Thursday, April 09, 2009
My Advice- Take Startup Advice from folks working in Startups
For the record, I don't know Eric Ries, but he seems all the rage of late with my twitter-stream flowing glorious with his Web 2.0 Expo wisdom about running a lean startup. He's more than likely earned it, most recently as co-founder and CTO of IMVU. And, I bet that we'd get along wonderfully, and that he's a great guy (given the posse he travels with, and friends of friends).
But, last I checked, he's a Venture Advisor at Kleiner Perkins, and I'm quite sure Kleiner Venture Advisor's aren't working for extra equity right now, firing their own staff to survive the next 6 months, filing and resolvings bugs on weekends, or doing PR outreach late into the night to get a little extra traction from their most recent product launch.
My hunch is that memories are forgetful when it comes to doing whatever it takes to make it to your next milestone.
So, if you have to make binary tradeoffs on who to take your advice from, I'd recommend that you take it from someone who's in the trenches, like Glenn Kelman, Andy Liu, or Ev Williams (and here) as their feedback may be a little more moist, with recent blood, sweat and tears (that is, if they have time to talk with you -- my hunch is that you'll be more likely to get a 4 sentence e-mail, as they won't have the time to prepare for and attend a multi-day conference).
Labels: andy liu, eric ries, ev williams, glenn kelman, kleiner perkins
