Why most startup advice sounds the same.
And what to do when you need guidance that actually fits your specific chaos.
I've been thinking about why so much startup advice feels like it was written by the same person. You know the pattern:
"Move fast and break things."
"Focus on product-market fit."
"Hire slowly, fire quickly."
All true, all useful, all completely useless when you're tech employee number two staring at a list of 20 scattered priorities, wondering which fire to put out first.
The problem isn't that the advice is wrong. It's that it's abstract when you need concrete. It's theoretical when you need tactical.
It's written for the startup that exists in someone's LinkedIn post, not the one you're actually building.
Theory meets Tuesday morning reality.
I remember walking into that startup as the second tech hire, rolling up to a VP of Product who handed me what looked like a wishlist to Santa. Twenty different priorities, development teams slowly chipping away at many of them, and chaos happening across all fronts so intense that nothing meaningful was getting done.
The standard startup advice would say "prioritize ruthlessly" or "focus on your core value proposition."
Great. How exactly do you do that when the founders are business development experts who see opportunity everywhere, and every customer conversation spawns three new feature requests?
Here's what actually worked:
We established process not because we loved bureaucracy, but because we needed to translate founder enthusiasm into developer clarity.
We broke work into smaller chunks not because agile methodology told us to, but because we needed wins the team could actually see.
We started iterating on previously developed features instead of constantly building new ones because we learned that improvement often beats innovation.
What makes advice actually useful.
Here's what I've learned about the difference between startup advice that changes how you work and startup advice that just sounds smart in a tweet.
The difference between helpful guidance and generic noise comes down to three things:
Specificity over scalability. The best advice I've received addressed my exact situation, not a universal truth that applies to everyone and therefore helps no one. When someone tells you exactly how they handled 20 competing priorities with a two-person dev team, that's gold. When they tell you to "be strategic," that's wallpaper.
Context over conclusions. I care less about what you decided and more about how you decided. Walk me through the meetings, the conversations, the moment you realized your approach wasn't working. Show me the messy middle, not just the clean outcome.
Constraints over possibilities. Tell me what you couldn't do, what you had to give up, what tradeoffs you made. Most startup advice sounds like it was written by people who had unlimited resources and perfect information. Real building happens within real limitations.
Finding guidance that actually fits.
After years of both giving and receiving startup advice, I've started offering something different. Instead of generic frameworks, I dig into your specific chaos. Instead of theoretical best practices, I help you navigate the political realities of your particular team, your actual customers, your real constraints.
Whether you're wrestling with unclear priorities, struggling to understand what customers actually want, or finding yourself constantly in reactive mode - these aren't abstract product management challenges. They're specific problems that require specific solutions, built for your specific context.
Sometimes you don't need another blog post about product-market fit.
Sometimes you need someone who's been through the exact flavor of chaos you're experiencing to help you see the path forward.
The shift that changed everything.
I used to collect startup advice like baseball cards. The more frameworks I knew, the more prepared I felt. But preparation and readiness are different things.
The shift happened when I stopped asking "What's the best practice?" and started asking "Who's dealt with this exact mess before?" Instead of seeking universal principles, I started looking for particular wisdom from people who'd navigated challenges that actually resembled mine.
Here's the thing about advice that works: it's not the most broadly applicable. It's the most precisely helpful for where you are right now, with your specific team, your actual constraints, your real timeline.
The next time you're drowning in generic guidance, try this instead. Find someone who's been where you are, not where you want to be. Ask them about their mistakes, their weird workarounds, and their moment of realization when everything clicked.
Until next week,
Mike @ Product Party
Want to connect? Send me a message on LinkedIn, Bluesky, Threads, or Instagram.
I'm starting to work with startups in a consulting capacity, helping founders navigate the specific product challenges that generic advice can't touch.
If you're dealing with scattered priorities, unclear customer needs, or reactive product decisions that feel uniquely messy, I'd love to hear about your situation.
Sometimes the most valuable conversation is the one tailored to your exact context, not startup theory in general.
