What's the one piece of common startup advice you think is completely overrated?
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We all hear the same advice: "build in public," "launch on Product Hunt," "find your niche," "talk to customers."
But what's one piece of this advice you think is actually overrated, misleading, or just doesn't apply to your experience?
For me, it's "ignore your competitors." I think watching them closely is how you find gaps. Curious to hear yours.
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"Build a community before launching".. I’m 100% sure a project can succeed without a community behind it. Truth is, your first project probably won't even be on the radar of your friends or family
@hiurich Honestly, I think “fail fast” is overrated. I’ve learned more from sticking with problems longer. Not everything is worth abandoning quickly
I think “move fast” is overrated when it becomes an excuse to skip understanding the problem. Speed is only useful after you know what matters. Otherwise, you’re just sprinting in fog.
The better version might be: learn fast, then move fast.
Mine is "be on every channel."
I have been talking to solo founders for the last six weeks and almost all of them are trying to do X + LinkedIn + Reddit + Discord + TikTok + a newsletter + a podcast all at once with maybe 5 hours a week of marketing time. The math doesn't work. They burn out at week 3 and decide marketing is impossible.
The actual play at 5 hours a week is very narrow. One or two rooms where your specific people already are. Three or four high-quality posts a week instead of fourteen mediocre ones. A handful of relationships with people who care, not a follower count. The advice "be everywhere" is written for full-time growth marketers in disguise and quietly destroys solo founders.
@channelscout I see your point, but how do you know which 1–2 rooms work without testing a few first?
With 5 hours/week, you can't do 7 channels. Totally agree there. But you can do 3–4 for a couple of weeks, see what gets traction, then cut the rest.
Test first. Then focus. That's the real play.
@wasil_abdal Fair pushback. I don't may not have articulated it well. We all get the same generic feedback of post on reddit or discord, but without testing the actual subreddits, newsletters, or servers where potential users are hiding, it's not a fair test. I think we are making a similar point.
“Build in public” can be overrated when it turns into performing instead of building. Sharing progress is useful, but only if it creates real feedback or trust, not just more noise.
The competitor angle is underrated for exactly the reason you said. Gaps only become visible when you're actually watching.
Mine would be 'launch embarrassingly early.' It's good advice for a lot of products. But it breaks down completely when trust is the product itself.
If you're building a financial analysis tool and the first version produces one wrong number, you've poisoned the well for that user permanently. There's no 'we'll fix it in the next iteration' because they've already filed you under AI that makes things up. The cost of that first impression isn't a bug report. It's a lost user who tells people.
In domains where accuracy is the core value proposition, shipping before you've got that right isn't bold. The bar for what counts as embarrassing is much lower than the advice implies.
How do you approach the competitor monitoring practically? Structured tracking or more passive observation?