Creating general laws in the real world is hard. Talk to an median investor, and you’ll hear confident advice about some startup subproblems. And the advice is regularly valuable. But occasionally, you’ll listen to a heuristic that is not well qualified or appropriately followed up with the indispensable, “but this is just a data point.” And you’ll ask yourself whether you should change course based on the advice.
The mechanism by which VCs or successful entrepreneurs give confident advice is well understood - they are in positions of power and wealth, and tons of young people look to them for advice. However, the truth is very rarely in the bite-sized heuristic form VCs are so well known for. There are specific “laws of startups” that YC preaches in these bites. Startups must make things people want. Founders must do things that don’t scale. Founders must talk to users. But then, occasionally, you will hear an unexpected “sending people Calendly’s is disrespectful” mixed in. You will squint, think, “seems weird, but I’ll take your word for it,” and move on.
Startups are in the business of meeting preferences in markets that people are willing to pay for. Laws of preferences are tough to find and take a ton of evidence to build. You should be nervous whenever you hear a statement with confidence of sweeping human preferences. For one’s self, this boils down to being skeptical and curious about sweeping statements with confidence from VCs or former entrepreneurs. Ask them for evidence or analysis - this alone will make clear whether to believe them. There are no dumb questions, and you can decide given their reasons.
Seeking the truth is why PG has excellent advice. Read his essays, and you will find careful calibrations and qualifications, as one expects when reading of something so fragile. But talking to the vast majority of Silicon Valley is different. VCs are famously considered “pattern matchers” - they have seen 100’s of startups and can tell you if what you’re doing wrong. Be careful in updating your behavior from evidence-less advice from pattern matchers.