What's up, it's Zayd

Last year, I spent $47,000 following startup advice that almost destroyed Valley.

They said to implement EOS framework.

So I did.

It lasted 6 weeks before it became bureaucratic theater.

They said to focus on OKRs.

So I did.

That ended up just being me writing beautiful quarterly goals while revenue tanked 30%.

They said a good leader nurtures and empowers.

So I did.

And I watched as people make expensive mistakes while I pretended not to micromanage.

No matter how many times people say to be selective about the advice you take and the people you take it from, that doesn’t change the fact that there are some truths that sound unequivocal when you hear them said enough times.

They sound like rules. So you follow them.

What we forget is that there is no one size fits all mold for our job which is creating something that literally doesn’t exist. Most founder advice is pattern-matched from companies that succeeded despite following it, not because of it.

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My favorite finds of the week

There's an entire industry built around telling founders what to do:

All of it assumes your company fits into neat categories. Series A companies should focus on X. B2B SaaS platforms should do Y. If you’re under $5M ARR, just implement these systems…etc.

Your company isn't a template.

Every piece of advice I followed in October 2024 made logical sense. Successful companies do these things. Smart founders implement these systems. Investors expect this level of operational maturity.

Logic doesn't know me or my company though. It doesn’t account for context.

Type 1: The Survivor Bias Special

These are the "10 things successful founders do" posts. They're completely useless because they ignore all the successful founders who did the opposite.

Example: "Successful founders delegate early."

Counter-example: Jensen Huang still reviews chip designs at NVIDIA. Elon still does product reviews at Tesla. Some founders should never fully delegate their superpower.

The advice is incomplete. It worked for those founders in that context. Maybe it works for you. Maybe it doesn't. Don’t assume that the books are talking to you. They are just words on paper.

Type 2: The Investor Optimization

This is advice optimized for what investors want to see rather than what actually grows your business.

"Build a repeatable sales process" sounds great in a board meeting. In practice sometimes you need to do things that don't scale to figure out what actually works.

"Focus on unit economics" makes sense at scale, but pre-PMF, you might need to burn cash inefficiently to learn what customers actually want.

Investors see thousands of companies. They pattern-match. They want to see familiar signals that historically correlate with success. Correlation isn't causation. (yes, I have been listening to a lot of the No Stupid Questions pod and can’t stop saying that)

Type 3: The Complexity Merchants

These are the frameworks that feel smart and sophisticated but create more problems than they solve.

I implemented three different "operating systems" in four months:

Each one required:

By the time we'd finished implementing one system, I'd decided it wasn't working and moved to the next.

The result of all of these tactics was organizational whiplash that felt productive in the moment.

The team stopped taking any process seriously because they knew it would change in six weeks. Trust eroded. Momentum died.

We lost 30% of our users in a single month because the product didn't work reliably.

While I was writing alignment documents, running twice-weekly all-hands meetings, implementing sprint planning, and creating dashboards to track our OKRs.

Our customers were experiencing bugs, getting confused by our UI, not seeing the value we promised, and leaving for competitors.

The advice I followed was "founder at your stage should focus on building systems and empowering your team."

The reality was: I needed to sell more and make sure the product actually worked.

Reason 1: Stage Mismatch

Advice for Series B companies doesn't work for pre-seed companies, but founders don't know this, so they implement Series B processes at Seed stage.

Example: Hiring a VP of Sales before you have repeatable sales motion. The advice sounds right. The timing is wrong.

Reason 2: Founder Mismatch

Some founders are natural operators. Some are natural sellers. Some are technical. Some are visionaries.

Advice optimized for operator-founders kills companies run by seller-founders (and vice versa).

I'm a seller. I'm good at understanding markets, talking to customers, closing deals. I'm terrible at building processes and managing operational complexity.

Every minute I spent "operating" was a minute I wasn't doing what I'm actually good at.

Reason 3: Context Collapse

Advice ignores your specific:

"Focus on retention" makes sense if you have high churn, but if churn is fine and growth has stalled, you need to focus on acquisition, not retention.

The advice isn't wrong, full stop. It's wrong for you right now.

Here's what I learned: You need an anti-playbook.

A systematic way to evaluate advice instead of blindly following it.

Step 1: Identify Your Actual Constraint

Most companies have one major constraint at any time:

Figure out which one is actually limiting your growth and being a real blocker.

For us in October, our product didn't work reliably. Everything else was downstream from that.

All the operational improvements I was making were irrelevant until we fixed the core product.

Step 2: Ignore Advice That Doesn't Address Your Constraint

This sounds obvious but founders violate it constantly.

Your constraint is customer acquisition. Someone gives you advice about building a better company culture. It might be good advice. It doesn't matter right now.

Your constraint is product reliability. Someone tells you to implement better sales processes. Wrong problem.

Step 3: Test Advice With Reversible Decisions

Some decisions are one-way doors (can't be easily reversed). Some are two-way doors (can be reversed quickly).

One-way doors:

Two-way doors:

For two-way door decisions, just try things. Don't overthink it. The cost of being wrong is LOW.

For one-way doors, get multiple perspectives and think deeply.

Most founder advice treats everything like a one-way door. It's not.

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Once I stopped following advice and started thinking from first principles:

We fired me from operations

I'm not good at it. Trying to get good at it was wasting time. We found someone who could take my vision and translate it without needing me in every decision.

We went back to sales

Revenue solves almost everything. When revenue grows, team morale improves, product decisions become clearer, investor relations get easier.

We trimmed the team ruthlessly

Not every person we hired was making good decisions. Each time we let someone go, a key metric improved because the remaining people had clarity.

We stopped building new features

We focused entirely on making our core features work reliably. Boring. Unsexy. Exactly what our customers needed.

We threw out all the frameworks

No more OKRs. No more EOS. No more operating systems. Just: What needs to happen this week to move the core metrics?

Six months after our worst month:

Before implementing any founder advice, ask:

Does this address our actual constraint?
If not, ignore it. No matter how smart it sounds.

Is this a one-way or two-way door?
Two-way doors: just try it. One-way doors: think deeply.

Does this match my strengths as a founder?
Advice optimized for operators doesn't work for sellers. And vice versa.

What's the opportunity cost?
What am I not doing if I spend time on this?

Is this investor-optimized or customer-optimized?
Sometimes these align. Often they don't.

Focus on what actually matters; product, revenue momentum, having a team that makes good decisions, the ability to iterate quickly, and a framework that supports your founder being in their zone of genius.

None of this is sexy. None of it makes for good LinkedIn posts. All of it actually matters.

At the end of the day, some founders need to delegate more. Some need to delegate less. Some companies need systems. Some need to tear down systems that aren't working. Some need to move faster. Some need to slow down and focus.

The answer is always: It depends.

On your market. Your product. Your team. Your strengths. Your constraints.