My friend Jake raised $2M following every "proven" fundraising strategy. Polished deck. Perfect metrics. Textbook timing. He got 47 rejections.
His rival Sarah raised $3M with a hand-drawn presentation and broken demo. Her product solved a problem so specific that conventional wisdom said the market was "too niche."
Jake followed median advice designed for median companies in median markets. Sarah followed the reality of her specific situation.
Most advice assumes you're building something normal. You're probably not.
Median advice feels safe because it's been tested on thousands of companies. It smooths out the rough edges, provides predictable outcomes, keeps you in the comfortable middle.
But founders don't operate in the comfortable middle. We exist in the edges, the exceptions, the places where standard rules break down and new possibilities emerge.
Following advice meant for the average startup leads to average results. Which means invisible in a market where only the exceptional survive.
When did "proven strategies" last prove irrelevant to your specific challenge?
Consider the advice to "find product-market fit before scaling." Logical for most products. Disastrous for network effects businesses like Uber or Facebook, where scaling creates the fit.
"Focus on retention over acquisition" works for SaaS. Terrible advice for marketplaces, where acquisition velocity determines which side reaches critical mass first.
"Build an MVP" assumes you're in a new market. If you're disrupting an established category, customers expect feature parity from day one.
The pattern repeats across every domain:
Financial advice optimizes for risk-adjusted returns. Startup equity requires concentrated, asymmetric bets that violate every diversification principle.
Management advice assumes stable teams and predictable processes. Early-stage companies require rapid role changes and constant experimentation.
Marketing advice targets broad audiences with tested messages. Breakthrough products often succeed by obsessing over tiny, underserved segments.
Three filters to separate relevant advice from median noise:
The Context Test: Was this advice developed for companies at my stage, in my market, facing my specific constraints?
The Exception Question: What unique factors about my situation might make conventional wisdom irrelevant or harmful?
The First Principles Check: If I ignore all external advice and reason from my direct experience, what approach feels most aligned with my reality?
The most dangerous advice sounds most reasonable. It's been proven to workâjust not for situations like yours.
Your best path probably isn't the most crowded one.
Seek mentors who've navigated your specific type of challenge, not general business success. Trust data from your own experiments over industry benchmarks. Question every "should" that assumes you're building something ordinary.
Average thinking produces average outcomes. Your extraordinary potential requires extraordinary discernment about whose advice actually applies to the outlier journey you're on.