How Founders Manage Diverse Advice from Advisors, Investors, and Mentors
Starting a business is a thrilling yet challenging journey. Founders often find themselves in a sea of advice, receiving feedback from various sources including advisors, investors, mentors, and sometimes even from friends and family. While this wealth of information can be incredibly valuable, it can also be overwhelming and, at times, conflicting. So, how do founders manage this diverse input to make informed decisions? Let’s dive into the strategies that successful entrepreneurs employ to navigate this complex landscape.
1. Understand the Source of the Feedback
Not all feedback is created equal, and understanding the source is crucial. Each type of advisor brings a unique perspective based on their background and interests:
- Advisors and Mentors: Often provide strategic advice and industry insights. They might focus on long-term vision, leadership, and market trends.
- Investors: Usually concentrate on financial performance, scalability, and return on investment. Their advice might be more risk-averse and short-term focused.
- Peers and Other Founders: Offer practical, hands-on advice based on their own experiences and recent challenges.
Moreover, each advisor might have a specific reasoning behind the advice. Are advisors looking for a role, looking for revenue, looking for a partnership, looking for compensation with your company? Is there a ‘hidden’ agenda? Understand their motivation to better understand where their advice is coming from.
Recognizing these different perspectives and motivations helps you as a founder contextualize the feedback and understand its relevance to your specific situation.
2. Evaluate the Advice Against Your Vision and Goals
Founders must always keep their company’s vision and long-term goals in sight. Feedback should be assessed on whether it aligns with these core objectives. When faced with conflicting advice, ask:
- Does this advice support my company’s mission?
- Will following this advice move us closer to our long-term goals?
- Does it align with our values and culture?
By filtering feedback through the lens of your vision, you can maintain strategic coherence and avoid being pulled in too many directions. And remember: you are the only ones steering the ship and the only ones who have to absorb the risk. No else does, except for onboarded investors. Any advice you receive, you have to properly think it through, and if you choose it, really own it. Otherwise, it will never feel like the right thing to do.
Sophie Haccou, co-founder at CupHub, shares her thoughts: “We were once advised: don't take all the advice. We still think that's a very good tip”.
3. Prioritize Based on Expertise and Experience
Not all advisors have the same level of expertise in every area. A mentor with deep industry experience might offer valuable strategic insights but may not be the best source for advice on technical development if they lack that background. Prioritize feedback based on the advisor’s expertise and their track record in the specific area they are advising on.
Alen Bajrektarevic, Founder at Bayrock, recognises that sometimes even advisors with similar expertise give conflicting advice. Then it’s time to go back to Tip #2. In his own words “Sometimes we get completely contradictory tips and feedback from fairly equal people (in terms of experience, knowledge, etc...) and then I think it mainly comes down to following your own vision and gut feeling.
4. Seek Clarification and Ask Questions
When receiving feedback, it’s essential to seek clarification to fully understand the advice and its implications. Ask questions like:
- Can you elaborate on why you think this is the best approach?
- Have you seen this strategy work in similar situations?
- What are the potential downsides or risks associated with this advice?
By digging deeper, founders can gain a clearer picture of the rationale behind the advice and its potential impact.
Identifying the ‘why’ of certain advice can especially be useful when there are conflicting opinions on the same topic. In the answers to the ‘why’ question there will often be similarities, just coming from a different viewpoint. Only when you fully understand the ‘why’ will you be comfortable taking a decision on how to tackle a specific issue and be comfortable with the risk you’re taking.
5. Balance Short-Term Needs with Long-Term Vision
Investors may push for quick wins to show immediate progress, while mentors might emphasize the importance of building a sustainable business model. You need to balance these short-term pressures with your long-term vision. It might involve making trade-offs but always with an eye on sustainable growth and long-term success.
6. Create a Feedback Log
Documenting feedback can be incredibly useful. Something as simple as an excel capturing all different viewpoints and highlighting which elements fit and which are conflicting can provide a great helicopter view and help put all advice in perspective.
Moreover, a feedback log also helps track advice over time, identify patterns, and evaluate the outcomes of decisions made based on past advice. This log can include:
- Who provided the feedback
- The context of the advice
- Actions taken based on the feedback
- Outcomes of those actions
Over time, this log becomes a valuable resource for making informed decisions and recognizing which sources of feedback have been most beneficial.
7. Trust Your Instincts
While external advice is valuable, as a founder you must trust your instincts. You know your business better than anyone else. When advice conflicts with your intuition or core understanding of the business, it’s essential to pause and consider why. Sometimes, the best decisions come from a combination of external advice and internal insights.
8. Know when to stop asking for advice
Last but not least: follow your own gut feeling and restrict the number of advisors that you consult. More is not always better.
Receiving diverse feedback is a double-edged sword for founders. It can provide a wealth of knowledge and new perspectives but also create confusion and indecision. By understanding the source of the feedback, aligning it with your vision, prioritizing based on expertise, seeking clarification, balancing short-term and long-term needs, documenting advice, and trusting your instincts, you can navigate this sea of feedback effectively. Ultimately, the ability to synthesize and apply feedback is a crucial skill that can significantly impact the success of a startup.
Advisors, remember the impact your words have! Jennifer Goodall, CEO at MindAffect, mentions: “I receive a lot of feedback, some great, some good, some completely useless and some so de-energizing that I want to resign and take up knitting 😆. It would be really helpful if the advisors read this article and actually understand the impact of their words.”
What are your thoughts on Navigating the Sea of Feedback?
Share them with us and other founders in the comments of this LinkedIn Post!