[aaavl2821]

Starting a company requires a tolerance for ambiguity. If there were a rules based system for how to start a startup, then startups wouldn't exist: they'd be "innovation processes" at big companies, and your advisors would be your bosses

The existence of counterexamples and conflicting advice doesn't mean that advice isn't useful, conflicting advice is just a symptom of startups being uncertain. With a large enough sample size of advice, you can start to make sense of it, understand what's good and bad advice, understand how people's life experience and incentives may color their advice etc. this makes it much easier for you to turn that advice into decisions and actionable steps

If you think about it this way then more advice is better. It's just up to you to synthesize that advice and decide what to do with it

[reikonomusha]

Then instead of saying “start simple” and “be difficult to replicate”, why not suggest something more like “your goal might be to build something as quickly as possible, but must be sufficiently non-trivial to build. Time to build isn’t always an indicator of simplicity, [blah blah blah].”

I guess what I’m saying is embrace ambiguity in the advice more clearly. Don’t say “Do X” and “Do the opposite of X”, which together give you no ground to “synthesize”.

Another approach is to describe the effect of “Doing X”. Maybe building fast means you can get to market faster. Maybe building something nontrivial means your competition won’t gobble up your market. But you, the founder, are the arbiter of that decision/tradeoff.

ISTM that many startup-advice-givers like to create these short memorable platitudes instead of actually describing tradeoffs and decisions that the founder must make.

[estsauver]

Another way to read "Difficult to replicate" would be "Use a skill most of the market doesn't have or doesn't have the tolerance/patience to use." Simple doesn't mean trivial.