How I learned to stop giving advice
I like some kinds of advice. I am a very recent founder who knows very little about a lot of things. But sure, there are two types of advice that annoys me, for one I learned to have patience for the other I learned to ignore.<p>I learned to be patient with who knows absolutly nothing about my business, my sector, my technology or startups in general. Friends of friends and relatives in general. It is good to have patience because most of time they give you ridiculous ideas (because they know nothing of your business), but every few times you realize you got a very interesting idea, something that you would never thought, precisely because they have a completely different background and experiences.<p>But the type of advice I learned to ignore are the ones from "experts". Such as the case of the OP. They are usually founders and <i>mentors</i>, both experienced and newbies. The problem is that they think they <i>know</i> what is your problem, and they <i>know</i> what would be the solution. And worst, usually the solution comes with a lecture about how you suck on doing something you obviously should be doing, ie, following a famous advice from a famous person: "get out of the building", "do something people want", recently the "do things that don't scale".<p>TL;DR If the advice comes from some random person and starts with "What if.." or "Have you tried...", be patient, you will hear a lot of nonsense, but sometimes it will pay off.
But if the advice comes from someone who think they are better than you on what you are doing, and starts with "You are not doing X right.." or "you must do <famous advice> more", forget it, it is BS.