What I tell every founder call
A short list of things I find myself repeating across advising conversations.
I do roughly four advising calls a month. After two years of this, the same sentences keep coming out of my mouth. Not because the founders are similar, but because the early-stage problems are.
Ship before you're ready
Every founder I talk to has a shipping date that is two weeks too late. Not from laziness — from wanting the thing to be defensible. The version you ship gets feedback. The version you don't ship gets nothing. Trade quality for cycle time in the first six months.
Hire one person, not three
The pull to hire is strongest when you are exhausted. Resist hiring three people at once. Hire one, integrate them properly, and let the next hire be a function of what you actually learned about working with the first.
Talk to users every week
Not "do user research." Five conversations, every week, recorded by you. The signal is in the offhand things they say between answers.
Make the boring decisions explicit
Every founding team has a list of boring decisions they've avoided. Naming conventions, who approves what, how releases work, when you say no. The avoidance is more expensive than any of the decisions would be.
Trust your taste, double-check your reasoning
Founders with good product taste tend to second-guess themselves into average products. The taste is the asset. The reasoning around the taste is the part to interrogate.
Stop reading Twitter for advice
You already have advisors. Use them.