Advice Can Be Tricky

A year ago, I met Allen Morgan at a conference. He wouldn’t remember me. But, I remember him. I thought he shared great ideas on the panels that day and I just wanted to learn from all of his great experiences at Mayfield Fund and now as a “Sherpa.” When he started to blog earlier this year, I wanted to make sure I read every blog post, no matter the subject. You can find his blog roll here.

Today, while I should’ve been offline and enjoying a day in the city, I made the mistake of checking Twitter and, seeing Allen’s new post, reading it, and then tweeting out with a pre-fix “Req’d reading.” However, his post was a bit provocative, and many people disagree with it. I am no expert in these political matters with investors, and I also don’t entirely agree with all of Morgan’s post today either.

But, I do think because of who Allen is, his blog is always required reading.

To my surprise, some of my good friends tweeted back at me, assuming that because I retweeted it that I agreed with the entire message. That was my mistake — I should have been clearer. It did make me think, though — lots of investors use blogs to dish out advice with entrepreneurs and the community, partly as a way of sharing stories but also as a way of marketing themselves. It’s all good and I try to read lots of them because it helps me learn.

That said, I always tend to think the best advice that investors and other people can give entrepreneurs is to encourage them to weigh both sides of an issue and to ultimately make up their own mind, for themselves.

Allen Morgan may write a short blog post about why entrepreneurs shouldn’t meet with an investors unless they are formally “pitching,” but a lot of investors may think that’s bad advice. As with each startup and each founder/entrepreneur, each scenario is different, each company has special needs, each investor has a different personality, and therefore I tend to think that each person should make up their own mind accordingly.