【导语】如何处理太多建议，是创业者经常会遇到的问题。以下文章来自硅谷著名孵化器YC的合伙人Aaron Harris。以下为硅发布翻译简写。

如何处理太多建议，是创业者经常会遇到的问题。乍一看，这好像都不该是个问题，因为十年前，人们在创业方面基本找不到太多高质量的建议，直到硅谷教父保罗.格雷厄姆，以及马克.安德森写了一些很好的文章。

而在那之后，创业世界里又出现了很多坏建议。多数创业者获得创业方面建议的渠道很少，因为他们的周围没有足够多的人曾经创办过公司，或者能够就早期创业提出建议。

但是早期创业生态系统的快速扩张，改变了这种动态。

现在，有数百人甚至约上千的人，在创业方面至少有一些“经验”。这些人中的绝大多数，很愿意帮助别人或者给别人建议。但这是一种祝福，也是一种诅咒。

为什么说这也是“诅咒”呢？

因为坏的部分在于：现在创业者实在有太多地方可以寻求帮助。而这会造成很多不好的后果。比如说，当一个创始人能够得到很多建议和帮助时，他如果是理性的，这就意味他做决策的时间点会被推迟，因为他要花时间收集他认为足够多的信息。而这是“危险”的。

因为第一，创业的最终敌人其实是时间，为一个决定，在时间方面不断推迟，这相当于是在浪费不可替代的资源。事实上，与其花大量时间去试图做一个完美决定，还不如快速做出一个错误决定，然后迭代它，因为其实无论最终你做的是什么决定，你还是会发现，这个决定也不完全正确。所以不要浪费时间，一个创业者在这种情况下能做的最好事情是：A，倾听第一个人的意见，并改变路线；或者B，尝试创业者自己想做的事情，看看进展如何。

理解这一点，也就意味着创业者要接受这样一个事实：即作为创始人，不管你能够做出什么决定，以及不管这个决定是多么明智，但它哪怕不是大错特错，还是可能至少有一点错。

这听上去似乎是不合逻辑的，因为我们常常觉得创业公司的“顾问”应该知道很多事，否则，为什么要叫他们为“顾问”呢？然而，任何顾问都不可能理解你业务的全部背景，因此在最好的情况下，他们也只是能够通过思考你提出的问题，来给出一般性的建议或者框架。

这里的难点在于：为了追求一个目标，有很多专家，并且总是有许多思想来源可以遵循。然而，关键是要挑出一个专家，让那个人成为你咨询的对象，让那个人，成为你寻求建议和咨询的对象。

对一个创始人来说，这就意味着要挑选一个能够触发你思维的顾问，而不是为你去做决定的人。选一个单一顾问，这意味：你不可能获得有关一个问题的所有可能性视角。我们的目标是：找到一个能挑战你的思想，并使你看问题更全面的人，而不是让你去做他会做的决定的人。这意味，你要接受这样一个事实，即这个人并不总是有一个完美答案，有时候，这些答案可能无处着手，有时候，这些答案可能是坏建议。

但创始人不应该想要找一个完美顾问，因为这是在追逐一个不可能的理想。我从未见过有任何投资者或者顾问是完美的，哪怕仅仅只是接近完美。伟大顾问的力量在于：他们能够以清晰的主观意识，思考新的和复杂的想法。这些人，承认他们有些东西不知道，以及避免过度地给你指定性的建议。同时他们倾听，并渴望学习。

而这里面也许最最重要的是，在态度方面，最好的创业顾问对你的潜力和企业的潜力有着近乎无敌的乐观态度。让自己拥有一个具备这些品质的顾问，并知道什么时候，你可以忽视他的建议。

What to Do with Too Much Advice

We recently announced the launch of a new version of Startup School. As part of that, we created a library of the best advice we’ve written and created in the past. This is a powerful collection, and it got me thinking about the nature of advice. Specifically, it made me consider an issue that frequently confronts founders: what to do with too much advice.

At first glance, this would seem to be an unlikely problem. Ten years ago, there wasn’t much high quality advice available for starting a startup. There were some great essays from Paul Graham and from Marc Andreessen and then there was quite a lot of bad advice. Most founders’ access to in person advice was even sparser. There simply weren’t enough people around who had recently started companies or advised early stage startups to give a founder easy access to someone experienced.

The rapid expansion of the early startup funding ecosystem has changed this dynamic. There are now hundreds, probably thousands, of people with at least some experience in startups. Most of these people are willing to help/advise some number of the people who ask. This is a blessing and a curse.

The blessing in this dynamic is that a larger group of people trying to help each other is a net positive. People who want to be founders can get more access and do it more quickly. The bad part is that there are simply too many places to turn for advice and help.

When a founder has access to so many sources of advice and help, it becomes easier for that founder to delay decisions under a rational argument that she is simply trying to do things “right” the first time. This is dangerous for two reasons. The first is that the ultimate enemy of a startup is time, and perseverating over a decision wastes that irreplaceable commodity. It is better to make a bad decision and iterate through it rapidly than it is to spend a huge amount of time trying to make a perfect decision, only to discover it wasn’t quite right either.

I’ve found, in working with startups, that good founders generally have a strong sense of what they want to do before asking questions. They are led astray when, in attempting to avoid a bad decision, they start asking many different people for confirmatory advice about an idea. At YC, we call this “shopping for advice,” and it usually ends with a long period of nothing happening, or with founders getting frustrated that no one is confirming what they want to do. The best thing a founder can do here is either a) listen to the first person and alter course or b) try the thing they want to do anyway and see how it goes.

Understanding this means accepting the fact that, in all likelihood, any decision that you make as a founder, no matter how well advised, will likely be at least a little, if not mostly wrong. This seems illogical because advisers are meant to know so many things, and we expect them to give good advice. However, no adviser can possibly understand the full context of your business, so, at best, they are able to offer general advice or frameworks for thinking through problems.

“Make for yourself a Rav” is a quote from the Mishnah, which is the core of the Judaism’s oral law. The idea here is that there are always many sources of thought one could follow, and many experts that one could consult in the pursuit of a goal. However, the key is to pick a single expert and make that person the one you consult, make that the person to whom you look to for advice and counsel.

For a founder, this means picking a single adviser who can inform your thinking, rather than someone who makes decisions for you. Picking a single adviser means that you won’t get all possible perspectives on an issue, but that should never be the point of advice in business. The goal is to find someone who challenges your thinking and makes your perspective better without trying to make you do exactly as he would do. It means accepting the fact that this person will not always have a perfect answer, may sometimes be unavailable, and may sometimes give you bad advice.

Founders who are searching for perfection in their advisers are chasing impossible ideals. No investor or adviser I’ve ever met is perfect or even nearly so. The strength of great advisers is in their ability to think about new and complex ideas with a clear sense of their own subjectivity. These people admit what they don’t know, avoid giving overly prescriptive advice, listen, and are hungry to learn. Perhaps most importantly, the best startup advisers have a near invincible optimism about your potential and that of your business. Make for yourself a Rav that has these qualities, and know when to stop listening to them.