Founders should ignore conventional startup advice and follow their own vision, using minimal resources to prove it works.
Allebest advises founders to ignore the saturated 'founder advice' ecosystem and instead focus on what they want to exist in the world, using the minimum resources needed to prove it works, rather than following conventional plays like raising VC money and chasing large markets. ✦ AI generated
Erik Allebest · No Priors · 2026-08-13 · original ↗
starts at this moment · 35:20
“For founders who are trying to figure out if they're in the right market, too early or wrong—what wisdom do you have?”
I think one of the curses of being a founder today is just how much founder advice there is out there. At the time when I was getting into doing this 20 years ago, the playbook was like, hire a technical founder from Stanford, raise a bunch of money, get an office, go after a big market, spend a bunch of money on customer acquisition. And we literally just did like all the opposite of that. I hired my friend from San Jose State. We worked remotely. We didn't raise any money. We didn't pay any money for customer acquisition. We picked a tiny market. So, I don't know. I think people should listen to their heart and listen to what they want to do and they should think of what do they want to see exist out there in the world and then they just relentlessly go after that. What is the minimum amount of resources you need to go prove that out? Who are the great people you want to work with? None of the rest of it matters. Just go execute and put something beautiful into the world that's unique and creates value for people and you'll figure the rest of it out. And stop listening to people just giving you advice on what to do. Just go do it.
verbatim transcript · starts at 35:20
35:20when you did this, a lot of people told you it was uh it was too small. I think one of the curses of being a founder today is just how much like founder advice there is out there. >> Okay. >> You know, at the time when I was, you know, getting into doing this 20 20 years ago, the the playbook was like, you know, hire a technical founder from
35:44Stanford, raise a bunch of money, get an office, go after a big market, spend a bunch of money on customer acquisition. And we literally just did like all the opposite of that. like I hired my friend from San Jose State. We worked remotely. We didn't raise any money. We didn't pay any money for customer acquisition. We picked a tiny market. So, I don't know. Like, I think people should listen to
36:07their heart and listen to like what they want to do and they should think of what do they want to see exist out there in the world and then they just relentlessly go after that more than, you know, what does the market saying, what are these different things. Of course, if you've got to listen to your customer, right? And you've got to pivot if it's not working. But like what's
36:25your vision for the world? What is the minimum amount of resources you need to go prove that out? Who are the great people you want to work with? None of the rest of it matters. Just go execute and put something beautiful into the world that's unique and like creates value for people and you'll figure the rest of it out. Um, and stop listening to people just giving
36:45you advice on what to do. Just go do it. [laughter] Okay, last question for you. Um, uh, do you do you believe in AGI? Do you believe in its like or ASI and its in its imminent arrival? And what's one thing you believe about the world if that is true? >> I do believe in um, superhuman intelligence and that it will move at a faster and faster pace.
37:10I think it will be a little bit scary if we don't put guard rules, guard rails around that and rules for how it should engage with humans. Um, I hope we can do that. I would say I'm more optimistic than pessimistic about the impact of that though. I would hope that it can help us help us solve some of the biggest problems around climate, biggest problems around even politics and