# Why Startup Advisors on Social Media are BAD (According to Comments)

## Метаданные

- **Канал:** Ed Kang (CFXO)
- **YouTube:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnbbP_uji4E
- **Дата:** 15.04.2026
- **Длительность:** 19:14
- **Просмотры:** 196
- **Источник:** https://ekstraktznaniy.ru/video/50904

## Описание

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0:00 Start
0:10 Disclaimer
0:54 TLDR
2:55 Selling a Course?
5:52 Asking First
7:41 Cost Complaints
9:31 Dunning Kruger
16:56 Perfectionism

## Транскрипт

### Start []

Let's talk about some of the comments that I see on social media complaining about startup advisors. Fair warning, we're going to have a little bit of fun with this, but expect a lively discussion. So, let me know what you think in the comments. Now, let me just

### Disclaimer [0:10]

say this is not a video of me crashing out or acting passive-aggressive or venting my frustrations with some of the comments that I experienced on social media. And while I'm not referring to any particular founder that I work with right now at startups. com or any other program, I do have the receipts of founders that I've interacted with in the past that have made me question whether I want to do this whole advisory thing at all. Let me also say that I consider it a unique privilege to have the platform, the voice that I have right now. No, I'm not a huge channel, I'm not Mr. Beast, but I do have influence and I don't take that lightly. So, I want to make sure that I'm measured as possible, very professional, and make this productive for all of you out there because I appreciate this community and all the support that I've received. Now that I've gotten those

### TLDR [0:54]

upfront disclaimers out of the way, let's do a no fluff TLDR. You are the average of the five founders you spend the most time with, especially online. This is a quote typically attributed to the leadership guru Jim Rohn. I've adapted it for startups and founders, especially online, because I believe that there's a certain amplification that occurs when you're hanging out with other founders on current social media platforms. And there's a difference between a wantrepreneur and a wantrepreneur. A wantrepreneur is someone who wants to be an entrepreneur and they're at different phases and I'm totally okay with wantrepreneurs, but the wantrepreneur is a completely different animal. We're going to talk about how you do not want to have these types of founders in your life. And finally, there's a difference between empathy and sympathy. Empathy is the willingness to step out of your shoes and walk in someone else's shoes in an appropriate manner in what's best for everybody. Where sympathy is just feeling bad because somebody else feels bad. And what wantrepreneurs often do out of bad faith and they're emotionally manipulative is they want you to feel bad because they feel bad because typically there's some type of unmet need or even pain that they are coping with on social media. They've just found that outlet and it's not healthy for anybody. you. It's not healthy for me. We need to distinguish between the two so we can have productive and healthy relationships. If you're still with me in this video, thank you. I want to invite you into a deep dive conversation. But let's get some introductions out of the way first. If we met before, welcome back to my channel. Thank you very much. Use the chapter markers to skip to the good part of the video. If we haven't met, my name is Ed Kang. I'm a seven-time funded founder with two exits. I'm also the chief strategy officer for startups. com. This is from my experience of advising hundreds of founders and working through other programs in the startup ecosystem across North America. Check the video description for some goodies on how we can potentially work together, if you even want to after watching this video. And while you're here, do the YouTube thing. Like, comment, subscribe. Always helpful. Let me know what you think. Let's jump back into the difference between a wantrepreneur and a wantrepreneur. The first founder is

### Selling a Course? [2:55]

someone who makes comments on social media, typically hiding behind their avatar, asking, "If you're so smart at startups, why are you selling a course? " Now, this founder could go either way, a wantrepreneur or a wantrepreneur. From founder, I think this is a legitimate question and I'm happy to answer it whenever it's given to me. There was a time that I did sell courses, but it was because I pivoted during COVID. When everything got locked down, I was launching a startup and we had to move to an online product. So, we sold it as an educational course. But I empathize because so many people got locked down and they lost their livelihoods, their ability to generate an income because they couldn't even go to work. So, entrepreneurship became a natural outlet and many people who were opportunistic said, "Okay, I'm not going to make the business the product. I'm entrepreneur the product itself and create wantrepreneurs, create individuals who spend more time thinking and learning about entrepreneurship than actually going out and doing a business. " And business was good. But it's not the business that I want to be in. So, I don't sell a course. Everything that you see on this YouTube channel is not behind a paywall. You don't have to pay anything just to learn everything. In fact, I put everything that I have for free and I want you to get as much value as you can, more value than what you would have paid for in some of these other courses so that maybe later on, when you're sitting on your millions and you're a successful founder, you might feel a bit guilty, contact me and write me a check. I will make that deal every day, all day long. But at startups. com, what we do offer is an advisory relationship. We offer you access to advisors that you would not get in other places without giving up tens of thousands of dollars and points in your company. But like I said, I understand why people are a little cynical of these gurus online who are trying to peddle courses. And I've had many founders come to me and say, "I paid for this and I got absolutely nothing out of it. " I also had founders come to me and say, "I wish I would have heard of you or learned from you or joined startups. com a year ago when I made all the mistakes in the past. " And so, what I look for is something called a righteous value exchange. We exchange time commensurate to the value that time is worth. The truth is, there's so many other things that I could be doing with my time, investing it into things that have asymmetric upside, such as my startup portfolio. But I have a personal mission to give back to the startup community because it's treated me so well. I'm extremely fortunate. I'm in this place where I can pretty much do whatever I want for work, but I'm not to the place where I can do nothing at all. And where I want to empathize with you as a startup founder, I want you to empathize with me as someone who also has to work, who has a family, who's got goals. And that's why I want to be an open book and I invite any founders to ask me legitimate questions as long as they are asked in good faith, not to have these gotcha moments so that I can be flamed online or attacked. That's not what I'm looking for. I'm looking for genuine value exchange where we can make each other better, you as a founder, me as an advisor. The next type of founder that

### Asking First [5:52]

you might have in your circle is the individual that would rather ask someone of convenience than go research the solution themselves first. We have so much access to great information our fingertips that I fully admit can be overwhelming. So, it's important to trust the information out there that you get from places like ChatGPT or if you use Claude, whatever you're using, but verify them with real people with experience and that's the benefit that I can bring into your life. Furthermore, if you are surrounded by founders who've learned how to learn, who are diving into all the AI advancements, trying out all the tools, and you get together and you share everything that you're experiencing and you give each other tips, wow, that is synergy to the greatest effect. That might sound like a cliche word, but it's true. Something magical happens as I've experienced when I was down at Y Combinator doing an interview. I was in a room with really smart people and we just started exchanging ideas. Something happens when really smart, hungry people are in a room together and they start working together, wow, magic happens. And that's what Silicon Valley's all about. That's why you've got network effects in those hubs. But online, what happens? It gets diluted a little bit and we try to create these little pockets for you to come in to talk to other founders that you might not necessarily have access to. But I work with my investor, Greg Weltsch, my GP that you've seen on this channel. We just share everything that we're learning. We're so busy experimenting and then when we get together, we get excited to share and teach each other. And that's what I want for all of you. But you have to demonstrate your willingness to maximize the time and the effectiveness of our conversations by going out and doing your homework first. So, if you have another founder like this in your life, try to teach them to learn how to learn. Spur them on, encourage them, point it out. But if they still refuse to be relentlessly resourceful, you should question whether they're in your founder circle. This next type of founder I

### Cost Complaints [7:41]

encounter on a regular basis. And once again, they can be a wantrepreneur or a wantrepreneur. A wantrepreneur typically is trying to become an entrepreneur and maybe they haven't reached that level yet where they can legitimately pay for services. And I relate to that so much. That's why, once again, I put out as much stuff as I can for free and there's a lot of free things out there. But if a wantrepreneur comes into my life and every time we get together, they start off reminding me how much this conversation is costing them, well, we're starting off on the wrong foot. And believe me, it has happened more often than not. And sometimes what I want to do is refer them to the other founders that I actually work for and show them the rates that they're paying so their jaws drop on the floor and they realize they're getting an absolute steal when they work with me at startups. com. And I don't mind founders being frugal and making sure they watch every single dollar that they spend. But when they use that to become passive-aggressive and make everybody else feel bad because they're feeling bad, they're looking for sympathy, not empathy, and that's inappropriate. In other words, you or any of your founder circle are allowed to be thinking this, but actually voicing it and imposing your belief system, what you value and what you are working through on other people, well, that just creates that relationship friction and you're not going to have a good experience with your fellow founders or with your advisor. And if you are in this boat, my suggestion to you is to come clean so I can empathize with you. Just be straight up and tell me what you're thinking because once you agree to pay, you are entering into a contractual obligation to work with me. We are having a righteous value exchange or at least I hope so. But if you're unwilling to take responsibility for your choice to do that, fully understanding that there always risks that you're not going to be successful, no matter how much I try to help you, well, that is your problem, not my problem. Now, this next one we

### Dunning Kruger [9:31]

all experience to a specific degree because it has to do with our cognitive biases. There's something called the Dunning-Kruger effect, which is basically when you know a little bit about something, you begin to think you're an expert and you're more confident than you should be. And what happens is, the more you learn about that something, the less confident you become because you realize there's so much more to learn and you're much more aware of it instead of having a false confidence that affects your performance. Founders will often come to me and they'll feel a little insecure like they already should have known something but they feel bad that they don't and that's quite okay. But when you become a wantrepreneur and you start puffing out your chest and saying no, I completely knew that and then still ask me to help you, that's when this cognitive dissonance starts to set into place and Dunning-Kruger effect becomes very damaging to the advisory relationship and to all the other founders that you're going to be working with. But the Dunning-Kruger effect is actually natural because we get this sort of dopamine high when we learn something and we feel a little bit competent, we want to expand that competence into the confidence that we can continue to learn and grow. But we also want to look good and so we avoid looking bad and so not knowing something could potentially reveal us as not having all the answers, looking bad and therefore we don't look good. So sometimes we start to get into this echo chamber in our minds and we puff ourselves up and we become overconfident. And this happens with pitch decks all the time. VCs will tell you that what happens is founders come in with much more confidence that their startup is going to become a unicorn than evidence to back it up. And whereas founders say, well, what about all that I know and what I've done up to this point in time, all my blood, sweat, and tears, the investors say, that's great, but we can't underwrite that. We need to see evidence and proof and then we get into something called the five stages of grief. For founders, grief look like this and remember every early stage founder feels this. I experience the five stages of grief all the time as I go through different cycles. But the first stage is denial and that's where Dunning-Kruger effect comes into play. Because we know just enough to be dangerous, we move into denial of the things that we don't know. We think, of course I'm going to raise $1 million for my startup. I'm an amazing genius. Of course this is the best thing since sliced bread. Of course nobody else is working on it. Of course investors are going to see it a mile away and start writing me checks. Now I'm being a bit facetious. It's actually a little more subtle than that. We start to dream about an investor recognizing who we are and writing that check because we want to and we have to be confident. We have to have conviction in our ideas. But when we hit the reality that it's not what it seems, that we're not actually right about something, we start to get angry. And this is a natural reaction everybody has. And I've had founders emotionally all their anger onto me and it's affected our relationship. But as I became a better advisor, I understood that this was a natural reaction and I actually became glad that I could share this moment with them. It's led me to my thesis, Joy Effects which I won't get into here, but that's when we're glad to be with each other in strength and weakness for network effects. And that moves to bargaining, which is the next stage. That's when we start negotiating with ourselves and with other people and we start to think, oh, if I just change my ask or change the terms or if I move from a convertible to a safe, that's going to change everything and it's just not the case. We have to move through the stage as quick as possible, which inevitably leads to depression. We get sad. We start to think we're really bad founders. We go into that trough of sorrow. Once again, it's completely natural. I've been in this stage where I've wallowed and literally locked myself in a room and not see my family for like two weeks except for meals. But if we can surround ourselves with the right people, then we can move past it and get to acceptance and that's when magic starts to happen, especially between you, other fellow founders who are in the same stage of acceptance, and your advisor. We all work together extremely well. Sometimes this feels like going to war with other people, but you realize that you're fighting back to back and you're in the same battle. I've had this with groups of founders as I worked them through their pitch deck and their narrative. At first, they start off with fully believing that they've got the goods and then I have to give them the letdown. We start having arguments, there's a lot of tension, but as we push through the stages together, sticking with each other, having each other's backs, we get to the stage of acceptance and that's when productivity goes to the next level and we start to see a light at the end of the tunnel and we come out to something that everybody can agree with. But a lot of times founders stay stuck in anger and they start blaming everybody else. One example of this is attacking VC. Some founders get really upset because VCs are rejecting them and they get mad at the entire VC industry. And then they point the finger at someone to blame because again, it's a natural reaction and sometimes that finger gets pointed to me. I fully recognize that as an advisor, I have the luxury of pointing the finger to the problems in somebody else's startup that I wasn't a part of creating. But that's what I bring to the table as an advisor. I bring an external perspective, someone who can go arms distance and who's not stuck looking at the forest and not seeing the trees. I can look at the whole forest and that's why I respect founders. It is one of the hardest positions to be in. Being the CEO of your own startup is a lonely position that many people don't understand and I empathize. I've made decisions that have caused catastrophic failures and adverse effects to all the people around me and I've looked like a total buffoon, a completely inept, incompetent leader. And I've been embarrassed I felt the shame and I've been angry at everyone else around me when I'm not willing to look inwards. But if you know a founder who's blaming everybody else instead of taking responsibility for what they control, that is very dangerous. That is slowly going to seep into you and start to infect you. It's like toxic radiation. You do not want to be around that whatsoever. And unfortunately, a lot of this is collected in social media because they start to gin up that anger and it becomes a mob and it becomes really easy to join in and that's what establishes that culture which invades all the other aspects of your startup life. This gets worse by an order of magnitude when that individual starts to exhibit narcissistic traits. And unfortunately, I know founders where I have completely rejected them. I fired them right on the spot because they've come at me right in the first conversation because they're already in that anger state. And believe you me, they still come after me and they yell and they kick and they scream and I say, get in line with all the other people who are completely disappointed with my advisory abilities. When the reality is I'm not the one who's supposed to be taking responsibility. Now I will take accountability for my part if I've contributed in any way and I'm willing to go through the reconciliation process and take ownership of my part, but it only goes so far. If you allow that inappropriate anger to become toxic and seep into your own personal founder circle, your own emotional life, then you are in trouble. It's like a cancer. You need to cut that out and be absolutely brutal with it. Don't worry about other people's opinions. You're doing this for you because you will not be useful at all for your startup and unfortunately for all the people that you care about in your life. Individuals like this, especially those who exhibit those narcissistic traits, I'm not saying they have narcissistic personality disorder, that's psychological label, that's not for me to give. But those who exhibit the traits similar to that, which many do, especially online, that is detrimental. Please be aware of this. I'm trying to be as serious as possible here because I worry about this a lot when it comes to what is happening in society in general.

### Perfectionism [16:56]

And finally, this is the wantrepreneur that says, I just need to get all this done before we talk. I know many founders, ones that I appreciate and I think are really smart and talented that avoid me because they don't think they're ready to have this conversation. Something has entered in their minds where there's an insecurity, fear, and a doubt that should not be there because that is preventing us from really being productive by engaging with each other to work on your startup. Let me just say, it is about direction, not perfection. If you have something in you that needs to be a perfectionist, it's probably based on fear. And if that fear is preventing you from going out and taking action, well, you are being a wantrepreneur. You want to be an entrepreneur, but something's preventing you from going out and doing it and that's not an indictment on you or your character or your potential. It just means you're experiencing a coping mechanism of some form and you're procrastinating. You're soothing yourself by avoiding facing something that you're really afraid of and that's okay, it's all natural. I do it myself all the time. But if you continue to isolate yourself, you can have downstream adverse effects on you personally, your own emotional and mental health. You can lose a perspective that's absolutely critical for you to be a successful founder. At worst, you might become a wantrepreneur because you start to lurk online and then you find your little corner, a dark corner where other people are going to say exactly what you want to hear, reaffirm your cognitive bias, become an echo chamber and nobody wins in that situation and you become all the things that you didn't want to that we talked about in this video. So if you're out there and you're in one of my programs, don't wait to talk to me. In fact, talk to me about the fact that you don't want to talk to me and I think you'll be pleasantly surprised as how we can deal with it and we can create a plan together with you and it's all going to work out. I've got your back and through that I want you to have mine and we're going to enjoy this startup advisor relationship. See, that wasn't so bad, was it? We got to have an honest conversation and I appreciate just the ability to articulate my thoughts and be open with all of you here on this channel. I hope you can be the same with me. Let me know what you think in the comments. In the meantime, watch some of the other videos that I put on the screen. They're here for you. Let me know what other videos along this type of topic would be useful for you and once again, I appreciate all the love and support I get on this channel. I hope I can reciprocate. Thanks for