This is what happens when we confuse morality with frugality. We've all been taught that the bake sale with five percent overhead is morally superior to the professional fundraising enterprise with 40 percent overhead, but we're missing the most important piece of information, which is: What is the actual size of these pies? Who cares if the bake sale only has five percent overhead if it's tiny?
What are bad recommendations you hear in your profession or area of expertise?
Question
What is the worst advice you received that you followed anyway?
Failure & regret
So, look, I read lots of books, lots of them, you know, especially when I went from programmer to a business, realizing I have to just learn business really quick. I got really dismayed with the quality of business books pretty quickly, because frankly, I think the business books are largely written by the people who have time, who are not the people who actually build companies, frankly.
David Senra, David Senra's podcast, David Senra (published episode transcript), 2026 source ↗
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Dan Pallotta
Founder of Pallotta TeamWorks; founder of the Charity Defense Council
Terence Tao
Mathematician; Fields Medallist, 2006
AI without validation is too unreliable to be of use in any serious application.
Recorded
Quanta Magazine reporter, Reported interview, Quanta Magazine, 13 April 2026
source ↗
Steve Jobs
Co-founder and chief executive of Apple; co-founder of NeXT; chief executive of Pixar
No. We have a lot of customers, and we have a lot of research into our installed base. We also watch industry trends pretty carefully. But in the end, for something this complicated, it's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them.
Recorded
Andy Reinhardt, Business Week Q&A in the Apple boardroom, extended online-only version, 25 May 1998
source ↗
Drew Houston
Co-founder and chief executive of Dropbox
I was going to say work on what you love, but that's not really it. It's so easy to convince yourself that you love what you're doing — who wants to admit that they don't? When I think about it, the happiest and most successful people I know don't just love what they do, they're obsessed with solving an important problem, something that matters to them.
Recorded
MIT 147th Commencement, MIT News (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), 7 June 2013
source ↗
More from Tobias Lütke
View profile →So I really tried everything, including, you know, just how to build the team in such a way that I delegate everything, and I have my different business lines, and arrange things. This is sort of after the IPO, and I realized I have to be a very “serious” public company CEO. And so it almost killed the company, honestly.
Recorded
David Senra, David Senra's podcast, David Senra (published episode transcript), 2026
source ↗
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