One suggestion I would give Sam is to provide for each of the "bullet points" a couple of relevant stories about YC companies.
Most public advice is devoid of context where it originated and unless stated very precisely is wide open to misinterpretation, forming a cargo-cult, or being ignored as too generic. Only a few people in the world can be that precise (I know just two), but adding a relevant story is available to any diligent thinker and it works nearly as well. The best stories are either those that gave rise to the advice, or those where the advice was applied with a visible outcome.
And to put my money where my mouth is, consider this example:
Advice: In B2B be on the lookout for people, organizations, or events which can force the hand of your prospect customers.
Story: There was a company that made e-commerce vulnerability detection/prevention software, but when they tried selling it, they found that IT departments stonewalled the adoption because they didn't want to admit there was a security problem in the first place. After much frustrating direct sales attempts, our protagonists took their software to a payment processor, which has promptly mandated use of software for all e-commerce portals that were their clients. Problem solved.
Now consider first the advice on its own, and then the advice and the story together. Which one actually drives the point home?
In this example, why would you want the lowest common denominator? It's not always about quantity of eyeballs. It's about quality when you're managing a brand appealing to the best and brightest.
yes sadly this could be one bullet point. "Avoid acting in a meaningful way on advice in any startup advice post" Case in point here:
1) In general, avoid the kind of stuff that might be in a movie about running a startup—meeting with lawyers and accountants, going to lots of conferences, grabbing coffee with people, sitting in lots of meetings, etc.
then 2) "Don’t underestimate the importance of personal connections"
so make sure you're working and nurturing personal connections but don't do that by grabbing coffee with people or going to conferences. Wait what?!
I'm picking on Sam and that's not really fair because every list of startup advice has these seemingly contradictory bullet points throughout. My advice would be understand whether you're an extrovert or introvert and technically gifted or market understanding gifted. Go work for someone who has that same profile and watch what they do. Then go cofound with someone who is the opposite of your profile (an extroverted market understanding individual if you're an introverted developer) where you know you'll mutually respect each others differences and won't murder each other after 6 months. With the two of you (or 3 possibly) covering those 4 bases you'll build the right product for the market and will build a culture where a broad range of employees feel comfortable and will always have someone to work with investors and customers and someone else making sure you're not taking your eyes off the critical internal stuff.
Work out if you're the Edge or you're Bono and then find your other half. The rest is all gut and while you'll screw some things up you have the building blocks to succeed.
I think by grabbing coffee, he was referring the time wasting that can happen when everyone becomes aware of your startup. Would be investors (as they should) want to meet, press, and a slew of others. The vast majority of those meetings will be a huge time suck. Better to focus internally first.
I think without the detail some of this type of general advice can also be viewed as harmful. Because like with any advice it totally depends on specifics and circumstances. Maybe it applies may it doesn't. How would someone starting out know?
For example:
"Don’t waste your time on stuff that doesn’t matter (i.e. things other than building your product, talking to your users, growing, etc.). "
So "stuff that doesn't matter" is everything but "building your product, talking to your users, growing, etc.?" (What is "etc" for that matter?)
By that token, if interpreted literally, it would mean "stop reading hacker news" or it could mean "don't worry about hiring anyone until you need to hire someone". Or "don't bother with backing up or security aspects". And so on. And we know that isn't what he means, right? Or is he assuming everyone can figure out exactly where the boundaries are?
The truth is everything is a matter of degree and nuance and quite frankly if you are starting out you really don't have the experience to to know how to navigate things with general guidelines.
As anyone knows who knows a great deal about a particular subject knows you often end up having people who ask you questions and start by telling you something they read online. (Happens to Physicians as well). And what they tell doesn't typically apply to their specific circumstances because you can't have a conversation with a blog post.
That. Learning is a high-p, low n problem even if YC attempts to do the opposite (extract a set of learnings that apply to every company, via observing first hand more than any other fund or entity in history). The richness of a story is a feature.
A nice parallel in finance is Steve Drobny's various books. Their format is anonymous interviews of very successful and well known hedge fund managers, where they explain their thinking through a bunch of events, actions, and analysis of what happened. They are REALLY good.
Most public advice is devoid of context where it originated and unless stated very precisely is wide open to misinterpretation, forming a cargo-cult, or being ignored as too generic. Only a few people in the world can be that precise (I know just two), but adding a relevant story is available to any diligent thinker and it works nearly as well. The best stories are either those that gave rise to the advice, or those where the advice was applied with a visible outcome.