Doing these things might feel good, but they won’t derisk your startup.

You could be in that bottomless pit for years and be a startup founder that's never built a product and has never gotten a single customer because you just cycled in and out of various forms of startup mentorship.

The collecting of mentors, advisors—oh, I went through three different accelerators and an idea lab. I'm building my advisory board. Why do you think founders are attracted to that versus building something and launching it?

I'm not saying like it's all bad, but it's a bottomless pit of time suck, you know? I think a lot of it also has to do with founders being a little bit afraid and thinking these things de-risk.

Well, if I have an advisory board, it's going to de-risk my startup—it's a bunch of smart people saying my ideas could. Or if I do a bunch of mentorship, it de-risks my startup, I get a lot of advice.

Like, the two things that ridiculously de-risk your startup—first one is talking to your customers. The second one is building and launching a product.

It's like, God forbid you're doing anything more than you're doing those things; you are not taking the optimal de-risk strategy.