These are a few lessons I’ve learned over a decade of supporting early-stage entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley and El Paso. No entrepreneurial journey is the same, but these principles are broadly applicable.

• Only entrepreneurs can build companies.
• Only entrepreneurs can build themselves into entrepreneurs.
• There are unknowable and uncontrollable factors that can dictate an entrepreneur’s success or failure. Even the best founders can fail if market conditions aren’t favorable.
• The challenges an entrepreneur faces are vast. Any one person does not have the applicable skills or experience to help entrepreneurs with more than a few particular problems.
• The simplest way to reliably support entrepreneurs is to 1) help them maintain morale and 2) find people who can help solve specific problems.
• Some ecosystems have more people with more relevant skills and experience than others.
• Ecosystems are jungles, not gardens. No person or entity can build or control an ecosystem; but they can contribute to them or destroy them.
• There is no right way to build a company, but there are countless wrong ways.
• Bad advice is worse than no advice.
• Your advice should be regarded as one data point.
• The winner is often whoever stays alive the longest.
• Every tech company must break a few important conventions to succeed, but it must not break all conventions. The challenge lies in picking the right conventions to break.
• Most companies should do most things conventionally so they can focus on breaking the right conventions.
• There are no shortcuts. Whatever impedes the entrepreneur’s path should become the path.
• A company needs people who can sell and people who can build.
• If you cannot build or sell, it is significantly easier to become a salesperson than it is to become a builder.
• A salesperson who cannot hire builders will not succeed.
• 99.99% of great ideas come from experience or networks with experience. Students and young entrepreneurs typically have little of either.
• Everyone wants to connect the dots, but few people want to go through the trouble of collecting dots. There is a competitive advantage to collecting the right dots.
• Expertise must be lived, and it goes stale fast.
• Real entrepreneurs don’t need permission to start.
• Money is an accelerant, not permission.
• If you think you know how to find the next great entrepreneur, quit your job and become an investor.
• Critiquing startup ideas is the refuge of the inexperienced.
• If you tell people they are something, eventually they start to believe you.
• You cannot alter risk preferences of sophisticated investors.
• Entrepreneurs should only take investments from sophisticated investors.