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.
• In most cases, you will not have the applicable skills or experience to help entrepreneurs with any particular problem. The best way to consistently support entrepreneurs is to 1) help them maintain morale and 2) find people who can help.
• 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 successful tech company must break a few important conventions, 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.
• It is significantly easier to become a salesperson than it is to become a builder. AI is shifting this balance, but for now it still stands.
• A salesperson who cannot hire builders will not succeed.
• 99.9% 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.
• 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 make billions as an investor.
• 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.