When Should You Trust Your Gut? | Dalton & Michael Podcast

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
If you wanted to build a new compiler, if you wanted to build something that's like really arcane, but that you know a lot about, and you have a lot of taste, you get a lot of opinions about, a lot of expertise on, often you should listen to that expertise.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:16)
This is Dalton plus Michael, and today we're going to talk about commit or validate. When to trust your gut as a startup founder.
So I'll set this one up. I find myself encountering two situations at YC. Situation one is, a founder who used to work at a company, built something extremely valuable at that company.
It was deployed. The company loved that thing, and that founder thought to themselves, hmm, maybe other companies would want it. And so they left, started YC to try to productize the thing they built. Example two, two kids maybe worked a year out of college, and they want to start a startup. They're trying to figure out what to work on. They're both technical, they're smart, they're bright, they want to get rich. Don't know what to do yet. We see these two patterns constantly, and I find it interesting on how we give advice. I'm like, hey, when, which one of these people, which one of these examples should trust their gut?

**SPEAKER_1** (1:16)
Yeah, basically we're saying that general advice doesn't apply well to these two cases. We are admitting that you actually need bespoke advice depending on which category you're in that's a little bit different. And so again, to make the extreme version of trusting your gut, this is when founders think they're Steve Jobs. You're like, well, Steve Jobs never talked to customers. Steve Jobs, and he would never give people what they asked for.
No one asked for the iPhone. He had to envision it.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:45)
He didn't even use a phone before he invented the iPhone.

**SPEAKER_1** (1:48)
Yeah, and so the extreme comic book version of trusting your gut is you talk to no one.
You somehow, from having great taste or a great internal idea of what people want, you just manifest it, and it's totally unique and different. And the opposite extreme is the comic book version of the mom test. I don't know anything. I have no ideas at all. I'm going to only talk to people and have them tell me the ideas, and have no opinion. I'm going to assume that I know nothing, and all my instincts are wrong.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:21)
In my mind, the perfect version of not trusting your gut is like the typical investor.
Like, I'm just going to hedge. I'm going to invest in a lot of different things and see what works. I can't even commit to one thing.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:32)
Yeah, sometimes we talk to founders that are like, yeah, we don't know what to work on, so our plan is to talk to people, and they'll tell us what to work on. And we're like, great, how's that going? So it's 0% trusting your gut.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:45)
All right, so let's say you're in that first category. Let's say that you have expertise. You're solving your own problem.
You've done something that's created value, either for a lot of people or maybe even just a few. How should you think about the challenge of bringing a product to market slightly differently?

**SPEAKER_1** (3:06)
Yeah, I think we would argue that if you were inside of a company, you built a tool, everyone at the company uses the tool, it's still being used even though you don't work there anymore. You probably know more than you think.
And that it's probably okay to trust your gut more than you think, that you do understand a problem or that you have a unique insight.

**SPEAKER_2** (3:26)
You've developed some taste.

**SPEAKER_1** (3:27)
Yeah, and to the extent in other aspects of your life, say you built consumer products, say you built an iPhone app that was pretty popular, and you've gone through that whole thing, and you have an idea for a new iPhone app, well, I think you might.
You understand what it takes to build and launch one of these things. And so you might have, it might be a better idea to follow those instincts a little bit more than thinking you have no, having no confidence or instincts at all. And so the more you've developed this expertise, the more you can self-discern that other people validate that things you've done in the past are good. It's not just in your own mind. You're an expert.
Those folks should feel, I don't know, like I think it's sometimes helpful to just be like, no, you should just listen to your instincts. Just do the thing. You know more than most people, so listen to yourself to get this off the ground.