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Jason Cohen on advice

From 69: Sound, Actionable Advice with Jason Cohen · · 边角聊

“If you find any advice whatsoever I can find you someone else who's very smart and successful who will tell you to do the opposite no matter what anything. ... So given that, what do you then do? Because that means none of the advice is necessarily the make or break. ... So it's not really about the advice, is it? It's really about like okay so what how do I know what's right for me?”

Jason Cohen
Founder & Chief Innovation Officer, WP Engine
advicedecision makingentrepreneurship

On , Jason Cohen, Founder & Chief Innovation Officer at WP Engine, spoke about advice during 69: Sound, Actionable Advice with Jason Cohen on 边角聊.

69: Sound, Actionable Advice with Jason Cohen
Watch on YouTube at 5:21
69: Sound, Actionable Advice with Jason Cohen
边角聊
Watch on YouTube at 5:21
Derrick is away, so Ben welcomes Jason Cohen, CTO of WP Engine and four-time entrepreneur. Jason knows a thing or two about startups and mentoring them to achieve profitability and growth. Jason is a straight talker and tells it like it is to get to solutions sooner. He encourages bootstrap founders to find an advisor who aligns with their goals. You need to know how to take advice and use advice that is right for you and your business. Even if you get great advice, think for yourself! Today’s Topics Include: • Advice is not enough; luck, execution, and other pieces are involved • Be honest and know what qualities investors want • Jason characterizes a company as a learning machine that’s constantly failing, not doing the right thing, and has no resources; but has agility to learn and react quickly • Embrace your humanity and smallness; don’t lie about being big • Share the good and bad about your startup journey for others to feel connected to and support it • When making decisions, apply filters to cut out things; constraints are useful • Universal Rule of Success: You’re all in and apply a lot of energy; makes you more productive and fulfilled • Many paths lead to success and failure; pick ones that naturally fit you • A good engineer can build features (not risky), but can they do everything else - probably not (risky); identify how a company’s priorities need to change to address risk • To be sustainable, get help and became an expert in something - not everything • Product success depends on use cases and maturity of company (convince customers how good it is now and will get even better); if product isn’t good, then business won’t last • Jason shares ideas and options regarding Ben’s Tuple product • When bootstrapping, getting money is challenging because you’re not on people’s radar Links and resources: WP Engine (https://wpengine.com) A Smart Bear Blog (https://blog.asmartbear.com/) Can you bootstrap a company on the side? (Part 1 with Jason Cohen) (   • Can you bootstrap a company on the side? (...  ) Jason Cohen - Designing the Ideal Bootstrapped Business (https://vimeo.com/74338272) Capital Factory (https://www.capitalfactory.com/) Paul Graham (http://www.paulgraham.com/) SmartBear (https://smartbear.com/) Peter Thiel (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_T...) Adwords (https://ads.google.com/home/) Slack (https://slack.com/) Hangouts (https://hangouts.google.com/) Marco (https://marco.org) Silicon Valley Successes Podcast (https://www.siliconvalleysuccesses.co...) Art of Product on Twitter (  / artofproductpod  ) Derrick Reimer (http://www.derrickreimer.com) Website Derrick Reimer on Twitter (  / derrickreimer  ) Ben Orenstein (http://www.benorenstein.com/) Website Ben Orenstein on Twitter (https://twitter.com/r00k?lang=en) Level (https://level.app/) Tuple (https://tuple.app/)
Jason Cohen

About Jason Cohen

Founder & Chief Innovation Officer · WP Engine

Jason Cohen, the founder and chief innovation officer of WP Engine, has been active in podcast discussions where he offers perspectives on startup strategy and business philosophy. On the podcast "69: Sound, Actionable Advice with Jason Cohen," Cohen stated that advice is often contradictory, as "if you find any advice whatsoever I can find you someone else who's very smart and successful who will tell you to do the opposite," and he emphasized that the value of advice depends on a founder's specific context and goals. He also argued that small companies should leverage their ability to change direction quickly, stating that "one of the few things that you have when you're little is you can move really... fast because you don't have any of those things like customers." In other appearances, Cohen discussed his new book "Hidden Multipliers," released for pre-order, and appeared as a surprise guest on the podcast "A series of miracles." On the "SaaSpocalypse 2" episode of Indie Board Session, he described how WP Engine defined its strategy by picking "2–3 things to win on" rather than depending on any single feature. Cohen also cautioned against small startups trying to appear bigger than they are, saying that "the problem is that you cannot in fact act like a bigger company... you've destroyed trust cuz you lied."

Profile compiled from Jason Cohen's verified public interviews and appearances. See all quotes & transcripts →

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