When should a founder trust gut instincts?

April 17, 2024·by Dalton Caldwell

When you’re making important decisions as a founder — like what to build, or how it should work — should you spend lots of time gathering input from others or just trust your gut?

The answer: it depends. It depends on who you are, what you’re building, and what you know here.

We often see founders getting it backwards. Some of the founders with the most expertise are the ones who hesitate to build the thing they know the world needs, while founders without much experience want to spend the next five years working on their vision before talking to anyone about it.

In this episode of Dalton + Michael we talk more about this, how to know when you should spend more time validating, and when to just commit.

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Dalton Caldwell

Dalton is Managing Director, Architect and Group Partner at YC. He was the cofounder and CEO of imeem (acquired by MySpace in 2009), and the cofounder and CEO of App.net.

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