This post reminds me of Paul Buchheit's definition of startup advice:
Limited Life Experience + Overgeneralization = ADVICE
The argument posed by the author looks good so long as he selectively chooses his examples (dropbox in this case). There's far too much chaos in startups to ever know what the best possible outcome is, so a founder can never come to the proposed conclusion of mediocrity (in fact, there's so much gray area that any conclusion is really just a reflection of founder confidence).
Yes. Clearly it makes logical sense to completely ignore the experience of people who have been doing what you're doing longer than you have.
Seriously though, I'm not saying you need to worship everything that these kinds of posts say. I'm just saying that one shouldn't go to the opposite extreme.
Limited Life Experience + Overgeneralization = ADVICE
The argument posed by the author looks good so long as he selectively chooses his examples (dropbox in this case). There's far too much chaos in startups to ever know what the best possible outcome is, so a founder can never come to the proposed conclusion of mediocrity (in fact, there's so much gray area that any conclusion is really just a reflection of founder confidence).