There’s nothing revelatory about telling someone to “face your fears” but a pseudo-philosopher VC is trying to pass this off like it’s this sage piece of advice no one has heard before.
Totally.
1) Vague advice is much easier to sell and elevate ones position (look at Tony Robbins). There's no negatively correlative impact to the advice so its hard to argue if someone is wrong.
2) Providing concrete advice is impossible to "scale" (e.g. books, podcasts, video, etc) as it requires context.
Wouldn't that make it easier to scale, since there's more context you can provide?
Everything you said sounds great for the person selling advice, but not great for the consumer, which was the point of the original comment.
Ben has done it. His experience, and the way he describes them, speaks to me. His first book, the Hard Thing About Hard Things, is therapy for founders. I don't think he's trying to prescribe anything new.
To paraphrase something that stuck with me: "the mechanics of starting a business are easy and can be taught to anyone. the emotions involved are very difficult and it's [Ben's] job at A16Z to help founders deal with them." I really appreciate what Ben is doing.
Owners have infinite ways to allocate their time. Many owners feel problems in their gut but they are uncomfortable to deal with, and so instead they do other things (which are easy to rationalize as more important). E.g. firing someone, perhaps someone that was just hired two months ago who moved across the country to take the job but is not working out. Many people would come up with a hundred reasons to keep the person even if their gut is saying to fire them, because of how uncomfortable it would be to actually do it. This article is saying you need to run towards those moments of fear and discomfort and do the right thing, not run away from them and dig the hole deeper.