Pinterest founder Ben Silbermann explains why it’s important to remember that VCs can be wrong

“People are going to give you all kinds of advice, and I think it’s really easy to take that advice because you walk into [the offices of venture capitalists] and there’s like Google’s first stock certificate and they invented Yahoo. These people are really, really smart.”

But Ben argues that it’s important to not over-index on what VCs tell you and to remember that they can be wrong:

“They can tell you that you should be more technical. They can tell you that you’re in the wrong market. They can tell you all these things and those things might be true and you should assess them for yourself, but you shouldn’t take it on face because they could be wrong.”

He continues:

“In the back of your head, you have to remember that for all the millions of dollars venture capital investors have made and for all the certificates that are on the wall… There are things they passed on, and those are the things that actually haunt them at night. And I think that if you convince somebody that you just might be the one that’s going to beat the odds, you can be successful. And it’s a general attitude that I think is important, whether you’re recruiting, whether you’re raising money.”

Full video: Y Combinator “Ben Silbermann at Startup School 2012“ (Oct 2022)