Paul Graham, Eric Ries, Steve Blank, Sam Altman, and many others have promoted their share of ideas that entrepreneurial and VC communities have latched onto as sacrosanct. Take, for instance, the notion of "minimum viable product". Do the absolute minimum of work to validate an idea because that way you didn't spend years of your life creating something that there was no market for. If you didn't go to market after 3 months of development, you're doing it wrong. If you didn't seek sage advice from a panel of... "experts"... trying to convince you why you should give up 10% of your life's work for $100,000, you're doing it wrong. If you take a principled approach to your work and do what is right rather than what is popular, you're doing it wrong. Ship as quickly as possible. Go fast. We need Velocity©! You don't need to do anything right, just focus on appearances. Generally speaking, whatever you're thinking and doing is wrong. They know what is best.

Herein lies the great dead zone of missed opportunities, rejected by venture capitalists and entrepreneurship thinkers who worked too hard to advance ideas that aren't universally applicable and in many cases are simply wrong.

PG et al: break from convention and challenge your theories about what makes projects successful