🚨 Dangerous B2B Advice

👋 Hi there - it’s Egemen. Thanks for reading Scalable.

Here is a quick rule: never take business advice from someone who hasn’t accomplished something in that area.

This week, I’m calling out some of these “worst practices”. If you are a founder who likes to leave the fluff behind, keep reading.

Over many years, I’ve observed that a lot of what startup advice just eats up your time, drains your resources, and keeps you from focusing on what truly moves the needle.

Here’s a snapshot of what’s on the menu today:

Stockholm-based node.vc closes €71 million fund to drive a founder-first Nordic ecosystem - it’s the scale of the week!

They’ve already made three investments in Sweden:

The firm’s entire motto is around collaborating, connecting successful entrepreneurs and early-stage founders to for growth and raising the odds in their favor.

When I first launched Scalable, it took a long time for me to figure out how SEO worked and what I needed to do optimize traffic.

Since then, I’ve been on the look-out for a high number of SEO tools that provide all of these as a service, and I’ve recently come across MEGA SEO.

Imagine flipping a switch and having SEO done for you end-to-end.

That's MEGA SEO, your autonomous SEO team. To prove it, MEGA SEO generates 2 free articles for you. All you need is your blog URL. It's like magic. 🪄✨

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Startup ecosystem is overflowing with advice, and quite a lot of founders are overwhelmed.

Honestly—just because something is repeated everywhere doesn’t make it true.

In fact, I’ve seen many of these so-called “best practices” are actually dangerous distractions that can drain your time, energy, and resources without moving you closer to real growth.

Let’s cut through the noise and focus on what really matters, so you can avoid these traps, work smarter, and build something that lasts.

Here are 4 areas I wanna touch upon, with a few bullet points in each:

Each of these 4 verticals directly or indirectly affect user experience, and UX starts a lot earlier than you think. It’s the “the first moment of truth”.

That’s why Steve Jobs have invested heavily on packaging when he rejoined Apple because the user experience starts there.

Here’s a video by Edward Sturm that breaks this down:

Trying to be clever rather than clear.

Clever taglines might make you smile, but if your customers don’t immediately get what you do, you’re losing them. In B2B, clarity beats wit every time—people want answers, not riddles.

Using heavy industry jargon to sound “professional.”

Loading up your messaging with jargon doesn’t make your company sound smarter. It just makes you harder to understand. Stick with language your audience can immediately relate to.

Staying in stealth mode until it’s “perfect.”

Perfection is the enemy of progress. If you wait until everything’s flawless, you’ll miss valuable feedback and possibly miss the market. Get it out there, and improve as you go.

👉 Voltaire once said “Perfect is the enemy of good”. That applies to your startup as well.

Believing “build it and they will come.”

Customers don’t magically appear just because you launched. Without a go-to-market strategy, even the best product will struggle to gain traction. Launch with a plan to attract real users.

Building every feature that customers suggest.

Listening to feedback is essential, but if you let every customer request steer your roadmap, you’ll end up with a product that’s all over the place.

Trying to reach every possible customer segment.

Broad targeting sounds good on paper, but it spreads you thin and weakens your impact.

Ignoring Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs) to maximize your reach.

Casting a wide net without an ICP usually means you’re wasting time and money on unqualified leads. A clear ICP keeps your efforts focused and significantly improves your chances of landing high-value customers.

Making fundraising your primary goal.

If you’re always chasing the next round, you’re likely neglecting the actual business. Instead, focus on building a profitable venture that could stand on its own, with or without investor money.

You “have to" fundraise.

There’s a myth that bootstrapping isn’t ambitious enough, but the truth is, it keeps you in control. Venture funding isn’t mandatory - on the contrary, some of the most successful companies out there started with zero external funding.

👉 If you’re looking to build a startup that actually grows (instead of one that just looks good on a pitch deck), it’s time to ditch these sooner rather than later.

I’ve come up with a quick checklist to help you “audit” your startup as part of a net promoter scoring exercise if you’d like to do that.

Rate each item on a scale from 0 to 10 based on how much you believe it applies (or has applied) to your startup.

🙌 I hope this comes in handy for you when you need it - it’s yours!

One thing that I’ve been digging deep this week was Claude’s new computer use for automation by Anthropic.

I remember, not long ago, robotic process automations (RPAs) were a highly-rated breakthrough piece of technology when it came to taking care of repetitive, monotonous tasks.

Often times, RPAs were expensive, they required specific software to “mimic” pre-trained mouse and click activity, and that took a long time to develop.

Now with Claude, you can do much more than that, for a fraction of the cost, time, and effort needed.

It’s scary impressive.

📨 Keep in mind - you can also reply to this email, I read every reply.