"What is a 'textbook' business strategy that completely falls apart in the real world?"
Posted: Tue Oct 13, 2026 5:36 pm
Business books and MBA programs love to hand us clean, glossy formulas: always optimize for scale, never compete on price, obsess over every customer metric, pivot fast, build a massive social media presence.
And yet, in the trenches, some of the most successful (or disastrous) decisions completely ignore the rulebook.
I'll start: The classic advice to "scale as fast as possible once you find product-market fit." In theory, it sounds like winning. In reality, I've watched brilliant companies light millions of dollars on fire trying to scale a leaky bucket, prioritizing vanity growth over actual operational stability, only to collapse under their own weight.
What is a piece of golden business or career advice that you've found to be absolute nonsense once you actually tried to apply it?
And yet, in the trenches, some of the most successful (or disastrous) decisions completely ignore the rulebook.
I'll start: The classic advice to "scale as fast as possible once you find product-market fit." In theory, it sounds like winning. In reality, I've watched brilliant companies light millions of dollars on fire trying to scale a leaky bucket, prioritizing vanity growth over actual operational stability, only to collapse under their own weight.
What is a piece of golden business or career advice that you've found to be absolute nonsense once you actually tried to apply it?