Shantanu Deshpande warns: Don’t take entrepreneurship advice from non-founders online. Here’s why

Shantanu Deshpande, founder and CEO of Bombay Shaving Company, often takes to social media to talk about startups, leadership, and entrepreneurship. In his latest LinkedIn post, Deshpande warns about taking entrepreneurship lessons online from non-founders.

"The number of non-founders giving advice on entrepreneurship with authority pisses me off totally. I honestly don't care if you seek attention or want likes. It's human. But innocent people tend to listen. And when the advice is poor, it can put someone's hard work and capital at risk," he writes.

Deshpande highlights that every single founder, especially early on, suffers from insecurity and is vulnerable to blindly following it.

"If you haven't been a founder, then the right to advise has to be earned - founding team or years of investing experience or operating expertise. You can't be a 'growth advisor | LinkedIn Top Voice | startup evangelist | Yada Yada' and give broad brush-stroke gyaan," he notes.

According to him, it's not only careless and harmful, but people must also resort to finding likes and influence on Instagram by dancing on Makeba (creating dance reels).

Shantanu Deshpande is not known to mince words. But 2022 stood out as a turning point when one post put out by him on LinkedIn sparked a firestorm. He opined that young people starting out in their careers should work for 18 hours a day and avoid "rona-dhona" (complaining). He was immediately canceled online and faced a backlash.

In an interview with Storyboard18, Deshpande admits, "I realized your words carry weight and sometimes people who know you directly, people who follow you on social media, they will know you because they followed you for a long time. They will get kind of where you are coming from. The moment your circle of influence goes beyond that significantly, you don't have the luxury of giving context to people."

However, as a founder of a consumer startup, he believes that it is important for the founders, the management team, and the companies to come out there and tell their stories.

"Consumers are very smart, and they want to know where their product is coming from. They are not going to be guided by advertising beyond a point. They want to know," he shares.

"But if you are authentic, and even if you are someone who has a strong point of view that people will disagree with, as long as you are consistent, authentic, and can back it up, it is great for founders to be out there and talk about their businesses and brands. Once in a while, you will get into a storm, it is fine. Eventually, public memory is fickle, public love is permanent," he says.

Deshpande has been among the startup founders who have been actively creating content on social media. He appears on marketing properties such as the podcast 'The Barber Shop' to talk about entrepreneurship and trends.

Read more here: Shantanu Deshpande: Public memory is fickle. Public love is permanent