...experienced in what then?? Experienced in something...the marketing, the finance, the technical part, the business, the "experienced" well-known professor, the "experienced" advisor...all already so successful before...but what if this was a different story? What if exactly their previous experience and success would prevent them from seeing that this time you need to look at things from a different angle? That you need to do something different? That the essential is not how you deal with what you already know, but rather how you deal with what you do not know yet...
Focusing on the specific experience/know-how of every single person of a new start-up is exactly the same as working in silos in big corporations. What you need to know, is not what those people know, but primarily how they think...yes, how they find the way, how they communicate to each other and with the rest of the world, if they can change perspective, if they can see and admit errors, preferably before they become too big, but in any case even after, when the error has been made, and they have the courage and personality to go to their stakeholders, admit they pursued to wrong strategy to reach the wrong milestone, and that now they will go back two steps because this is the only way to succeed at the end...rather than going forward against a wall in order to pretend until the very end that the initial strategy was the right one (when it wasn't) just because they had pretended till that very moment that "they knew"...
I always asked myself, why are those people, those "experienced" people, so good, why they know things so well to be able to give the right advise to others, till I realized...they don't (at least most of the time)...
Too many times, people fall in the experience Bias: they think that what they know, because they know it, is also what is needed...this mostly for two reasons: one depends on the conviction that other people need the same thing we do (if we like a certain cake, we cannot possibly think someone else will not like it, or will not want to eat it, and we passionately prepare and offer such cake to the poor receiver, taking it personally if this person does not show the same enthusiasm as we do)... But ask yourself, when you make a present, do you make it to get praised yourself (to show how great you are) or to please the person who receives it? Do you think primarily at what you can do well and you know well, or at what the person/company that receives it wants, likes and needs? The (honest) answer to this question determines if your presents and, more important, your advice are given because this is what you know well (and want to be appreciated for it) or because this is what the start-up needs (...which might be something else than what you can give them...)
Nobody likes not to be needed, and everybody wants to be appreciated for what they can, for this reason we like to assume this is what everybody needs...if this was not the case, we not only would feel worthless, but we would be out of business ;-)
I have a very simple and fresh example of such common "thinking bug": while I was here writing this post, my mother (who is currently my guest at home) came back from grocery shopping saying she had bought a certain type of very spicy tea, made a cup of it and wanted me to smell it and savor it and, while celebrating its incredible taste, shed added she would buy more for me...but when she saw my a bit cold response to her enthusiasm (I do not particularly appreciate that spicy tea), she immediately got offended: she wanted to do something for me she thought was a nice "present" and she took it personally that I was not grateful to her (ok, I am a INTP, and she still has not accepted that, my straightforwardness is for her still a sign of rudeness...). Mum, everyone, if you want to do something nice for me, buy me the tea I like, not the one you like (of course, you have to be able to understand what it is, first...)...and please do not take it personally, it is not because you do not know what I need (or what a business needs) that you simply have to give "what you like and are good at", it is not because you are good/experienced at something, that was needed by someone else or by a previous business, that it will be also needed by me, or by a new business...it is not about you, it is not about your value...it's about what is necessary every single time