don’t worry if you don’t know “absolutely everything” before starting out

Before they launched their car com­pa­nies, Henry Ford and Karl Benz didn’t decide to first spend a decade trying to win the appro­val of pro­mi­nent horse breeders.

via gapingvoid.com

Hugh advances some very good reasons why you shouldn’t try and learn everything about your chosen industry before setting up your own shop, and illustrates with some good examples (and a great cartoon of course). A couple he doesn’t (although the quote above implies the first):

• the people you are trying to learn from may not want you to succeed
• especially now, the people who know all there is to know at the moment don’t know how to engage in a web-powered marketplace, or a new “social business” environment