Why I Would Never Hire a Startup Consultant to Validate a Disruptive Idea

At the age of six, I started drawing cars. After years of practice, they became increasingly realistic and, in my mind, increasingly futuristic.

One day, I showed my older brother, who was studying automotive engineering, my latest creation: a car without wheels. The vehicle would hover above the motorway using electromagnetism, just like the trains I had seen on television in Tokyo.

It was a brilliant idea. At least, I thought so.

My brother explained why it would not work. Through his feedback, I learned at a very young age that something can be theoretically possible and still fail completely in practice.

That is the essence of why I usually have something against startup consultants.

This does not apply to consultants who have built and operated companies themselves. They have experienced what it means to make decisions with incomplete information, pay salaries when cash is running out and live with the consequences when their advice turns out to be wrong.

But consultants who have never been entrepreneurs do not know that reality from the inside. They can study it, analyse it and advise on it, but their knowledge comes from models, observation and the experiences of other people.

That is not the same as entrepreneurship.

Startup consultants understand models, not necessarily startups

A startup consultant usually has one particular area of expertise and knows a little about everything around it. They may know how to create a financial model, analyse a market, structure an organisation or prepare a presentation for investors.

That knowledge can be useful. The problem begins when theoretical expertise is presented as practical entrepreneurial wisdom.

Every startup consultant I have encountered was capable only of analysing existing ideas. None could imagine something that did not yet exist.

They could explain what had worked before, compare an idea with existing businesses and place it inside a familiar model. But genuinely new ideas do not fit comfortably inside models. If they did, they would not be new.

Models are developed by studying what companies have already done. They organise knowledge from the past and can help us recognise patterns. What they cannot do is predict with certainty what will happen when a founder introduces something the market has never seen before.

The market conditions, technology and purchasing behaviour on which those models were based may already have changed. Today, technology changes faster than many organisations can adapt. A model may still be useful as a thinking tool, but it should never be confused with reality.

Why established business models can mislead startups

For years, companies defined target groups primarily by age, gender, income and location. The rise of the internet, social media and omnichannel purchasing behaviour made many of those categories far less useful. Two people of the same age, gender and income may now behave completely differently because they have different interests, online habits, values and contact moments with a brand.

The traditional marketing model of the four Ps, Product, Price, Place and Promotion, can still help structure a conversation. But it cannot capture the complete reality of a digital company in which customer experience, data, communities, platforms, relationships and rapidly changing technology all influence success.

The same applies to Porter’s Five Forces. It can help founders think about competition, suppliers, customers, substitutes and new entrants. But modern disruption often comes from an unexpected direction, outside the sector a company believes it is competing in.

The model is not necessarily wrong. The danger lies in believing that because you have completed the model, you understand what will happen.

You do not.

A startup is not a completed spreadsheet. It is a collection of assumptions that must survive contact with customers, competitors, technology, investors and reality.

Most startup consultants I have met were too conservative

A consultant is usually hired to reduce uncertainty. The founder presents an idea, and the consultant analyses whether the market is large enough, the finances are realistic and the strategy appears credible.

That sounds sensible, but a genuinely disruptive startup does not begin with certainty. It begins with an insight, frustration or possibility that other people have not yet recognised.

In a world in which yesterday’s knowledge can become outdated today, a startup often needs to challenge established assumptions. That requires imagination, courage and a willingness to enter a market before every question has been answered.

Consultants tend to struggle with this because uncertainty is difficult to put into a report. What cannot be measured is often treated as a weakness. What cannot be compared with an existing business is considered too risky. What cannot be supported by historical data is dismissed as unrealistic.

But every original idea lacks historical data at the beginning.

When Uber started, no conventional taxi-market model could fully describe what the company might become. Instagram was not simply another photography company. WhatsApp was not created by improving the traditional telephone business. Airbnb did not fit neatly into the established hotel industry.

The most important opportunity was precisely the part that existing models could not explain.

Startup consultants cannot validate a genuinely innovative concept

Founders are regularly told to have their business idea validated. It sounds responsible, especially to investors and shareholders who want some form of certainty before committing money.

But what exactly is being validated?

A consultant can investigate whether a problem exists. They can interview potential customers, analyse competitors, estimate costs, test pricing assumptions and identify legal or operational risks. All of that can provide valuable information.

What they cannot do is validate an entire disruptive business before the market has experienced it.

Asking a traditional startup consultant to validate a truly innovative idea can be like asking an aircraft engineer to validate Elon Musk’s plan to reach Mars. The engineer may understand aerodynamics, materials and propulsion, but the ambition involves too many unknown factors to be confirmed through existing aviation knowledge alone.

The same applies to a disruptive startup. Individual assumptions can be tested, but the complete concept can only be validated by building, launching, observing and adapting.

I have never written or seen a disruptive business plan that was executed exactly as originally intended. The successful companies I have been involved with changed because customers reacted differently than expected, technology created new possibilities, competitors moved, employees contributed better ideas or the original proposition turned out to solve a different problem.

That is not evidence of poor planning. That is entrepreneurship.

A consultant does not carry the entrepreneur’s risk

There is another fundamental difference between consultants and entrepreneurs: accountability.

A consultant delivers an analysis, presentation or recommendation. The entrepreneur decides whether to act and then carries the financial, personal and operational consequences.

If the advice is wrong, the consultant may have an uncomfortable conversation. The entrepreneur may lose the company, the invested capital, valued employees and several years of life.

That difference matters.

It is easy to advise someone to focus, scale, restructure, hire a management team, enter a new market or stop developing a product. It is something else entirely to make that decision when your own money, reputation, employees and future depend on it.

“If a consultant knows how to build a million-dollar business, ask to see theirs.” Ben Steenstra

If someone repeatedly claims to know how founders should build million-dollar companies, I believe it is fair to ask why that person has never chosen to build one themselves.

That does not automatically make their knowledge worthless. It does mean they should be honest about where that knowledge ends.

When hiring a startup consultant can be useful

Despite my criticism, there are situations in which hiring a startup consultant makes sense.

If you lack knowledge in a specific area, a specialist can help you understand the fundamentals. Many first-time founders have never built a financial forecast, calculated their capital requirements or prepared for an investment round. Someone who has done this repeatedly can prevent basic mistakes and save valuable time.

A consultant can also be useful when stakeholders demand independent support or validation. Investors, shareholders, banks and government organisations often want reports, calculations and formal analyses. These documents may create only apparent certainty, but sometimes they are necessary to move forward.

Consultants can also add value when the business itself is relatively conventional. If you want to open a bakery, retail store or established service business, there is a great deal of relevant historical knowledge available. An experienced specialist can help you understand margins, locations, staffing, licences, purchasing and predictable risks.

In those situations, existing knowledge is precisely what you need.

The mistake is not hiring a consultant. The mistake is hiring someone with theoretical knowledge and expecting them to provide entrepreneurial vision.

What is the alternative to a startup consultant?

When I started my first company, I had no startup capital. I was therefore forced to rely on the people around me.

I told almost everyone about my plans, whether they wanted to hear them or not, and continually asked for opinions and advice. Some people commented on a colour they disliked. Others asked questions that forced me to reconsider the entire idea.

The most valuable conversations were with entrepreneurs who had built something themselves, taken risks and discovered that reality rarely follows the original plan. They understood that an idea does not become better simply because a spreadsheet looks convincing.

They challenged me to think more boldly while also confronting me with the practical consequences.

That combination matters. Experience without questions can become prescription. Questions without experience can remain abstract. The most useful person is often someone who can contribute entrepreneurial and strategic knowledge while still allowing the founder to reach an independent conclusion.

That may sound strange coming from someone who works with entrepreneurs and startups. The difference is that I do not sell certainty. I can share what I have experienced, explain what I have seen succeed or fail and challenge the assumptions behind a decision. But my experience is not automatically the answer to somebody else’s business.

The founder must still decide what fits.

Learning by doing remains the best startup education

I am a strong advocate of learning by doing. The mistakes you make often teach you faster than advice, because they force you to understand why something failed.

Sometimes you will also discover methods that should not work according to theory but work extremely well in practice. No consultant could have predicted them because they emerged from the specific combination of your market, timing, customers, personality and team.

That does not mean founders should ignore knowledge or repeat avoidable mistakes. It means knowledge should support experimentation rather than replace it.

Talk to customers. Build something small. Test whether people will use it. Ask whether they will pay for it. Observe what they actually do instead of relying only on what they say. Adjust the idea and try again.

A report may make you feel more certain. Only reality can tell you whether you are building a business.

Hiring startup consultants can also be expensive. A serious conversation over dinner with an experienced entrepreneur may cost almost nothing and produce a far more honest perspective.

You have to eat anyway.

Five reasons I would not hire a startup consultant

After more than thirty years of entrepreneurship, these are my five main reasons for not hiring a startup consultant to validate a disruptive idea.

They depend on existing knowledge. Startup consultants analyse models, markets and companies that already exist. That can be useful for understanding the past, but it does not mean they can imagine the future.

They have not necessarily experienced entrepreneurship. Unless they have built and operated a company themselves, their understanding comes from observation rather than personal accountability.

They confuse analysis with vision. Analysing whether an idea resembles something successful is fundamentally different from recognising the potential of something that does not yet exist.

They are often too conservative for disruption. Their work is expected to reduce uncertainty, while disruptive entrepreneurship requires founders to act despite uncertainty.

They cannot validate an entire innovative concept in advance. They can test individual assumptions and identify risks, but the market provides the only meaningful validation of the complete idea.

This article is my personal opinion, formed by more than thirty years of building companies, making mistakes, taking risks and living with the consequences of my own decisions.

Not every startup consultant is the same. A consultant who has also been an entrepreneur can bring valuable practical experience into the conversation.

But if someone has never built a company, never risked their own capital, never carried responsibility for employees and never had to live with the consequences of a business decision, I will not allow that person to tell me whether an original idea can succeed.

They may understand the model.

That does not mean they understand entrepreneurship.