Entrepreneurial advice.. and what no book or guru can teach you.

Marc Andreessen, the guy who invented the browser and the founder of  Ning,  is blogging.  Some of his posts are brilliant and (to me at least) bring something quite new to the table.  Here's why:
Unlike many people who proffer management and start-up advice Marc Andreessen has pretty much steered clear of all that and spent his time actually building stuff.  He knows all about runaway success but more importantly he knows a about failure and what it's like to struggle like hell against seemingly insurmountable odds... and it's this later stuff that makes you wise.
Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with the advice from the likes of  Tom Peters,  Peter Drucker  and  Jim Collins  et al, or any of the other 'gurus'.  But it's just that until you've actually built something from scratch, risked everything you've got to finance your dream or know what it's like to face imminent disaster and still not back down from what needs to be done... then there will always be something missing.
There's a clarity, a wisdom and a quiet authenticity that is discovered and honed in the fight for survival against all the odds, that can never be had through academic learning.  Marc Andreesson has been there[1] and it shows in his writing.  Here's a couple of snippets from Marc's brilliant post  ' Why there's no such thing as Web 2.0' :