Startup Confidential

James provides insightful guidance to those who are working hard to atart and scale their businesses

Cuts to the chase - realistic, concise, fun.

I am one of the engineer - investor - CEOs who Dr. Richardson has cheated out of pre-paid consulting services at the rate of $250 / hr. I am the paying customer who is the subject of Richardson's made-up factoid about an engineer who would not give context on the business and defensively blustered when challenged. Richardson said to me, he does not read briefing papers and does not prepare for paid consultation meetings. In my career I have never seen an engineer bluster. The sneering tone of Episode 74 "Why Engineers Struggle as Founders" is an example of Richardson's contempt for paying customers, for whom he claims to be "doing you a favor". My advice is to not let Dr. Richardson interact with your employees or you will lose valuable human resources and your judgement will be questioned. Richardson knows nothing about engineering, which requires judgement to get approximately the right answer to real problems, and do it fast. But Richardson can't know because he is permanently stuck as a contingent worker, an external temporary resource. People who have shown the bad judgment to waste years on a social science PhD and now do undergraduate level work are not trusted with business decisions among the executive team in companies that manufacture and sell CPG. Business decisions in CPG industry are made by the executive team responsible for operations. Managers with the education and experience for quantititative analysis politely extract insights from external resource consultants with social science degrees, then send them away so engineers and business executives can get back to making money. Richardson ignores his own advise to focus on customer experience while consuming the product as he repeats in podcast episode #74, "F__k, F__k, f__king up, F__kups, and F__king ruin. We are sympathetic to his excuses, claiming to be a neurodiverse, solopreneur, but our sympathy ended when he stole our money. From 1st hand experierience, in my opinion, Richardson is a self-indulgent, unemployable creep. He might learn about new strategy for sales of CPG from participating in the success of our business, But after being cheated in a paid discovery call, In my opinion his ability to learn in real-time are limited and his insights are becoming outdated.

I never miss an episode. When Dr. Richardson puts out a blog post, you must read it, when he posts on LinkedIn, pay attention. And when he releases a new podcast episode, you must listen! Not to be missed!!