These articles are always a guilty pleasure, because all of us reading them can point out countless mistakes the author made that we, of course, would never make. All the time failing to consider that we would simply make different mistakes.
1. Try something new
2. Read all the advice from experts
3. Nod and say “sure, no problem”
4. Make all the mistakes anyway
5. Finally understand for yourself what that advice really meant
6. Advise beginners not to do that thing
7. Repeat
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I've had that experience more than once.
* "Don't remove the credit card field from your sign up form."
* Hmm, but what if I remove the credit card field from my sign up form?
* Conversions went down
> but all the stories of success from Techcrunch, the accelerator Y Combinator, and the Facebook movie combined and fed in to my fantasies that somehow through sheer will and my own brain power I could achieve similar success
Maybe just me, but getting inspired by Mark its the first mistake you could do.
FB/GOOG/etc are the very rare outliers. Don't hedge your business (or mental-wellbeing) on the expectation to replicate their success.
It's good to have high ambitions but have a plan B & don't expect to be the unicorn. It would be analogous to starting a band in the hopes of becoming the next Beatles.