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I beg to disagree, I think it's a really bad analogy. First, businesses are unique in many areas. Opening a restaurant is different than opening a book store. Second, in business, there are people involved. In sales, in production, in customer support and people are unique. While in driving, every car in the world feels and looks the same.

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But opening a restaurant is similar to opening a restaurant. Given that there are many people who have opened restaurants before, it is obviously reasonable to get some advice from them before opening your first restaurant (though I'm sure many restaurant owners fail to do that).

Startups are no doubt more varied and unpredictable, but there are still a lot of commonalities. Unlike driving, a startup mentor won't sit in the driving seat and do it for you, but their advice can prove invaluable, because once you're experienced enough, many aspects of business do look the same across all or most businesses.

To sharpen the analogy, maybe each type of business is like a certain type of car or sport. You should learn the relevant skills before diving in. Driving a Geo is different than driving a Ferrari, but they're still both cars.

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