Stop Advising. Start Building: An Entrepreneur’s Manifesto
- Esra Talu
- Nov 11
- 4 min read
I don’t want to be known as an advisor. Not a mentor. Not a consultant. I’m a tech entrepreneur who has spent decades building—shipping products, opening markets, and carrying real risk. When I founded GoGlobal, it wasn’t to add another voice to a crowded chorus of “advice.” It was to replace advice with aligned action.
Advisory isn’t evil; it’s often misaligned. Founders aren’t short on opinions—they’re short on customers, capital, and credible pathways into new markets. Slides aren’t the bottleneck—execution is.
Over the years, I’ve seen three recurring problems with traditional advisory:
Incentives are upside-down. Billable hours reward time spent, not outcomes delivered.
Playbooks are generic. “Best practices” often ignore the messiness of real markets.
Gatekeeping persists. Access to capital and corporates still runs through closed doors.
So I built something different.
An entrepreneur-led platform (not a consultancy)
GoGlobal is a platform where founders learn by building. We run tightly scoped, time-boxed sprints that put real opportunities on the table and move them forward—customers met, pilots launched, capital conversations opened. Advice becomes a by-product of doing, not the product itself.
“Advice is a by-product of doing, not the product itself.”
Here’s how we rewrite the founder–“advisor” contract:
Built with sprints, not billable hours
We co-design 30–90 day sprints around a single metric that matters (e.g., first U.S. design partner, enterprise pilot in MENA, or a co-investment lead). Deliverables are live: intros, meetings, MoUs, pilots. If it doesn’t move your metric, it doesn’t make the sprint.
Live experiments, not static playbooks
Every market entry is a hypothesis. We pressure-test ICPs, channels, and pricing through real conversations with customers and partners. We keep what works, kill what doesn’t—fast.
Open networks, not gatekeepers
We operate a network-of-networks across the U.S., UK, Europe (with a focus on emerging, younger ecosystems), Türkiye, KSA, and the broader MEA—operators, angels, corporate buyers, and ecosystem builders. Doors open because the right value shows up, not because we guard the handle. GoGlobal mobilizes operator networks across the U.S., UK, Europe’s emerging ecosystems, Türkiye, Saudi Arabia, and the wider MEA to open qualified rooms and close real deals.
Outcomes over outputs
Pitch decks and one-pagers matter—but only as fuel for outcomes. We measure progress in signed pilots, revenue, committed capital, strategic partnerships, and market expansion.
What founders really want
Founders don’t want more “shoulds.” They want decision acceleration and risk-sharing. They want a partner who has lived through supply-chain chaos, pricing mistakes, and hiring crunches; who knows when to say “this won’t scale” and when to press the gas. They want access to qualified rooms—not just rooms.
That’s the difference between being an advisor and being an entrepreneur who builds with you. The former optimizes for being right; the latter optimizes for getting you right.
“Founders don’t need more ‘shoulds’; they need decision acceleration.”
A simple framework: the 4 As
We run every sprint through four checkpoints:
Aim: What single outcome matters in the next 90 days?
Access: Who are the 15 people that, if engaged, unlock that outcome?
Actions: What are the weekly experiments and meetings that move those 15?
Accountability: What are we measuring every Friday that proves momentum?
If a task doesn’t serve these four, it’s theater. We don’t do theater.
"We don’t do theater—only outcomes.”
Why me, why now
I built one of Türkiye’s earliest e-commerce companies and then scaled my work across multiple ecosystems. I learned the hard way that markets reward builders, not commentators. The world doesn’t need more polished opinions; it needs committed operators who translate ambition into traction—across borders, cultures, and capital stacks.
Founders are expanding globally earlier than ever. The old advisory model—static, siloed, and slow—can’t keep up. What they need is an entrepreneur-led platform that compresses cycles, multiplies networks, and aligns incentives. That’s what GoGlobal is.
A new standard
If we’re going to keep calling it “advisory,” let’s at least raise the standard:
Skin in the game: tie meaningful compensation to outcomes.
Time-boxed sprints: velocity beats vanity.
Operator councils: founders need domain experts who ship, not just speak.
Open doors: measure yourself by the rooms you unlock and the deals that close.
Evidence over ego: celebrate pilots, customers, and capital—not decks.
This isn’t semantics. It’s a different contract with the founders. Less theater. More traction. Less guidance. More go.
So no, I’m not an advisor. I’m an entrepreneur who built a platform where founders learn by doing—with us, not from us. If that disrupts “advisory,” good. It’s overdue.
If you’re a late-seed to Series A founder expanding to new markets, bring a single outcome you want in 90 days. We’ll design the sprint—and build it with you.
For more on building over advising, read my eBook, Breaking Boundaries: How I Built a Startup and Paved the Way for Others: https://a.co/d/fyfMPBR
—Esra Talu, Founder & CEO, GoGlobal
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