Sublime
An inspiration engine for ideas
Peter Schroeder on Substack: "‘How to do great work’ by Paul Graham mapped out."
substack.comsubstack.com
People's motives for starting startups are usually mixed. They're usually doing it from some combination of the desire to make money, the desire to seem cool, genuine interest in the problem, and unwillingness to work for someone else. The last two are more powerful motivators than the first two. It's ok for founders to want to make money or to see... See more
Paul Graham • Billionaires Build
The Power of the Marginal
paulgraham.comFinding startup ideas is a subtle business, and that's why most people who try fail so miserably. It doesn't work well simply to try to think of startup ideas. If you do that, you get bad ones that sound dangerously plausible. The best approach is more indirect: if you have the right sort of background, good startup ideas will seem obvious to you. ... See more
Paul Graham • How to Get Startup Ideas
I think the important thing about the real world is not that it's populated by adults, but that it's very large, and the things you do have real effects. That's what school, prison, and ladies-who-lunch all lack. The inhabitants of all those worlds are trapped in little bubbles where nothing they do can have more than a local effect. Naturally thes... See more
Paul Graham • Why Nerds are Unpopular
What the Bubble Got Right
paulgraham.com
Another common trick is to start by considering new work to be of a different, less exacting type. To start a painting saying that it's just a sketch, or a new piece of software saying that it's just a quick hack. Then you judge your initial results by a lower standard. Once the project is rolling you can sneakily convert it to something more.
Paul Graham • Early Work
They weren’t left to create their own societies. They were junior members of adult societies.
Paul Graham • Hackers & Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age
Silicon Valley venture capitalists develop the lean startup “release early, release often” mantra as a way to de-risk investments and avoid investing significant capital without gauging market demand, resulting in narrowing / more incremental innovation. Individual creatives might bias towards smaller projects to de-risk the possibility of inv
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