Sublime

Actually startups take off because the founders make them take off.

When you stand back at a sufficient distance, you can see ideas spreading through groups of people like waves.

Weird is interesting . My friend Jared recently joined Union Square Ventures as a venture partner and wrote a short essay about the consumer applications we should be looking for in the age of AI - and how likely they are to appear “weird” at first glance. Indeed, new social paradigms that consume our psyche tend to appear strange when we first use... See more

People with negative taste can make things that look really nice, but they also look very plain. I think the founders of Google have negative taste. John Gruber, as far as I can tell, mostly does. Same with Paul Graham. (As do I, for that matter.) People with negative taste make things by trying something very simple and then stripping away pieces ... See more

That's made harder by the fact that the best startup ideas seem at first like bad ideas.

That, not exploiting people, is the defining quality of people who become billionaires from starting companies. So that's what YC looks for in founders: authenticity.