On Startups and Ideas

  1. On the essence of a startup: "A startup is a company designed to grow fast. Being newly founded does not in itself make a company a startup. Nor is it necessary for a startup to have venture funding or to be in technology."
  2. The fundamental recipe for success: "You need three things to create a successful startup: to start with good people, to make something customers actually want, and to spend as little money as possible." [1]
  3. The importance of user focus: "The essential task in a startup is to create wealth; the dimension of wealth you have most control over is how much you improve users' lives; and the hardest part of that is knowing what to make for them." [2]
  4. How to get startup ideas: "The way to get startup ideas is not to try to think of startup ideas. It's to look for problems, preferably problems you have yourself." [3]
  5. The nature of good startup ideas: "The very best startup ideas tend to have three things in common: they're something the founders themselves want, that they themselves can build, and that few others realize are worth doing." [3]
  6. On the evolution of ideas: "It's a big mistake to treat a startup as if it were merely a matter of implementing some brilliant initial idea. As in an essay, most of the ideas appear in the implementing." [2]
  7. The power of unscalable efforts: "One of the most common types of advice we give at Y Combinator is to do things that don't scale. A lot of would-be founders believe that startups either take off or don't. You build something, make it available, and if you've made a better mousetrap, people beat a path to your door as promised. Or they don't, in which case the market must not exist."
  8. The single biggest mistake: "The number one mistake startups make is not making something users want." [4]
  9. On competition: "Competition is not what kills startups. What kills startups is distraction." [5]
  10. The value of a niche market: "Better to make a few users love you than a lot ambivalent." [2]
  11. On being "ramen profitable": "A startup that's ramen profitable is one that makes just enough to pay the founders' living expenses. This is a big milestone. Maybe the most important one."
  12. The importance of launching quickly: "The reason to launch fast is not so much that it's critical to get your product to market early, but that you haven't really started working on it till you've launched." [2]
  13. On the difficulty of being a founder: "The difficulty of being a successful startup founder is concealed from almost everyone who's done it." [6]
  14. The power of momentum: "A startup is like a mosquito. A bear can absorb a hit and a crab is armored against one, but a mosquito is designed for one thing: to score." [1]
    • Source: Hackers and Painters (2004)
    • Link: While from the book, this idea is echoed in many essays.
  15. On convincing investors: "To convince investors, you need three things: formidable founders, a promising market, and some evidence of success so far." [3]

On Work and Learning

  1. The nature of great work: "The recipe for great work is: very exacting taste, plus the ability to gratify it." [1]
  2. On the importance of interest: "It's essential to work on something you're deeply interested in. Interest will drive you to work harder than mere diligence ever could." [7]
  3. The two-word advice for aspiring founders: "Just learn." [3]
  4. On the danger of fake work: "The most dangerous way to lose time is not to spend it having fun, but to spend it doing fake work." [8]
  5. The power of writing: "You can't think well without writing well, and you can't write well without reading well." [7]
  6. On deep work: "It's hard to do a really good job on anything you don't think about in the shower." [1][9]
    • Source: Hackers and Painters (2004)
    • Link: While from the book, this idea is a recurring theme.
  7. Maker's vs. Manager's Schedule: "The manager's schedule is for bosses. It's embodied in the traditional appointment book, with each day cut into one hour intervals. You can block off several hours for a single task if you need to, but by default you change what you're doing every hour. The maker's schedule is for people who make things, like programmers and writers. They generally prefer to use time in units of half a day at least."
  8. On determination: "Being strong-willed is not enough, however. You also have to be hard on yourself. Someone who was strong-willed but self-indulgent would not be called determined. Determination implies your willfulness is balanced by discipline." [1][9]
  9. The importance of simplicity in writing: "If you really understand something, you can say it in the fewest words, instead of thrashing about." [10]
  10. How to work hard: "In most cases the recipe for doing great work is simply: work hard on excitingly ambitious projects, and something good will come of it." [9]

On People and Teams

  1. The importance of co-founders: "Cofounders are for a startup what location is for real estate." [2]
  2. The quality of people matters most: "What matters is not ideas, but the people who have them. Good people can fix bad ideas, but good ideas can't save bad people." [11]
    • Source: This is a widely attributed quote, often summarized from his talks and essays on building teams. A similar sentiment is in How to Start a Startup.
    • Link: http://www.paulgraham.com/start.html
  3. On hiring: "Hiring is the most important thing to culture because you're bringing people in and so the culture becomes the people around you." [11]
    • Source: This idea is a core tenet of Y Combinator's advice on team building.
  4. The value of face-to-face interaction: "It's hard to say exactly what it is about face-to-face contact that makes deals happen, but whatever it is, it hasn't yet been duplicated by technology." [9][10]
  5. On nerds and popularity: "The main reason nerds are unpopular is that they have other things to think about." [1][10]

On Programming and Technology

  1. The purpose of a programming language: "A programming language is for thinking about programs, not for expressing programs you've already thought of." [10]
    • Source: Hackers and Painters (2004)
    • Link: While from the book, this is a core part of his philosophy on programming languages.
  2. Hackers and empathy: "Like painting, most software is intended for a human audience. And so hackers, like painters, must have empathy to do really great work. You have to be able to see things from the user's point of view." [7]
  3. On web-based software: "There is all the more reason for startups to write Web-based software now, because writing desktop software has become a lot less fun." [9]
  4. The hacker's attitude: "Those in authority tend to be annoyed by hackers' general attitude of disobedience. But that disobedience is a byproduct of the qualities that make them good programmers." [9]
  5. On Object-Oriented Programming: "Object-oriented programming offers a sustainable way to write spaghetti code." [1]
    • Source: This is a famous, provocative quote often cited from his talks and writings, reflecting his preference for functional languages like Lisp.

On Life and Philosophy

  1. A simple life recipe: "Don't ignore your dreams; don't work too much; say what you think; cultivate friendships; be happy." [1][10]
  2. On wealth creation: "To get rich you need to get yourself in a situation with two things, measurement and leverage. You need to be in a position where your performance can be measured, or there is no way to get paid more for doing more. And you have to have leverage, in the sense that the decisions you make have a big effect."
  3. On keeping your identity small: "The more labels you have for yourself, the dumber they make you."
  4. The importance of not giving up: "You can get surprisingly far by just not giving up." [2]
  5. On controversial ideas: "At every period of history, people have believed things that were just ridiculous, and believed them so strongly that you risked ostracism or even violence by saying otherwise. If our own time were any different, that would be remarkable." [1]
  6. The relationship between worry and quality: "People who do good work often think that whatever they're working on is no good. Others see what they've done and think it's wonderful, but the creator sees nothing but flaws. This pattern is no coincidence: worry made the work good." [1]
  7. On procrastination: "We overestimate the damage done by procrastinating for a day and underestimate the damage done by procrastinating for several years." [7]
  8. The value of surprise: "In business, as in war, surprise is worth as much as force." [1]
  9. On choosing the harder path: "Whenever you have to make a choice, choose the harder option. Chances are the only reason you're even considering the other is because you're lazy." [8]
    • Source: This is a summary of a principle he often discusses, particularly in the context of startups choosing difficult problems. A related idea is in The Hardest Lessons for Startups to Learn.
    • Link: http://www.paulgraham.com/hard.html
  10. On the nature of cities: "Great cities attract ambitious people. You can sense it when you walk around one. In a hundred subtle ways, the city sends you a message: you could do more; you should try harder."
  11. On being relentlessly resourceful: "'Make something people want' is the destination, but 'be relentlessly resourceful' is how you get there." [3]
    • Source: This is a core YC principle, often attributed to Paul Graham.
  12. The danger of plausible-sounding bad ideas: "If you make a conscious effort to think of startup ideas, the ideas you come up with will not merely be bad, but bad and plausible-sounding, meaning you'll waste a lot of time on them before realizing they're bad." [12]
  13. On the illusion of expertise: "The way to succeed in a startup is not to be an expert on startups, but to be an expert on your users and the problem you're solving for them." [12]
  14. The power of small beginnings: "People are bad at looking at seeds and guessing what size tree will grow out of them. The way you'll get big ideas... is by starting out with small ideas." [10]
  15. On the moral weight of a startup: "Starting a startup is a huge moral weight. Understand this and make a conscious effort not to be ground down by it, just as you'd be careful to bend at the knees when picking up a heavy box." [2]

Learn more:

  1. Quotes by Paul Graham (Author of Hackers and Painters) - Goodreads
  2. Startups in 13 Sentences - Paul Graham
  3. Essays by Paul Graham - YC Library | Y Combinator
  4. Paul Graham's greatest advice for startuppers - Gavrilo Bozovic
  5. Paul Graham Essays Summarized: 5 Timeless Lessons for Founders - Capitaly
  6. 50 Quotes from Paul Graham on Counterintuitive Parts of Startups, and How to Have Ideas
  7. Quotes by Paul Graham (Author of Paul Graham) - Goodreads
  8. 11 Lessons from Paul Graham's Essays - Devansh
  9. Paul Graham's Quotes | Glasp
  10. 50 Quotes from Paul Graham - Glasp Blog
  11. Paul Graham: On Determination & Success, Hard Work, Wealth Creation, Startups, Programming and Art. - Play For Thoughts
  12. Before the Startup - Paul Graham