Lessons from Paul Graham

Infographic for "Lessons from Paul Graham".

On Startups and Ideas

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." — Paul Graham: Startup = Growth.
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." — Paul Graham: How to Start a Startup.
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." — Paul Graham: Startups in 13 Sentences.
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." — Paul Graham: How to Get Startup Ideas.
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." — Paul Graham: How to Get Startup Ideas.
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." — Paul Graham: Startups in 13 Sentences.
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." — Paul Graham: Do Things That Don’t Scale.
The single biggest mistake: The central startup failure is building something users do not want. — Paul Graham: The 18 Mistakes That Kill Startups.
On competition: Founders should guard against distractions that pull attention away from making something users want. — Paul Graham: The Hardest Lessons for Startups to Learn.
The value of a niche market: "Better to make a few users love you than a lot ambivalent." — Paul Graham: Startups in 13 Sentences.
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." — Paul Graham: Ramen Profitable.
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." — Paul Graham: Startups in 13 Sentences.
On the difficulty of being a founder: The difficulty of founding a startup is easy to underestimate before doing it. — Paul Graham: Before the Startup.
On convincing investors: "To convince investors, you need three things: formidable founders, a promising market, and some evidence of success so far." — Paul Graham: How to Convince Investors.

On Work and Learning

The nature of great work: "The recipe for great work is: very exacting taste, plus the ability to gratify it." — Paul Graham: Taste for Makers.
On the importance of interest: Sustained interest is essential to doing difficult work well. — Paul Graham: How to Do What You Love.
The two-word advice for aspiring founders: For aspiring founders, learning deeply is more useful than trying to imitate startup expertise. — Paul Graham: Before the Startup.
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." — Paul Graham: How to Lose Time and Money.
The power of writing: Writing is a tool for discovering and sharpening thought. — Paul Graham: The Age of the Essay.
On deep work: Good work usually requires a problem important enough to keep occupying your mind. — Paul Graham: How to Do What You Love.
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." — Paul Graham: Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule.
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." — Paul Graham: The Anatomy of Determination.
The importance of simplicity in writing: Clear writing benefits from simplicity and compression. — Paul Graham: Writing, Briefly.
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." — Paul Graham: How to Do Great Work.

On People and Teams

The importance of co-founders: "Cofounders are for a startup what location is for real estate." — Paul Graham: Startups in 13 Sentences.
The quality of people matters most: The people behind an idea matter more than the initial idea because strong founders can adapt. — Paul Graham: How to Start a Startup.
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." — Paul Graham: Why to Start a Startup in a Bad Economy.
On nerds and popularity: "The main reason nerds are unpopular is that they have other things to think about." — Paul Graham: Why Nerds Are Unpopular.

On Programming and Technology

The purpose of a programming language: Programming languages are tools for thinking about programs, not merely ways to express finished solutions. — Paul Graham: Hackers and Painters.
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." — Paul Graham: Hackers and Painters.
On web-based software: Web-based software can give startups advantages in deployment, iteration, and direct customer contact. — Paul Graham: The Other Road Ahead.
The hacker's attitude: Hackers tend to question authority because technical work rewards independent judgment. — Paul Graham: The Word “Hacker”.

On Life and Philosophy

A simple life recipe: "Don't ignore your dreams; don't work too much; say what you think; cultivate friendships; be happy." — Paul Graham: What You’ll Wish You’d Known.
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." — Paul Graham: How to Make Wealth.
On keeping your identity small: "The more labels you have for yourself, the dumber they make you." — Paul Graham: Keep Your Identity Small.
The importance of not giving up: "You can get surprisingly far by just not giving up." — Paul Graham: Startups in 13 Sentences.
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." — Paul Graham: What You Can’t Say.
The relationship between worry and quality: People doing ambitious work often worry that it is not yet good enough. — Paul Graham: The Anatomy of Determination.
On procrastination: "We overestimate the damage done by procrastinating for a day and underestimate the damage done by procrastinating for several years." — Paul Graham: Good and Bad Procrastination.
The value of surprise: "In business, as in war, surprise is worth as much as force." — Paul Graham: How to Make Wealth.
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." — Paul Graham: Cities and Ambition.
On being relentlessly resourceful: “Make something people want” describes the goal; being relentlessly resourceful describes the founder behavior needed to reach it. — Paul Graham: Relentlessly Resourceful.
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." — Paul Graham: Before the Startup.
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." — Paul Graham: Before the Startup.
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." — Paul Graham: How to Get Startup Ideas.
On the moral weight of a startup: Starting a startup creates obligations to cofounders, employees, investors, and users, so founders should enter it consciously. — Paul Graham: Startups in 13 Sentences.

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On Startups and Ideas

On Work and Learning

On People and Teams

On Programming and Technology

On Life and Philosophy

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