Startup Strategy
Fundraising, growth, hiring, and the hard parts of building a company
Paul Graham's advice that early-stage founders should do things by hand that they'll later automate — and why 'unscalable' is often the right choice in the beginning.
“Counterintuitive but true. The most successful startups I've seen all had a phase where the founders were doing the work manually. This essay explains why.”
The 'notice problems' essay — Paul Graham on how the best startup ideas come from noticing things that are missing or broken in your own life, and why trying to think of ideas usually doesn't work.
“Made me completely change how I approach ideation. The 'live in the future' framing is much more useful than most 'find your passion' advice.”
Paul Graham's early essay on how Lisp gave Viaweb a competitive edge — and on the Blub Paradox: why programmers using weaker languages can't see what they're missing.
“The Blub Paradox is one of the most useful concepts for understanding technology adoption and hype cycles. More true now than when it was written.”
Paul Graham's short essay on the incompatibility between how makers (programmers, writers) and managers need to structure their time — and why meetings are so destructive for creative work.
“This is the single essay I send to every founder who complains they can't get anything done. 15 years old and more relevant than ever.”
YC on what PMF actually looks and feels like
“Most founders think they have PMF when they do not - this gives you the real signals to look for”
Jason Cohen on finding your ICP
“Wish I had read this before our first 100 sales calls. Save yourself time.”
How a $10B gaming company runs with tiny teams
“Small autonomous cells beating big teams. Relevant for any startup org design.”