Paul Graham

Quotes are word for word from the source.

• Early User Acquisition

  “When anyone agreed to try Stripe they'd say "Right then, give me your laptop" and set them up on the spot.”

  Our noteManual onboarding is crucial for acquiring early users.

• Early Startup Fragility

  “The mistake they make is to underestimate the power of compound growth. We encourage every startup to measure their progress by weekly growth rate .”

  Our noteInexperienced observers often fail to understand that almost all startups are initially fragile.

• Founder Self-Belief

  “Almost all startups are fragile initially. And that's one of the biggest things inexperienced founders and investors (and reporters and know-it-alls on forums) get wrong about them.”

  Our noteDismissal by investors can be overcome with growth, so the real danger is founders doubting their own startup.

• Evaluating Startup Potential

  “It's even ok if investors dismiss your startup; they'll change their minds when they see growth. The big danger is that you'll dismiss your startup yourself.”

  Our noteEarly startups should be evaluated by their potential size if founders execute well rather than their current state.

• Insanely Great Experience

  “The question to ask about an early stage startup is not "is this company taking over the world?" but "how big could this company get if the founders did the right things?"”

  Our noteThe overall experience of being a user matters more than the standalone product.

• User Experience

  “Your first users should feel that signing up with you was one of the best choices they ever made.”

  Our noteYou must provide an overwhelmingly positive experience to your first users.

• Customer Satisfaction

  “I have never once seen a startup lured down a blind alley by trying too hard to make their initial users happy.”

  Our noteFocusing intensely on satisfying early users is never a mistake.

• Overcoming Perfectionism

  “It's not the product that should be insanely great, but the experience of being your user. The product is just one component of that.”

  Our notePerfectionism is usually procrastination in disguise because initial assumptions about users are always flawed.

• Initial User Toehold

  “In software, especially, it usually works best to get something in front of users as soon as it has a quantum of utility, and then see what they do with it.”

  Our noteFinding just one user with a genuine, actionable need provides the essential initial foothold for a startup.

• Maximizing Options

  “The less sure you are about what to do, the more important it is to choose options that give you more options in the future.”

  Our noteIn times of uncertainty, prioritize choices that maximize your future options.

• Career Motivation

  “If you choose a kind of work mainly for how well it pays, you'll be surrounded by other people who chose it for the same reason”

  Our noteChoosing work solely for money means you will be surrounded by others with the exact same motivation.

• Founders vs Managers

  “what they were being told was how to run a company you hadn't founded - how to run a company if you're merely a professional manager.”

  Our noteMost advice given to founders is actually tailored for professional managers running established companies.

• Flat Communication

  “"Skip-level" meetings will become the norm instead of a practice so unusual that there's a name for it.”

  Our noteDirect communication across different levels of the hierarchy will become a standard practice.

• Goals and Methods

  “The persistent are attached to the goal. The obstinate are attached to their ideas about how to reach it.”

  Our notePersistent people focus on the ultimate goal, whereas obstinate people fixate on their specific methods.

• Energy of Persistence

  “One thing that distinguishes the persistent is their energy. At the risk of putting too much weight on words, they persist rather than merely resisting.”

  Our notePersistent individuals are defined by their forward-moving energy rather than mere resistance.

• Clarifying Ideas

  “Writing converts your ideas from vague to bad. But that's a step forward, because once you can see the brokenness, you can fix it.”

  Our noteWriting exposes the flaws in vague ideas allowing you to fix and improve them.

• Quality of Ideas

  “The quality of the ideas that come out of your head depends on what goes in, and you can improve that in two dimensions, breadth and depth.”

  Our noteGenerating good ideas requires expanding both the breadth and depth of your knowledge.

• Explanation and Pedagogy

  “The best way to explain the answer may be to start with a slightly wrong version, and then fix it.”

  Our noteWhen explaining complex concepts, it is effective to start with an incomplete model and refine it.

• Addiction and Willpower

  “People who don't want to want something - drug addicts, for example - can sometimes make themselves stop wanting it.”

  Our noteIt is sometimes possible to suppress specific desires through strong willpower.

• Truth and Bias

  “The clearest evidence of this is that whether a statement is considered x-ist often depends on who said it. Truth doesn't work that way.”

  Our noteIf an evaluation depends on the speaker rather than the content, it is not a pursuit of truth.

• Experts and Open-mindedness

  “If someone I knew to be both a domain expert and a reasonable person proposed an idea that sounded preposterous, I'd be very reluctant to say "That will never work."”

  Our noteYou should approach seemingly absurd ideas from reasonable experts with caution rather than quick dismissal.

• Startups and Trends

  “We shouldn't be asking why people are starting companies, but why they're starting companies again .”

  Our noteThe startup boom should be viewed as a revival of past entrepreneurship rather than a completely new phenomenon.

• Career Paths

  “So the prestigious route in 1960 was not to start your own company, but to work your way up the corporate ladder at an existing one.”

  Our noteIn the past, climbing the corporate ladder at a large company was a much more respected path to success than starting a business.

• Prestige and Success

  “One of the most conspicuous patterns I've noticed in my life is how well it has worked, for me at least, to work on things that weren't prestigious.”

  Our noteFocusing on tasks that others do not admire often leads to greater success and achievement.

• Truth and Belief

  “Fastidiousness about truth means more than just not believing things that are false. It means being careful about degree of belief.”

  Our noteBeing fastidious about truth requires carefully calibrating the degree of your beliefs.

• Self-Belief

  “If you overestimate the importance of what you're working on, that will compensate for your mistakenly harsh judgment”

  Our noteOverestimating the importance of your work helps counter overly harsh self-judgment.

• Spending and Growth

  “In practice there is surprisingly little connection between how much a startup spends and how fast it grows.”

  Our noteThere is surprisingly little correlation between a startup spending and its growth rate.

• Firing Decisions

  “Deciding to fire people is usually hard, but there's one case in which it shouldn't be: when there are people you already know you should fire but you're in denial about it.”

  Our noteYou should not hesitate to fire someone when you already know it is necessary but are just in denial.

• Premature Hiring

  “If you went out and hired 15 people before you even knew what you were building, you've created a broken company.”

  Our noteHiring a large team before defining your product guarantees a broken company.

• Survival Revenue

  “Be ruthlessly mercenary when you start doing this, though. You're trying to save your company from death here, so make customers pay a lot, quickly.”

  Our noteWhen fighting for survival you must be ruthless in charging customers quickly and heavily.