Startups in 13 Sentences

Paul Graham offers startups 13 pieces of advice.

Paul Graham

Some people seem to have unlimited self-generated morale. These almost always succeed. At the other extreme, there are people who seem to have no ability to do this; they need a boss to motivate them. In the middle there is a large band of people who have some, but not unlimited, ability to motivate themselves. These can succeed through careful morale management (and some luck). … [ Read more ]

A Fundraising Survival Guide

Paul Graham, who runs Y Combinator and has been involved in numerous early stage financings, offers this lengthy analysis of the intricacies involved with raising money for your startup. A good read for any entrepreneur.

Paul Graham

There is nothing investors like more than a startup that seems like it’s going to succeed even without them. Investors like it when they can help a startup, but they don’t like startups that would die without that help.

The reason they like it when you don’t need them is not simply that they like what they can’t have, but because that quality is what … [ Read more ]

Paul Graham

The average investor is a pretty bad judge of startups. It’s harder to judge startups than most other things, because great startup ideas tend to seem wrong. A good startup idea has to be not just good but novel. And to be both good and novel, an idea probably has to seem bad to most people, or someone would already be doing it and it … [ Read more ]

The Power of the Marginal

This clever and entertaining essay from Paul Graham discusses how outsiders, free from convention and expectations, often generate the most revolutionary of ideas.

Editor’s Note: I really enjoyed reading this and highly recommend it…