=== What I Worked On === (February 2021)

Before it will be the desire to impress people. So while working on things that aren't prestigious doesn't guarantee you're on the right track, it at least guarantees might have made an offer if they had more time. But by definition you don't care; the initial offer was acceptable.

Some investors will try to prevent others, and Nick Tomarello for reading drafts of this.

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=== How to Start a Startup === (March 2005)

(This essay is derived from a talk at the Harvard Computer Society.)

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. Most startups that fail do it because they fail at one of these. A startup that does all three will probably succeed.

And that's kind of exciting, when you think about it, because all three are doable. Hard, but doable. And since a startup that succeeds ordinarily makes its founders rich, that implies getting rich is doable too. Hard, but doable.

If there is one message I'd like to get across about startups, that's it. There is no magically difficult step that requires brilliance to solve.

The Idea

In particular, you don't need a brilliant idea to start a startup around. The way a startup makes money is to bad people.

People

What do I mean by good people? One of the best tricks I learned during our startup was the crosshairs of whoever does.

Raising Money

To make all this happen, you're going to need money. Some startups have been self-funding-- Microsoft more to setting up a company than incorporating it, of retroactively. It turns out that no one comes and arrests you if you don't do everything you're supposed to when starting a company.

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=== How to Get Startup Ideas === (November 2012)

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.

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. Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo, Google, and Facebook all began this way.

Problems

Why is it so important to work on a problem you have? Among other it ensures the problem really exists. of an idea? How do you tell whether something is the germ of a giant company, or just a niche product? Often you can't. The founders of way to have good startup ideas is to become the sort of person who has them.

Being at the leading edge:

> Live in the future, then build what's missing.

That describes the way many if not most of the biggest startups got started. Neither were even supposed to be companies at first. They grew out of things their founders built because there seemed a gap in the world.

Once you're living in the future in some respect, the way to notice startup ideas is to look for things that seem to be missing.

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=== A Student's Guide to Startups === (October 2006) ...
=== Why to Not Not Start a Startup === (March 2007) ...
=== The Power of the Marginal === (June 2006) ...
=== Mind the Gap === (May 2004) ...

From "How to Start a Startup" (March 2005), Paul Graham says you need three things:

1) Start with good people
- Start with 2–4 founders; avoid having so many founders that disagreements turn into factions.
- Choose people who are "animals" at what they do: obsessive and tenacious.
- For programmers, PG's tests were: genuinely smart, can get things done, and no attitude (smart people can say "I don't know," "maybe you're right").

2) Make something customers actually want
- Don't rely on a "brilliant idea." Instead: look at something people are trying to do and figure out how to do it in a way that doesn't suck.
- Avoid the "Hail Mary" plan (big upfront plan + big team + discover no one wants it).
- Get a prototype in front of users and refine it based on their reactions.
- Watch users (PG mentions trade shows as a way they learned by watching people use Viaweb).
- Aim at smaller customers first; it's easier to sell to them, and "the low end eats the high end."

3) Spend as little money as possible
- "Get big slow": growing slowly gives you time to learn what users want and keeps you flexible.
- Don't hire people unless you must; hiring is expensive, slows you down, and creates meetings.
- Keep a grad-student level of frugality (cheap space, cheap habits).
- Don't waste money on "brand"; in most tech markets, making the product better beats advertising.

A concrete operating loop implied by the essay is: build v1 fast → put it in front of users → watch what confuses them / what they ask for → iterate, while keeping burn low and the team small.