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What is your favorite Paul Graham quote?
Mine is: Build sth. 100 people love, not something 1mio people kind of like!
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@inna_proshkina sounds like a variant of "Build sth. 100 people love, not something 1mio people kind of like!"
@shashcoffe Yeah, I also live "do things that don't scale". Thinkings about that always helps me coming up with crazy & interesting ideas...
@between_team @shashcoffe @jgrenzemann Doing things that don't scale is a classic startup mantra, but I've always found you have to be careful not to incur too much tech debt - if your product is the tech, it better work as you scale! The user aquisition and process doesn't have to scale at the start
@shashcoffe @jgrenzemann @daniel_baum That's definitely true. In the tech side if you hardcode/scrap together everything you won't be prepared for growth.
@shashcoffe @daniel_baum @between_team yeah sure - but on the otherside: how many team/companies do I know that focus so much on "beeing prepared for growth" and it newer comes, because they move too slow and don't get any momentum on the market side. I'm quite aware that this isn't a yes/no black/white question - but anyhow: once you have found out what to build (product/market fit) its more likely for you to raise more money (and worst-case: begin from scratch with dev). But the otherway around is worse - no customers, no money - but very very well written code ;)
@mouna_selmi True, true. Founding a startup is like climbing the everest. In such an adventure you want to have folks around that you can trust/rely on - even when things get nasty and the relationships gets under pressure.
Here's my favorite of his.
“The main reason nerds are unpopular is that they have other things to think about.”
"What I tell founders is not to sweat the business model too much at first. The most important task at first is to build something people want. If you don't do that, it won't matter how clever your business model is."
@_karlr I also like the shortform of this "build something people want", whereas this is easier said than done...
For me:
"The word 'try' is an especially valuable component. I disagree here with Yoda, who said there is no try. There is try. It implies there's no punishment if you fail. You're driven by curiosity instead of duty".
~not a quote ~ His essay on "Shlep Blindness" is really impactful for those trying to start a company
https://twitter.com/paulg/status... - where he quoted me ;-). Was kind of awesome to be noticed by someone you have been reading and following for years.
Neuton AutoML