Paul Graham Essays 📝

Daily wisdom from @paulg’s essays, interviews and lectures to help you think clearer, build better and make smarter decisions.

[Paul Graham Essays 📝 @pgessays]

One of the most valuable things my father taught me is an old Yorkshire saying: where there's muck, there's brass. Meaning that unpleasant work pays. — @paulg

[Paul Graham Essays 📝 @pgessays]

We'll be back soon. Thank you all for your support 😊🙏

[Paul Graham Essays 📝 @pgessays]

"As Ben Franklin said, if you love life, don't waste time, because time is what life is made of." — @paulg

[Paul Graham Essays 📝 @pgessays]

"You're all smart and working on promising ideas. Whether you end up among the living or the dead comes down to the third ingredient, not giving up." — @paulg

[Paul Graham Essays 📝 @pgessays]

"Curiosity is unlike most other appetites in this respect: Indulging it tends to increase rather than to sate it. Questions lead to more questions." — @paulg

[Paul Graham Essays 📝 @pgessays]

"Don't decide too soon. Kids who know early what they want to do seem impressive, as if they got the answer to some math question before the other kids. They have an answer, certainly, but odds are it's wrong." — @paulg

[Paul Graham Essays 📝 @pgessays]

"Since startups make money by offering people something better than they had before, the best opportunities are where things suck most. And it would be hard to find a place where things suck more than in corporate IT departments." — @paulg

[Paul Graham Essays 📝 @pgessays]

"The ambitious are not content to imitate." — @paulg

[Paul Graham Essays 📝 @pgessays]

"If you have two choices, choose the harder." — @paulg

[Paul Graham Essays 📝 @pgessays]

"In a world with superlinear returns, it's even more valuable to know what you're interested in, and to find ways to work on it." — @paulg

[Paul Graham Essays 📝 @pgessays]

"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." — @paulg

[Paul Graham Essays 📝 @pgessays]

"It's obvious why investors delay. Investing in startups is risky! When a company is only two months old, every day you wait gives you 1.7% more data about their trajectory." — @paulg

[Paul Graham Essays 📝 @pgessays]

"What nerds like is other nerds. Smart people will go wherever other smart people are." — @paulg

[Paul Graham Essays 📝 @pgessays]

"Attention is a zero sum game. If you can choose what to work on, and you choose a project that's not the best one (or at least a good one) for you, then it's getting in the way of another project that is." — @paulg

[Paul Graham Essays 📝 @pgessays]

"The way not to have to raise money is not to spend money. Do everything as cheaply as you possibly can. What you want in a startup is this feeling of cheap and hip. Not miserly cheap, but cool, bohemian cheap. That’s what we strove for." — @paulg

[Paul Graham Essays 📝 @pgessays]

"Running a startup is like walking on your hands: It's possible, but it requires extraordinary effort." — @paulg

[Paul Graham Essays 📝 @pgessays]

"Any investor who co-invests with you is one less investor who could fund a competitor. Apparently Kleiner and Sequoia didn't like splitting the Google deal, but it did at least have the advantage that there probably wouldn't be a competitor funded by the other." — @paulg

[Paul Graham Essays 📝 @pgessays]

"One of the biggest mistakes ambitious people make is to allow setbacks to destroy their morale all at once, like a balloon bursting. You can inoculate yourself against this by explicitly considering setbacks a part of your process." — @paulg

[Paul Graham Essays 📝 @pgessays]

"The easy, conversational tone of good writing comes only on the eighth rewrite." — @paulg

[Paul Graham Essays 📝 @pgessays]

"A lot of startups have that form: Someone comes along and makes something for a tenth or a hundredth of what it used to cost, and the existing players can't follow because they don't even want to think about a world in which that's possible." — @paulg

[Paul Graham Essays 📝 @pgessays]

"Startup founders are naturally optimistic. They wouldn't do it otherwise. But you should treat your optimism the way you'd treat the core of a nuclear reactor: As a source of power that's also very dangerous. You have to build a shield around it, or it will fry you." — @paulg