Paul Graham Quotes

Number of users may not be the perfect test, but it will be very close. It’s what acquirers care about. It’s what revenues depend on. It’s what makes competitors unhappy. It’s what impresses reporters, and potential new users.

Organizations that can't measure performance end up measuring performativeness instead.

The customer is always right, but different customers are right about different things; the least sophisticated users show you what you need to simplify and clarify, and the most sophisticated tell you what features you need to add.

Twitter won't last forever. Nothing does. But whatever motivation ends up driving a successful "next Twitter," it's unlikely to be the fear that Elon will start allowing people to say heterodox things on the original Twitter.

A good programming language should have features that make the kind of people who use the phrase “software engineering” shake their heads disapprovingly.

Venture capitalists have a list of danger signs to watch out for. Near the top is the company run by techno-weenies who are obsessed with solving interesting technical problems, instead of making users happy.

Trying to think of startup ideas doesn't merely yield few good ideas; it yields bad ideas that sound plausible enough to fool you into working on them.

If you want to create wealth (in the narrow technical sense of not starving), then you should be especially skeptical about any plan that centers on things you like doing.

Startups are not magic. They don’t change the laws of wealth creation. They just represent a point at the far end of the curve.

Don't imitate qualities of your heroes at random. Some are flaws they succeeded despite. The qualities that are easiest to imitate are the most likely to be the flaws.

One of Y Combinator's most important traditions is conciseness. There is so much vague blather in business. It wastes people's time and, worse still, is a sign of unclear thinking.

When a political figure is killed, his supporters want to believe he was killed by some powerful, organized "them." They want his death to be meaningful, and it's more meaningful to be killed by a powerful political force than a random nut, as most actual killers turn out to be.

The first type of judgement is the type where judging you is the end goal... But in fact there is a second much larger class of judgements where judging you is only a means to something else.

It could actually be a significant problem that Europe doesn't have enough garages. This sounds like a joke, but I'm serious. Garages let you work on stuff that doesn't matter yet, which is how big things often start. The outliers of ideas need the outliers of space.

Good founders are remarkably similar across both generations and domains. E.g. Zuck and Bill Gates are way more like one another than they are like their contemporaries.