Paul Graham Quotes

When startups are doing well it's common for them either not to disclose their numbers, or under-report them. Half the time when I get an email with great numbers, it's followed by "but don't tell anyone."

College students mostly think what their teachers tell them to.

If you're trying to sell a domain name, quote a price. I often help startups find new names, and we always just skip the names that say "make offer." A name is not even interesting until you know what it costs.

Forums have immense momentum. Reddit, for example, maintained its character through years of mis- and no management. So my bet about the future of Twitter is that there will be less change than those who fear or hope for change expect.

A startup sent me a revenue graph that grew steeply, then flattened. I asked why. Because they decided to focus on profitability, and had just achieved it. That's the right answer!

It annoys me when teachers require kids to use laborious, prescribed methods to calculate things (and to "show their work" to prove they did) because it teaches kids not to see the patterns that exist in the numbers.

Benioff is eccentric and maybe well-meaning but I can't help noticing his oscillations coincide with whatever side has the upper hand.

In the old days, before startups, it was obvious to new grads which employers were most impressive to work for. It was as easy as judging the relative prestige of universities. Now it's much, much harder. You have to guess which cluster of nerds is the new Google.

Finishing things is more than just an exercise in tidiness or self-discipline. In many projects, a surprising amount of the best work is done in what was meant to be the final stage.

Two important principles that have a lot in common:

If you make users love you, investors will love you too.

If the people lead, the leaders will follow.

The users who complain about the flaws in your product may seem annoying, but they are on the whole probably your most valuable users. They complain because they care, and I doubt a startup could ever get really big without users who care a lot about the product.

Even the best startups often go through near-death experiences. The problem with venture debt is that it tends to turn near-death experiences into death experiences. Avoid it if you can.

In the non-sucky parts of the real world, you don't have to give really long answers to questions or risk losing points. So treat this as a hack you have to do for school, not a permanent habit.

What was the chain of thought that led to Jar Jar Binks? How did someone as experienced as George Lucas make such a mistake?

I've been doing office hours with startups for 20 years now. I must have talked to over a thousand of them. How have I not become bored by it? I think the reason is curiosity. Each startup's idea is different, and it's a puzzle to figure out how to make it work.