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… - Paul Graham

If you're wondering how to design your startup's product so that everyone will want it in 10 years, just do whatever would make your friends want it this week. Otherwise your company won't exist in 10 years anyway.

If you're a hot startup, investors will offer you money on terms so good it would seem crazy to refuse. And yet it will often be the right thing to. Not because of the dilution, but because raising too much will make your company slack and bloated.

When people criticize an action on the grounds of the "optics," they're almost always full of shit. All they're really saying is "What you did looks bad." But if they phrased it that way, they'd have to answer the question "Was it actually bad, or not?"