I've seen occasional articles about how to manage programmers. Really there should be two articles: one about what to do if you are yourself a progra… - Paul Graham

I was very impressed by the papers published in philosophy journals. They were so beautifully typeset, and their tone was just captivating — alternately casual and buffer-overflowingly technical. A fellow would be walking along a street and suddenly modality qua modality would spring upon him. I didn't ever quite understand these papers, but I figured I'd get around to that later, when I had time to reread them more closely. In the meantime I tried my best to imitate them. This was, I can now see, a doomed undertaking, because they weren't really saying anything. No philosopher ever refuted another, for example, because no one said anything definite enough to refute. Needless to say, my imitations didn't say anything either.

I'm always looking for ways to add network effects to a startup's idea. Investors love those. But network effects are genuinely good to have. So any we come up with in order to feed to investors, they should probably go and make happen.

Actual traits of successful founders:

Good at building.
Genuinely interested in the problem.
Very determined.
Talks a lot to users.