If you're in high school and you want to start a startup one day, you might think the best thing to do now is to start startups. But it probably isn'… - Paul Graham

Being both imaginative and determined is a powerful combination because it's so rare — so many imaginative people are dreamy and ineffective, and so many determined people are merely energetic robots.

If you disagree with something, it's easier to say 'you suck' than to figure out and explain exactly what you disagree with. You're also safe that way from refutation. In this respect trolling is a lot like graffiti. Graffiti happens at the intersection of ambition and incompetence: people want to make their mark on the world, but have no other way to do it than literally making a mark on the world.

So if you can figure out a way to get in a design war with a company big enough that its software is designed by product managers, they’ll never be able to keep up with you. These opportunities are not easy to find, though. It’s hard to engage a big company in a design war, just as it’s hard to engage an opponent inside a castle in hand-to-hand combat.