A startup's ascent often consists of alternating rises and flat spots. This puzzled me when I first saw it at Viaweb. But it turns out just to be wha… - Paul Graham

Someone asked how to expand startups' ideas. The best way is to shrink the idea down to its essence, then ask how broadly that essential idea could be expanded. You have to shrink it first, though, or there will be random stuff left in it that impedes its expansion.

The harder the task, the less you care about people's race or sex or whatever, either in the racist sense or the diversity sense. You're so desperate simply to find anyone who can do it well that you don't think about anything else.

The difference between a random fact and (for lack of a better word) a non-random one is how many other facts it's connected to. The latter kind are better.