Paul Graham Quotes on Business
About Paul Graham
A computer scientist, writer and essayist, entrepreneur and investor. His work includes the programming language Arc, the startup Viaweb (later renamed Yahoo! Store), co-founding the startup accelerator and seed capital firm Y Combinator, a number of essays and books, and the media webpage Hacker News.
Analysis
Without writing, thinking becomes vague—writing is not just expression but a tool for clarity.
Action Items
- Start a daily writing habit – Spend 10 minutes each day writing about a problem, idea, or belief to clarify your thinking.
- Use writing to make decisions – Before making a tough choice, write out the pros, cons, and assumptions to expose hidden logic gaps.
- Revisit what you wrote – Review your past writings weekly to spot patterns, refine ideas, and challenge your own evolving logic.
Analysis
In the very early stages of your startup, you should focus on doing tasks and activities that are highly manual, time-consuming, and personalized to get your first users and make them extremely happy.
Action Items
- Actively Recruit Your First Users Manually.
- Deliver an "Insanely Great" Experience to Early Adopters.
- Embrace Unscalable Manual Efforts to Learn and Iterate.