Paul Graham Explains How to Start a Startup

woginuk writes "Paul Graham has posted a new essay on his website on how to start a startup. According to him 'You need three things to create a successful startup: to start with good people, to make something customers actually want, and to spend as little money as possible. Most startups that fail do it because they fail at one of these. A startup that does all three will probably succeed.' How difficult can that be? So go start them startups."

Comments

Too bad

[3dWarlord]

Too bad he doesnt have any tips for designing a vapour language.

Re:You're right, your post is a load of crap.

[LaCosaNostradamus]

I suppose all those ridiculously rich VCs got their money either through luck or because our economic system rewards morons.

Yes, that's correct. Real skill in making sustainable investments had little to do with this class. But still, in the worldview of "guys with money did something right", there's no way to disprove your data. Guys with money are simply your fucking heroes. Their money is your proof. Too bad you have little idea how they got it, or understand the circumstances by which that happened.

but labeling them all morons is hyperbolic and, well, moronic

No, calling them "morons" is completely honest, but that label is wholly inconsistent with the current state of the American Hypercapitalist Empire. You simply cannot accept the idea of such a moronic class, while also accepting the idea that your society's elite viciousness is some sort of virtue.

Look, when Lucretia Bigass goes down to the local convenience store and buys her lottery ticket, you probably consider her to be a moron. I do. Mathematically, lotteries are "sucker bets" and you are actually better off EATING that dollar bill than spending it on a lottery ticket.

YET ... when some VC jumps on the investment bandwagon along with all the other VCs, effectively buying a lottery ticket since they have all the same qualifiers of "gambling at poor odds", you somehow DON'T think that that act shows they are a moron.

In the same vein, you probably don't even think that buying stocks is gambling. But since you have no control of the stock price, and furthermore have no practical sense of the information that affects the stock price, it's GAMBLING ... and we're back to that lottery-ticket thing, and then inescapably to the "moron" label.

By the way, your comment about "in excess of x10" illustrates the fact that you're basing your opinions on popular mythology and not any real knowledge.

By the way, I'm basing my comments off of plenty of personal experience in Boston MA in the 1990s, as well as absorbing hundreds of anecdotes over the years from books and interviews. But keep fightin' that reality, Ace. Maybe one day you'll die, smug, thinkin' that if you only had one more year to fight, that you'll actually win.

I can only end this posting with my usual insightful statement:

The stock market is a religion, and like all religions, it is highly resistant to logic and data.