Paul Graham: What does it mean to do things that don't scale?

less than 1m read

·Nov 3, 2024

Processing might take a few minutes. Refresh later.

What doing things that don't scale means specifically is doing things in a sort of handmade, artisanal, painstaking way that you feel like, yeah, it would be great if you could do things that way forever. But you, in the back of your mind, think to yourself, well, there's no way we can keep doing this and become giant.

What doing things that don't scale means is do those things early on anyway, because you know if you don't do them, you'll never be big. You've got nothing to lose, and also you learn a lot from it. You learn a lot.

So, I discovered a lot of these things that we teach startups at Y Combinator, or you teach startups at Y Combinator. I'm retired; I don't know if you know that. But a lot of the things you guys teach startups are things that I hit myself and didn't realize that they were actually common startup lessons.

One of them is doing things very manually for your early customers. Like, it's so important to get early customers that if you have to do a ton of manual stuff, that's okay. You'll learn a lot from it.

Citizenship and voting rights of indigenous people | Citizenship | High school civics | Khan Academy

Citizenship in the US territories and District of Columbia | High school civics | Khan Academy

View All

YC Tech Talks: Designing from Day One: Artists as Founders with Multiverse (S20)

Um, so we’re multiverse. We did YC W20, so that was from like January to March of this year, just before corona hit. You know, multiverse, we’re making next generation tabletop RPGs. You can think of us like a mix between, you know, DnD and Roblox. We wa…

The Kangaroo is the World's Largest Hopping Animal | National Geographic

[Music] The kangaroo, one of Australia’s most recognizable marsupials. There are a handful of species found all over the country, from the antillipine kangaroo in the far northern reaches to the aptly named eastern gray. The only large animal to hop as a…

How To Turn $25,000 Into A Substantial Return In Real Estate | FT. Scott McGillivray

If you’re an investor and you’re trying to save for retirement, you would put about 50% into stocks and 50% into bonds. But we’re in a very dislocated story about fixed income now. I’ve taken my commercial real estate position from 31% of my portfolio—tha…

Discovering Resilience in the Oregon high desert | National Geographic

Nature, the most powerful creative force on earth. (uplifting energetic music) I’m Chef Melissa King. Cooking has taken me to incredible places. Magical. From TV competitions and celebrity galas to countries around the world. I’m heading out to places I’v…

Khan Academy Ed Talks featuring Ben Gomes - Thursday, April 22

Hello and welcome to Ed Talks with Khan Academy, where we talk to influential people in the education space. Today, we are happy to welcome Ben Gomes, who’s the Senior Vice President of the Learning and Education organization at Google. Before we get int…

The Trolley Problem in Real Life

Excuse me. You know, if I had been driving, that would’ve been pretty dangerous. Every time you sneeze, your eyes close for about one second, which means if you sneeze while driving at, say, 70 miles per hour times 5,280 divided by 60 divided by 60, you w…

Paul Graham: What does it mean to do things that don't scale?

More Articles