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.

What will it take to save the savanna elephant? | Podcast | Overheard at National Geographic

The Upcoming Stock Market Collapse | Round 2

View All

Charlie Munger: How to Invest During a Recession

You mentioned we’re in a big bubble; can you elaborate on that and how is this likely to play out? Well, I think eventually there’ll be considerable trouble because of the wretched access; that’s the way it’s usually worked in the past. But when it’s goin…

Long Distance KISSING and more! LÜT #22

Starry night socks and a gun that shoots ketchup onto your food. It’s episode 22 of LÜT. First, let’s break the ice… or let the ice do the breaking itself as a hammer. Of course, this hammer lets you open bottles. When you pour out the contents, be sure i…

Jessica Livingston on Cofounder Disputes and Making Something People Want

All right, so now we’re going to move on to another monster: co-founder disputes. I think people underestimate how critical founder relationships are to the success of a startup. Unfortunately, I’ve seen more founder breakups than I care to even count, an…

Article VI of the Constitution | National Constitution Center | Khan Academy

Hi, this is Kim from Khan Academy, and today I’m learning more about Article 6 of the US Constitution. Article 6 is, as we’ll soon see, kind of a constitutional grab bag. It covers debts, religious tests for office, and it establishes the Constitution as …

Compare with multiplication examples

This here is a screenshot from this exercise on Khan Academy. It says the number 48 is six times as many as eight. Write this comparison as a multiplication equation. So pause this video and see if you can have a go at that. All right, so it sounds very …

Camo Sharks: Breaching Test | SharkFest | National Geographic

RYAN JOHNSON: One of the most important tests that we’re going to do is the breaching test. GIBBS KUGURU: Breaching is sort of this ambush attack. They need speed, power, stealth. RYAN JOHNSON: This is when we’re going to be able to measure the color of…

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

More Articles