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.

Crowd-funding: Tips

Determinant when multiplying a matrix by a constant

View All

Emirate of Diriyah as the first Saudi State

The history of the Saudi state and the Saudi dynasty really becomes interesting in 1744 in the town of Diriyah, which is very close to the modern city of Riyadh in the region of the Arabian Peninsula known as the Najd. This is an important term to know if…

How to Throw an Atlatl | Live Free or Die: DIY

[Music] So this is the ATL, and this is what they call the dart. It predates the bow and arrow people. It’s really responsible for our survival as human beings. So this tool has been used for a longer duration than probably any other hunting tool that ma…

These are the most INSANE mansions of Beverly Hills 90210

Let’s see if we can clear this without scraping. Make sure to smash that like button. If this video gets three thousand likes, then I’m not gonna scrape; otherwise, if it doesn’t get three thousand likes, I’m gonna scrape my bumper pretty bad here. Oh, w…

Medical Reason for Visions? | The Story of God

Ian Ball had never been a religious person. He never really thought about God. But scarring from brain surgery brought on a series of visions that made him question everything. “It’s carried on for about three or four weeks. About how often? Every day. E…

Animal behavior and offspring success | Middle school biology | Khan Academy

Let’s talk a little bit about reproductive success, which is related to the number of surviving offspring that an animal has during its lifetime. An animal that has more surviving offspring has a higher reproductive success. Now, there’s two broad categ…

I can't keep doing this to myself

Guys, I’m making this video out of necessity. There’s a large part of me—it’s been the prevailing part of me as of late—that makes me not want to make this video because it’s unfiltered, because it’s not ready. What I want to say isn’t totally polished. I…

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

More Articles