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.

The Small Investor's Secret Weapon

trying to get my life together vlog | Med School Diaries

View All

No Truth Can Be Justified

The initial guesses at what knowledge was all about amounted to what is known as the justified true belief vision of knowledge, and it’s still the most prevalent idea today. Anyone who calls themselves a Bayesian is a justified true believer, and that’s t…

Worked examples: Definite integral properties 2 | AP Calculus AB | Khan Academy

So what we’re going to do in this video is several examples where we evaluate expressions with definite integrals. Right over here we have the definite integral from -2 to 3 of 2 F of x DX plus the definite integral from 3 to 7 of 3 F of x DX. All we know…

The History of Not Forgotten - Smarter Every Day 269

Hello. Hello. Hello. Hey, it’s me Destin. Welcome back to Smarter Every Day. So every year I like to make a video about Not Forgotten, which is a Peruvian orphanage I work with. This year’s a little different. I usually make one to update you on the progr…

Definite integrals: reverse power rule | AP Calculus AB | Khan Academy

Let’s evaluate the definite integral from negative 3 to 5 of 4 dx. What is this going to be equal to? I encourage you to pause the video and try to figure it out on your own. All right, so in order to evaluate this, we need to remember the fundamental th…

Types of forces and free body diagrams | AP Physics 1 | Khan Academy

In this video, we’re going to discuss different types of forces, but we’re going to do it in the context of free body diagrams. So let’s say that I have a table here, and I have a block that is sitting stationary on that table. What are all of the forces …

It Started: The Upcoming Housing Collapse - Round 2

What’s up, Graham? It’s guys here. So, we got to talk about the housing market because after two years of non-stop bidding wars, price increases, and low inventory, believe it or not, asking prices have begun to fall. Except for Betty White’s house, which…

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

More Articles