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.

Conclusion for a two sample t test using a P value

Saddle points

View All

15 Ways to Accelerate Your Journey to $1,000,000

You know, Alexa, accelerating isn’t just about putting your foot on the gas and pushing full steam ahead. In fact, that’s the last step. Before you can accelerate, you have to optimize your machine to run smoothly and efficiently and remove as many obstac…

Gerrymandering | US government and civics | US government and civics | Khan Academy

What we see here are two maps of congressional districts. On the left, we see some congressional districts in and around Austin, Texas. This black line shows us Travis County, where Austin, Texas, is. On this right map, we see the congressional districts …

How to Move the Sun: Stellar Engines

Nothing in the universe is static. In the Milky Way, billions of stars orbit the galactic center. Some, like our Sun, are pretty consistent, keeping a distance of around 30,000 light years from the galactic center, completing an orbit every 230 million ye…

What Genetic Thread Do These Six Strangers Have in Common? | National Geographic

People have always asked me, kind of like where I’m from, what my race is, and I was not totally sure. [Music] I identify as mixed: white, black, and Native American African-American. But my mom would say, “You’re black, but you’re also white.” I didn’t u…

Unit 731: Japan’s Hidden Experiment

Four to six weeks. It’s a duration of time that you and I probably take for granted. What can really happen in that time? Nothing, right? Maybe that’s a big project at work, or maybe how long you’d spend learning integrals in calculus. In a different per…

The Index Fund Problem Looming in 2024

I told you not to sell. I worry about it. A good.com. Do you happen to own index funds in your portfolio? Maybe SPY from State Street or VO from Vanguard or IVV from Black Rock? All these ETFs track the S&P 500, which is an index composed of the large…

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

More Articles