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.

Ray Dalio & Bill Belichick on Going From Nothing to Something Big: Part 1

How to Have Interesting Ideas (The Ben Thompson Playbook)

View All

The One Ring Explained

These books are all about this ring. How it’s found and [spoiler alert] how it’s destroyed. While Tolkien built the largest and most consistent fictional universe, he sure didn’t mind being vague at times. So, if you finished the story and then thought: w…

Spinning Sphere of Molten Sodium

Thermometry is kind of a key safety diagnostic to make sure that we’re well controlled. Thermometry, thermometry! What if it gets too high? Here in trouble! Or sodium expands when it heats, the vessel has a certain volume. There’s a temperature above whic…

Zoroastrianism | World History | Khan Academy

So in any discussion of ancient Persia, we quickly talk about the faith of the Achaemenid Empire, and that’s Zoroastrianism. It’s popularized by Cyrus the Great when he establishes the Achaemenid Empire, takes over the Median Empire, the Babylonian Neo-Ba…

Successful Pitch

These are the three attributes you find in every successful pitch. These are the ones that get a check, that actually start their journey funded on Shark Tank, that go into the ecosphere of Shark Tank, that get followed every year by all the networks, tha…

Brave New Words - Kevin Roose & Sal Khan

Hi everyone, it’s here from Khan Academy, and as some of you all know, I have released my second book, Brave New Words, about the future of AI in education and work. It’s available wherever you might buy your books. But as part of the research for that bo…

LC natural response derivation 1

In this video, we’re going to begin the derivation of the LC natural response, the response of an inductor capacitor circuit. This is a difficult derivation, but it really pays off in the end. There’s a real fun surprise at the end, and that is this is wh…

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

More Articles