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 5 BEST Credit Cards For Cash Back

Inverting op-amp circuit

View All

Finding specific antiderivatives: rational function | AP Calculus AB | Khan Academy

So we’re told that ( F(2) ) is equal to 12. ( F’ ) prime of ( x ) is equal to ( \frac{24}{x^3} ), and what we want to figure out is what ( F(-1) ) is. Alright, so they give us the derivative in terms of ( x ), so maybe we can take the antiderivative of t…

A Survivor's Story as a Guide at Rwanda's Genocide Memorial | Short Film Showcase

I would say like more than majority of the people, they are very smart. It’s a great pleasure you welcome to Kar Genocide Memorial. My name is Gamba. I’m the head guide of the place we’re visiting. The tour starts by laying the leaf of flowers as a sign o…

Is Glass a Liquid?

In 1994, a massive earthquake shook the Northridge suburb of Los Angeles, killing 57 people and injuring over 5000. The cost of damages was in excess of $20 billion. It’s earthquakes like this one that make us question just how solid is the earth beneath …

How to Raise Capital For Your Business | Shark Tank's Kevin O'Leary and Mark Cuban

As an entrepreneur just starting out, I’ve been told that, um, I need to raise money from friends and family. Most of those people that are saying that have friends and family who have been able to give them, um, you know, sizable amounts of money. But fo…

Solve by completing the square: Non-integer solutions | Algebra I | Khan Academy

Let’s say we’re told that zero is equal to x squared plus six x plus three. What is an x, or what our x is that would satisfy this equation? Pause this video and try to figure it out. All right, now let’s work through it together. So the first thing that…

Principal-Agent Problem: Act Like an Owner

We spoke earlier about picking a business model that has leverage from scale economies, network effects, zero marginal cost of replication. But there were a few other ideas on the cutting room floor that I want to go through with you. The first one was t…

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

More Articles