Paul Buchheit: What are some things successful founders have in common?

less than 1m read

·Nov 3, 2024

So this was actually where the focused frugality obsession and love thing came from. I was actually trying to distill it down into a small enough number of words, and then I was going to try to translate it into emoji, but I failed at that part. I couldn't figure out the emoji for obsession; like love, I'm like okay, a heart.

But there is, I think, like this obsessive focus. There's almost an irrationality in some of these founders. The example that comes up as like the most insane version of it is probably like Elon Musk.

So I actually, he came into Google, gave like a Tech Talk, I want to say 2003 or something like that. And it was after he had started SpaceX, but before they had done the first rocket launch. Someone is like, what are you gonna do if the rocket explodes when you launch it? He's like, well, I have enough money for three launches, so I hope one of them succeeds.

Like he literally plowed his entire fortune; the first three blew up. I think, yeah, the first three did blow up. He managed to scrape together enough money for like a fourth rocket, but that fourth rocket hadn't gone, there would be no SpaceX, and Elon would be bankrupt.

Right? Like that's insane. I would not take all of my money and plow it into like some harebrained rocket scheme. Right? Like that's like a level of irrationality that is, I think, like wonderful.

How can a dandelion hold back a flood? | Initiating the butterfly effect for good

The Paradoxes of Life

View All

Worked example: Maclaurin polynomial | Series | AP Calculus BC | Khan Academy

We’re told that ( f(x) ) is equal to one over the square root of ( x + 1 ), and what we want to figure out is what is the second degree Maclaurin polynomial of ( f ). And like always, pause this video and see if you could have a go at it. So, let’s remin…

Cocaine Shipment at JFK Airport | To Catch a Smuggler

[music playing] We’re headed to a warehouse. This one has a lot of European shipments, South American shipments, a lot of source countries for us for narcotics. So we’re gonna see what we can find over here. [music playing] Albert, take a look at this. …

15 Signs You Are Financially Mature

You know, up until a certain point in life, money comes and money goes, and that’s about it. You just made a couple of purchases, you’ve got a stable place, a stable income, and things seem to settle. At this point, you start to be more financially mature…

Probability for a geometric random variable | Random variables | AP Statistics | Khan Academy

Jeremiah makes 25% of the three-point shots he attempts, far better than my percentage for warmup. Jeremiah likes to shoot three-point shots until he successfully makes one. All right, this is a telltale sign of geometric random variables. How many trial…

The Nature of Nature | National Geographic

The ocean has been my passion since I was young. I used to dream of being Jacques Cousteau, exploring the seven seas with my team. But in just a few generations, the underwater world has changed dramatically. All over the planet, so many places are now vo…

Generating inputs and outputs of a function

So we’re asked to pick any three pairs of corresponding input and output values of the following function and fill the table accordingly, and if necessary, round our answers to the nearest 0.1. Our function is defined as: if I input a t, what I’m going t…

Paul Buchheit: What are some things successful founders have in common?

More Articles