Paul Graham: What are some common mistakes founders make?

What you will get wrong is that you will not pay enough attention to users. You will make up some idea in your own head that you will call your vision, and then you will spend a lot of time thinking about your vision in a cafe by yourself.

You will build some elaborate thing without going and talking to users, because that's doing sales, which is a pain in the ass. They might say no, and you’d be way better off finding someone, anyone, who has a problem that they will pay you to fix, and fixing it.

Then see if you can find more people like that. Best case is if you yourself have the problem, right? But you will not ship fast enough because you don't want to face the—you’re embarrassed to ship something unfinished, and you don't want to face the likely feedback.

It's humbling and humiliating when they tell you how shitty what you built actually is, right? But that's the only way you get it better. Yeah, so you will shrink from contact with the real world or contact with your users. That's the mistake you will make.