Lecture 3 - Before the Startup (Paul Graham)

less than 1m read

·Nov 5, 2024

That short. Like, long introductions are no good. Sam knows. Alright, ready, everybody? I'm not gonna ask if the mic is working like in every talk so far. I'll just assume it's working.

No!

No, fuck!

All right, well make it work somebody.

It works, it works

All right, this is like some kinda class tradition. All right, all right. I wrote out my talk and afterwards in a couple days I will like turn it from a talk into an essay and put it online. So, you don't have to take notes, just, just listen.

All right. So, one of the advantages of having kids is that when you have to give advice to people, you can ask yourself, what would I tell my own kids? And actually, you find this really focuses you. So, even though my kids are little. My two-year-old today, when I asked what he was gonna be after two? He said a bat. The correct answer was three. But a bat is so much more interesting.

So even though my kids are little, I already know what I would tell them about startups if they were in college. And so that is what I am gonna tell you. So, you're literally getting what I would give my own kids, since most of you are young enough to be my own kids.

All right. So, startups are very counterintuitive. And I'm not sure exactly why, it could be simply

How Ozempic is Currently Breaking the Stock Market (and Denmark’s Economy)

Background of the Carthaginians | World History | Khan Academy

View All

Parametric curve arc length | Applications of definite integrals | AP Calculus BC | Khan Academy

Let’s say we’re going to trace out a curve where our x-coordinate and our y-coordinate that they’re each defined by, or they’re functions of a third parameter T. So we could say that X is a function of T and we could also say that Y is a function of T. If…

Sled Dog Houses - Thaw Project | Life Below Zero

What I got here is I got some plywood, some rough cut 2x4s. I’m going to start laying this out. My goal here is to be efficient with my materials; you know, try to make my dog houses out of one sheet of plywood per dog. When winter comes, you got to cons…

Peter Lynch: How to Invest Small Amounts of Money

I think the public can do extremely well in the stock market on their own. I think the fact that institutions dominate the market today is a positive for small investors. These institutions push stocks on usual lows; they push them on usual highs. For som…

Limits at infinity using algebra | Limits | Differential Calculus | Khan Academy

Let’s think about the limit of the square root of 100 plus x minus the square root of x as x approaches infinity. I encourage you to pause this video and try to figure this out on your own. So, I’m assuming you’ve had a go at it. First, let’s just try to…

THE MOST EXPENSIVE HOME IN THE WORLD ($250,000,000)

This is the most expensive home in the world at $250 million. It’s also the tallest residential building in the world, to the point where you could actually see the curvature of the Earth right from your living room. And today, you’ll get to see exactly w…

Jim Bell's 'Assassination Politics'

Assassination politics is the name of an essay by a guy called Jim Bell. In it, Bell plausibly describes what he takes to be an inevitable technological event that will make it impossible for the state to exist, at least in the forms we’re familiar with r…

Lecture 3 - Before the Startup (Paul Graham)

More Articles