by @abhia90 // newsletter // youtube

<aside> ⭐ Article by Paul Graham here

</aside>

"A lot of would-be founders believe that startups either take off or don't. You build something, make it available, and if you've made a better mousetrap, people beat a path to your door as promised. Or they don't, in which case the market must not exist. [1]

Actually startups take off because the founders make them take off. There may be a handful that just grew by themselves, but usually it takes some sort of push to get them going. A good metaphor would be the cranks that car engines had before they got electric starters. Once the engine was going, it would keep going, but there was a separate and laborious process to get it going."

"The need to do something unscalably laborious to get started is so nearly universal that it might be a good idea to start thinking of startup ideas as as pairs of 1) what you're going to build, and 2) the unscalable thing(s) you're going to do initially to get the company going. This also allows you to be imaginative in both domains"

• What are things that don't scale? What are the long term implications of these unscalable methods (that are usually applied in the beginning stages of the company)?
• What is the most unscalable thing that founders have to do in the beginning? Why do founders resist this?
• What's the deal with startups being fragile?
• How should you treat your first customers? Why don't most founders do this?
• What level of intensity should your attention be on your users?
• Should you focus on a narrow or broad market at first? What sized companies are the best early adopters?
• Consultant
• What's the more extreme variant of the consultant?
• Do launches work for growth? Do partnerships work, either in general or for growth? What about partnerships with large companies?