10 Life-Changing Lessons I Learned From Paul Graham
#10: The way to get startup ideas is not to try to think of startup ideas.
Paul Graham is a computer scientist, author, and, as the founder of Y Combinator (an early-stage startup accelerator) is arguably one of the most famous people from Silicon Valley. His essays are read by more than 35 million people each month.
He is one of my heroes, and here are the ten lessons I’ve learned from him.
#1. Startups are doable (and so is getting rich)
According to Paul Graham, there are three essential keys to founding a successful startup:
- Hire good people
- Build something people really want
- Spend as little money as possible
And the great thing is that all of the points above are doable. If you do them, you’ll have a successful startup. And because success at a startup makes its founders rich, becoming rich is doable too.
“Startups are not this great mystery that people only on the inside know,” he writes in his blog, “do something people want and spend less than you make. How hard is that?”