Determination, Flexibility, Imagination, Naughtiness, Friendship http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2010/1108/best-small-companies-...
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Y Combinator’s Paul Graham: We’re Looking For People Like Us
121–123 of 123 posts
Re: Y Combinator’s Paul Graham: We’re Looking For People Like Us
#122It's interesting to see pg's opinion about what is important in founders evolve over the years. When I applied to YC in late 2008, I was told by alumni that YC was "looking for smart people." Although he's talked about discipline and determination as early as May 2004 in his essays those words were most commonly found next to the words "talent," "skill," or "smart," as if the two qualities were equally important. Now…
Maybe they've figured out that there are plenty of smart people, but not as many truly determined people. Determination then becomes the limiting factor once smartness has been established.
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Re: Y Combinator’s Paul Graham: We’re Looking For People Like Us
#123It's interesting to see pg's opinion about what is important in founders evolve over the years. When I applied to YC in late 2008, I was told by alumni that YC was "looking for smart people." Although he's talked about discipline and determination as early as May 2004 in his essays those words were most commonly found next to the words "talent," "skill," or "smart," as if the two qualities were equally important. Now…
Maybe they've figured out that there are plenty of smart people, but not as many truly determined people. Determination then becomes the limiting factor once smartness has been established.
I think pg in his essays is saying something stronger, which is that determination is actually more important than intelligence.
And although I tend to agree, let me play devil's advocoate for a moment. "We learned quickly that the most important predictor of success is determination."
A more important predictor of success could be, ambition. It's different from determination because with ambition you need to make it big, but with determination you just have to have it.
Determination is the wrong thing because to make a startup succeed you have to want it, but you also have to want to make it big.
In fairness, pg touches on this when he says, "I don't know if it's exactly right to say that ambition is a component of determination, but they're not entirely orthogonal. "