Paul Graham Keynote at PyCon
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Paul Graham Keynote at PyCon
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Re: Paul Graham Keynote at PyCon
#2"find the tiny thing that turns into the gigantic idea"
I like this, or it at least validates some of my thinking. All of my startup ideas are small and modest, something that will help me and maybe some people like me. But I have no idea where the idea will take me...
Re: Paul Graham Keynote at PyCon
#3"find the tiny thing that turns into the gigantic idea" I like this, or it at least validates some of my thinking. All of my startup ideas are small and modest, something that will help me and maybe some people like me. But I have no idea where the idea will take me...
"tiny thing -> gigantic idea" + "maybe it’s a bad idea to have really big ambitions initially", could suck us in however to one of PG's 'mistake founders made': "Marginal Niche" (from http://www.paulgraham.com/startupmistakes.html).
So I guess a question is how to distinguish between marginal niche, and something small in a huge market. I guess it's market size and gut feel of potential.
Re: Paul Graham Keynote at PyCon
#4Thanks for this! Lots of wisdom here. This one particularly rings very true:
"Only way to get a product visionary as the CEO of a company is to start it and not get fired."
From the same part in the article,
"None of the existing players will – not run by product visionaries."
Later elaborated on as: "just have to be better than samsung, hp, motorola – not so hard"
Doesn't this in itself bring an interesting question? Why is that those companies cannot innovate or have visionaries? Surely, they must. Maybe that's another opportunity though. How to find the visionaries in your company and reward them for doing so?
Re: Paul Graham Keynote at PyCon
#5Curious point:
> replace universities
> heading down wrong path last couple decades. not fun for students or professors.
Is that (fun part) generally true? I'm in my thirties, and I certainly had lots of fun at my previous job (MSFT, on developer tools), but none of it compared with either my undergraduate or Ph.D. student experiences. That also seems to be true for most of my colleagues and friends --- who have done the startup sold for lots of money, big smash-hit video games, part of the i* device releases from day 1, etc.
All of the faculty I know really love it as well. Certainly, I hear bad things from the assistant (untenured) faculty, but all of the folks I meet who've made it over the hurdle seem to really love their work and have a lot of fun.
Are non top-tier universities really that bad? Or is my circle of friends and programming languages researchers just a bunch of weirdos?
Re: Paul Graham Keynote at PyCon
#6Curious point: > replace universities > heading down wrong path last couple decades. not fun for students or professors. Is that (fun part) generally true? I'm in my thirties, and I certainly had lots of fun at my previous job (MSFT, on developer tools), but none of it compared with either my undergraduate or Ph.D. student experiences. That also seems to be true for most of my colleagues and friends --- who have done…
I think there's something to be said for considering pg's approach for non-American universities outside the top rankings.
I get the impression that the best American universities are perfectly fine, and then some.
Re: Paul Graham Keynote at PyCon
#7Ongoing diagnosis seems simliar to one of the recent X-Prizes:
http://www.qualcommtricorderxprize.org/
And the idea of the X-Prize seems to be mostly in-line with the spirit of Y Combinator. I only last night saw all the current X-Prizes and am pretty impressed.
Re: Paul Graham Keynote at PyCon
#8Anyone have a video link? Google came up empty for me
Re: Paul Graham Keynote at PyCon
#9Curious point: > replace universities > heading down wrong path last couple decades. not fun for students or professors. Is that (fun part) generally true? I'm in my thirties, and I certainly had lots of fun at my previous job (MSFT, on developer tools), but none of it compared with either my undergraduate or Ph.D. student experiences. That also seems to be true for most of my colleagues and friends --- who have done…
That point also struck me as odd considering he later pitches the idea of making a product to abstract away paralellism... a problem that would certainly be out of reach to all but the most educated (read: PhD from a good university).
Re: Paul Graham Keynote at PyCon
#10Curious point: > replace universities > heading down wrong path last couple decades. not fun for students or professors. Is that (fun part) generally true? I'm in my thirties, and I certainly had lots of fun at my previous job (MSFT, on developer tools), but none of it compared with either my undergraduate or Ph.D. student experiences. That also seems to be true for most of my colleagues and friends --- who have done…
> Are non top-tier universities really that bad?
Yes.