541–550 of 681 posts
Google was a successful, unsustainable search engine before it was a successful business.
Facebook was a successful social network waay before it was a successful business.
Reddit was... You can see where I am going with this.
This advice is horrible for 14 year olds - it’s the equivalent of saying hey kids go become a movie star, rock star, sports champion or rapper
Even if they don’t make a startup, at least following the advice would make them more employable.
> Don't try to guess whether gene editing or LLMs or rockets will turn out to be the most valuable technology to know about. No one can predict that. Just work on whatever interests you the most. This optimizes for Paul's outcomes not for the individual outcomes.
I don't get your comment. Are you saying PG is trying to deter and throw off teenagers so they don't compete in the space he invested in?
How to start Google? You can't. That holds for 99.999999% of the people. The rest 0.000001% aren't wasting their time reading Paul Graham's essays.
Not saying Larry Page and Sergey page aren't talented - clearly they were/are very talented people. But they were also extraordinarily lucky. To take another example, if Gary Kildall had been a slightly more ruthless businessman and IBM had had a little more foresight, Bill Gates would not be a billionaire.
> Don't try to guess whether gene editing or LLMs or rockets will turn out to be the most valuable technology to know about. No one can predict that. Just work on whatever interests you the most. This optimizes for Paul's outcomes not for the individual outcomes.
> This optimizes for Paul's outcomes not for the individual outcomes. I don't get your comment. Are you saying PG is trying to deter and throw off teenagers so they don't compete in the space he invested in?
> Don't try to guess whether gene editing or LLMs or rockets will turn out to be the most valuable technology to know about. No one can predict that. Just work on whatever interests you the most. This optimizes for Paul's outcomes not for the individual outcomes.
> This optimizes for Paul's outcomes not for the individual outcomes. I don't get your comment. Are you saying PG is trying to deter and throw off teenagers so they don't compete in the space he invested in?
It's interesting that this piece mentions "to get really rich" as one of the primary motivators. Especially to high school students. I wonder if that's good advice or if society is better served by motivating students to start companies that make the world better.
Getting rich and making the world better are not incompatible, or even unaligned in general. You get rich by offering a good or service that society desires.
Paul Graham sounds like a boomer telling their kids to go apply in person or go door to door for jobs. Especially talking about Software startups, which will increasingly have a lower and lower barrier to entry (aka lower profitability) Theres simply no way to get away with what Google, Facebook or Uber did today. You will not sneak your software into enterprise customers, you will not be able to skirt regulations. H…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Compared to my 25 and 15 year old self, my 35 (now 40) self is a lot wiser in terms of dealing with people, applying humility and being crisp on the wide gulf between "what I find is worth doing at the moment" and "what's valuable." I think these are all hugely valuable and serve me well.
LLMs are increasingly good at your 40 year old soft social skills like humility, so don't bank on that being worth much very long.