Making Startups Powerful: paulgraham.com/powerful.html↗

I tried asking myself what I'd learned after 40, and it turned out to be a lot of the most important stuff I know. At least 90% of what I know about startups, because I was 40 when we started YC. Plus everything I know about parenting and most of what I know about writing.↗

It seems a mistake to call oneself a "non-technical founder." You're treating not knowing how to do something as a part of your identity. Surely it's better just to fix that.↗

The most important component of writing clearly is simply to have high standards for clarity. Then if you write something unclear, you notice, and ask: what did I mean to say? You can just keep doing this over and over. And if you have high standards for clarity, you will.↗

Prediction: In the AI age, taste will become even more important. When anyone can make anything, the big differentiator is what you choose to make. paulgraham.com/taste.html↗

@pritika_mehta All you need is nerds, rich people, a government that doesn't get in the way, and time.↗

When To Do What You Love: paulgraham.com/when.html↗

Tips on writing: How to Write Usefully: paulgraham.com/useful.html The Age of the Essay: paulgraham.com/essay.html Write Like You Talk: paulgraham.com/talk.html↗

Something I taught 13 yo: Making important decisions without consulting anyone else is not a sign of strength or intelligence. In fact rather the opposite.↗

Something I taught 9 yo: Even if the stuff you're learning in your classes is just mindless memorization, it's still worth getting good grades, because good grades get you sorted with smarter people, and being around smart people is genuinely worthwhile.↗

Valuation matters far, far less than the decision of whether to invest or not. The spread between bargain and outrageous startup valuations can't be more than 5x, in a world where the best investments can return 1000x.↗

The reason most founders are surprised by the difficulty of fundraising is that they're learning something about themselves, not something about fundraising. They know fundraising is hard for startups that don't seem appealing to investors. They just didn't realize they had one.↗

There are people who fix problems and people who complain about problems, and the two sets are remarkably disjoint.↗

@tinvaan I would raise maybe $500k, keep the company small for the first year, work closely with users to make something amazing, and otherwise stay off SV's radar. In other words, be the opposite of a scenester.↗

When startups think a partnership with some big company will be the silver bullet that makes them grow, they're usually mistaken. What makes you grow is building amazing things and making customers love you.↗

Projects that yield great results often wouldn't seem promising to a rational person. Fortunately some people have a compensating irrationality: they're so interested in the project that they'll work on it for its own sake.↗