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Billionaires Build
Paul Graham · Passages from the same work, in order.
Billionaires Build, Excerpt 1
As I was deciding what to write about next, I was surprised to find that two separate essays I'd been planning to write were actually the same. The…
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Investing · Cognition · Philosophy · Leadership · Entrepreneur memoirs
Billionaires Build, Excerpt 2
They have 1001 heuristics for doing this, and I'm not going to tell you all of them, but I'm happy to tell you the most important ones, because these…
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Wealth · Investing · Leadership · Human nature · Entrepreneur memoirs
Billionaires Build, Excerpt 3
Who are your first users going to be, and how do you know they want this? If I had to decide whether to fund startups based on a single question,…
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Investing · Action · Decision · Philosophy · Entrepreneur memoirs
Billionaires Build, Excerpt 4
YC doesn't have time to do this, but if the YC partners can convince themselves that the founders both (a) know what they're talking about and (b)…
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Investing · Cognition · Action · Entrepreneur memoirs
Billionaires Build, Excerpt 5
But you should know who your competitors are, and tell the YC partners candidly what your relative strengths and weaknesses are. Because the YC…
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Investing · Cognition · Action · Character · Entrepreneur memoirs
Billionaires Build, Excerpt 6
So that's what YC looks for in founders: authenticity. People's motives for starting startups are usually mixed. They're usually doing it from some…
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Action · Wealth · Human nature · Investing · Entrepreneur memoirs