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Paul Graham

@paulg

15 Dec 20

One difficulty when trying to ban ideas on social networks is that it's the edge cases that matter most, but bans are enforced by low-level employees who don't understand them.

I've thought enough about this problem that I'm pretty sure there are no obviously good solutions. Ergo if there are solutions at all, they'll be counterintuitive.

Two possibilities: Have the users do it. Have smart people do it, aided by staff and software.

Both of those potential solutions have big drawbacks. That's why I describe them as counterintuitive. But perhaps there are clever ways to overcome them. It's still too early in the evolution of this technology to know what's possible.

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Paul Graham

@paulg

25 Nov 20

"Make something people want" is fundamentally advice about being empirical, instead of assuming you already have all the answers. The equivalent for investors would be "Let founders teach you what people want."

That has been the m.o. at YC from the beginning: that founders both should and can understand their users better than we could.

That rule cuts both ways. If we see signs founders don't understand their users as well as we do, it's a reason for rejection. But if founders can teach us things about their users, based on real data, they become very convincing.

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Paul Graham

@paulg

8 Jul 20

If you're a designer or marketer, one of the most valuable things you could do right now is to create a mask that people want to wear in order to seem cool, even if they're against masks.

Use brand, bling, celebrities, or just cool design. You know how to push people's buttons. This is the time to do it like you've never done it before.

The opportunities for brand marketing are unprecedented. You're right on people's faces. That's so much more powerful than shoes. You'll never get another chance like this in your lifetime.

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Paul Graham

@paulg

27 Jun 20

Later-stage investors who disparage seed investing as "spray and pray" don't realize that "pray" can be replaced by "help."

It's an understandable oversight. The later you invest, the less you can, or are expected to, help the company. What people don't get (it was a surprise to me at first) is that things change so much at the seed stage that it's qualitatively different.

Seed investing is so different from series A investing that you have to be a different sort of person to do it well. Jessica and I were well suited to seed investing, but I don't think either of us would make good VCs. You have to be tougher and better at thinking about money.

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Paul Graham

@paulg

17 Jun 20

Preparing kids to become startup founders by having them do pitch contests is like preparing kids to become pilots by having them run around the room with their arms stuck out, making whooshing noises.

The idea comes last. The way you actually prepare is by learning how to build things.

Pitch contests are not merely useless, but actively misleading, because they train people that the audience they have to convince is investors, when actually it's customers.

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Paul Graham

@paulg

16 Jun 20

In 2016 I was so worried about the increasing polarization of the US that I spent 3 months researching and writing an essay about it (paulgraham.com/re.html), but even I have been surprised at how fast it has increased since then.

I didn't focus much on how to decrease or mitigate polarization. I was just trying to understand the causes of it. But it's time now to start thinking about how to deal with it, or God knows what the US will look like in another 10 years.

Decreasing polarization itself will not seem as exciting as dealing with the specific problems that we have polarized responses to. But it could be more important, because if we don't fix polarization, we could lose the ability to respond effectively to any other problem.

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