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25 Feb, 4 tweets, 1 min read
What novel technology will do for cryptocurrency what GUIs did for personal computers and the web did for the internet? If you have even an inkling of the answer, the expected value of that insight is enormous.
One of the things standing in your way is that such ideas have to come from cryptocurrency experts, and yet most cryptocurrency experts are proud of their mastery of the currently difficult user experience, and thus minimize it.
Present-day cryptocurrency experts are like neckbeard hackers in the 80s saying "who needs more than a command line?" and thus failing to invent GUIs. Or if you want a more recent example, the people who said "just write a cron job" and thus failed to start Dropbox.
Being an expert means doing hard things easily, and this, paradoxically, makes you blind to opportunities to make them even easier. And yet such opportunities yield hyperlinear returns. Make something half as difficult, and you'll get way more than twice as many users.

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More from @paulg

Paul Graham Profile picture
19 Feb
@tlbtlbtlb I would write about how the startup model is spreading into industries far removed from "tech."
@tlbtlbtlb It's not software eating the world. It's very specifically startups eating the world, meaning new companies started by a couple people that make progress really fast. This model seems to work in more domains than it doesn't.
@tlbtlbtlb It started in tech, but it looks like it's going to take over many if not most industries. If so, the world economy is going to be remade.
Read 4 tweets
Paul Graham Profile picture
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.
Read 4 tweets
Paul Graham Profile picture
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.
Read 5 tweets
Paul Graham Profile picture
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.
Read 4 tweets
Paul Graham Profile picture
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.
Read 4 tweets
Paul Graham Profile picture
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.
Read 4 tweets

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