Paul Graham turned a $200k investment into a $600 billion YC portfolio.

He’s also written 200+ essays since 1993 that are a gold mine of wisdom on wealth creation and beating the status quo.

Here are 16 of the very best nuggets from his essays 99% of people wouldn't know: 🧵
1. Follow Curiosity, Not Passion

Most career advice says "follow your passion." Graham says that's backwards.

"If something seems like work to others but doesn't to you, that's what you're suited for."

This reveals your natural competitive advantage.

Everyone thought Roger Federer was insane...

When they heard he ditched Nike's $100M deal for a no-name brand making running shoes out of garden hoses.

But the details of this bizarre gamble would change sports & business forever...

Here's the full story: 🧵
The year was 2018.

Roger Federer had just won his 20th Grand Slam at the Australian Open.

Nike had been his partner for 24 years, since he was just 13 years old.

But then came the contract renewal meeting that shocked the sports & business world...

While everyone watches ChatGPT, this Swedish startup just quietly raised $200M in funding.

They achieved perfect product-market fit using a strategy every AI company missed.

Here's the counterintuitive approach that turned "impossible users" into a billion-dollar goldmine: 🧵
Most founders get product-market-fit (PMF) backwards.

They build a product first, then hunt for customers.

@antonosika did the opposite.

He accidentally discovered his market before building his product.

Here's how...

The biggest financial scam:

Buy Now, Pay Later.

It's not helping you afford things, it's engineered to create long-term debt dependency.

Here's how Buy Now Pay Later companies profit from your spending habits (& why we've been measuring debt risk completely wrong): 🧵 The psychology is simple.

When you see a $400 purchase split into "4 easy payments of $100," your brain doesn't process it as $400.

It processes it as $100.

This is weaponized behavioral science.

The way Warren Buffett runs Berkshire Hathaway is insane:

Only 25 people manage almost 400,000 employees in the middle of nowhere.

Buffett created and scaled a very unconventional model that 99% of people never heard of.

Here's how it works: (thread) 🧵
Most trillion-dollar companies have massive headquarters, armies of middle managers, and endless meetings.

Berkshire Hathaway has 24 people in Omaha running 60+ subsidiaries worth $1.1 trillion.

But here's the crazy part...

SHOCKING: University of Exeter completed the largest AI creativity study ever.

Turns out, AI makes individuals MORE creative but society LESS creative overall.

Here's what 900 participants revealed:

(hint: we're accidentally creating a creativity monoculture) The experiment was straightforward:

300 writers split into 3 groups. 600 judges evaluating their work.

Group 1: No AI assistance
Group 2: One ChatGPT-generated idea
Group 3: Up to 5 AI-generated starting points

Each wrote 8-sentence stories targeting young adults.

Poor Charlie's Almanack is one of the most powerful book that exists.

But the deepest lessons often hide in plain sight.

I’ve collected 8 of them that completely shifted my perspective.

Be prepared to have your mind blown... (thread) 🧵 1/ Think Like a Psychologist

Wall Street analyzes Coke's financials.

Munger sees a machine for creating conditioned reflexes.

Every ad links Coke to happiness and fun. After decades, just seeing the logo triggers positive emotions.

90% of founders waste years building products nobody wants.

They all skip the ONE question that matters most.

Answering it is how I got strangers on Reddit to pay me for an 'AI' startup before even having a product.

The "reverse launch" method—get paid first, build second: 🧵 May 2023. My co-founder Kyler and I had an idea.

Real estate investors pay people to "drive for dollars", literally driving around neighborhoods looking for deteriorated properties to buy.

We thought: "What if AI could do this using street view images?"

But here's the mistake most founders make...