Paul Graham’s startup tips, for everyone

Issue 005

In this edition…

• Wisdom from Paul Graham, applied broadly Paul Graham’s startup tips applied to all careers 🌎

Wisdom from Paul Graham, applied broadly 

Paul Graham is one of the greatest investors in Silicon Valley. His 13 tips on founding a startup are key for entrepreneurs, but many of them are relevant to everyone – no matter what their job or role is. His ideas construct a valuable framework to think about how to operate in your career. 

Here are some highlights, applied broadly:

Pick good cofounders

Or: surround yourself with great teammates

In a startup you can change your idea, but not your cofounders. The “success of a startup is almost always a function of its founders.”

This thinking can be applied more generally, too. If you’re choosing between two jobs, prioritize the opportunity with higher quality teammates. You should consider technical experience, intelligence, and skillset, but also personality, ethics, and standards. To the extent you can control it, try to work with people you respect and will help you grow. It’s helpful to like them too.

Launch fast

Or: share your ideas early

Paul Graham says “launching teaches you what you should have been building. Till you know that, you're wasting your time.”

While preparation is important, sharing ideas internally can lead to valuable feedback and help you iterate to arrive at a better idea, faster. Withholding thoughts you have on how to improve your business in order to perfect them can slow down progress. 

Let your idea evolve

Or: be open to feedback and be ready to pivot

In the same way that “it's a big mistake to treat a startup as if it were merely a matter of implementing some brilliant initial idea,” it’s a mistake to become married to one approach or concept. Leveraging feedback and ideas from those around you and being willing to evolve is key in any job.

Understand your users

Or: know your audience

Whether it’s your own teammates, your customers, or your clients, offering value requires understanding. This is key in ensuring you adequately address their needs and it’s important in knowing how to communicate with them most effectively.

You make what you measure

Or: be data driven

This is a focus at Eight Sleep and comes up in our Operating Playbook repeatedly. Being relentlessly data-driven can be more time-consuming than relying on intuition or precedent processes, but it ensures you are expending energy on the right things. This improves revenue, processes, post-mortems, and efficiency.

Paul Graham explains: “I learned this one from Joe Kraus. Merely measuring something has an uncanny tendency to improve it. If you want to make your user numbers go up, put a big piece of paper on your wall and every day plot the number of users. You'll be delighted when it goes up and disappointed when it goes down. Pretty soon you'll start noticing what makes the number go up, and you'll start to do more of that. Corollary: be careful what you measure.”

Avoid distractions

Or: always stay focused on your main goal

This is intimately connected to the prior point. Data correlations help you understand what has the biggest impact on your personal or organizational success.

If a certain weekly meeting seems to align your team and increase efficiency, make sure that meeting is great. If your pitch to clients is a key indicator in whether you capture new business, make sure the pitch deck is excellent. If follow-up calls with customers drive repeat purchase, perfect this process. Once you pinpoint what moves the needle, focus your energy there.

This may sound obvious, but it’s often easy to be pulled into side projects or tasks that don’t make an impact. Resist this when possible.

Don't get demoralized and don’t give up

Graham argues “You can get surprisingly far by just not giving up. This isn't true in all fields. There are a lot of people who couldn't become good mathematicians no matter how long they persisted. But startups aren't like that. Sheer effort is usually enough, so long as you keep morphing your idea.” However, persistence is still important in any job.

Every career offers varying degrees of stress, “moral weight,” criticism, and roadblocks. While maintaining confidence and being persistent are particularly relevant in entrepreneurship, everyone can benefit from practicing positivity and staying steadfast in the face of adversity. 

Key takeaway: understand your user and all other stakeholders

Graham concludes his tips by identifying the most important advice from this list: understand your users. If we interpret this broadly, it is key to understand anyone to whom you offer service, whether that is a client, third-party partner, customer, or coworker.

Having a keen understanding of the needs and preferences of all stakeholders enables you to communicate effectively and operate efficiently towards the things that matter most. 

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