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Lecture 3 - Before the Startup (Paul Graham)

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  • Recommended by 1 person: 1 on Hacker News.
  • Presented by Paul Graham, co-founder of Y Combinator
  • An opinion. It argues one side of a question engineers disagree on.

Beginner. No background in the topic needed.

1.1M views12 years ago1 recommendation

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Paul Graham discusses counterintuitive aspects of startups and how to generate startup ideas in this Y Combinator lecture.

Lecture Transcript: tech.genius.com/Paul-graham-lecture-3-counterintuitive-parts… Paul Graham delivers an informative (and highly amusing) talk, addressing counterintuitive parts of startups, in Lecture 3 of How to Start a Startup. See the readings at startupclass.samaltman.com/courses/lec03/ Discuss this lecture: startupclass.co/courses/how-to-start-a-startup/lectures/6403… This video is under Creative Commons license: creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/

Why it's here

1 person recommends this, 1 disputes it

What people say. Recommended as a classic lecture on startup philosophy and how to find co-founders and ideas.

chrisaon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Ask HN: How do I find my co-founder?”

Paul Graham gave a talk to college students that covered this: link to this video In short: build things you are interested in with people who are also interested in those things. Don't call it a startup at first; just make projects.

gcton Hacker News • Disputes

On “Mean People Fail”

PG decided this: link to this video was the right way to shut down a question he didn't think was up to snuff so I guess I'm not going to take his opinion on what is/isn't "mean" too seriously

gcton Hacker News • Disputes

On “Your name is fine”

After seeing how PG treats people when the filter's off, I don't think I want to be in YC: link to this video

mhartlon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Lecture 3: How to Start a Startup”

I share pg's distaste for the mouthful that is "entrepreneurship" ( link to this video ). How about resurrecting the root, and using "enterprise" instead? Moving a language as big as English is a Brobdingnagian task, but few people are as well-positioned as pg to (re)introduce "enterprise" as a more economical alternative to "entrepreneurship".

sreyaNotfilcon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Before the Startup”

Hey guys, I believe this is from the "How To Start A Startup Lecture 3", so if you'd like to hear it go here... link to this video

anonbankeron Hacker News • Mentions

On “Write like you talk”

This is especially interesting, as pg uses a very creative variation on "Um"1 (as a method of making people focus on the poigniant/funny statement he just made). I'm not sure if this is a case of someone weaponizing their verbal tic, but I think pg should probably add it to his actual writings. 1. link to this video

f0e4c2f7on Hacker News • Mentions

On “Ask HN: What are your favorite Essays/Longform blogposts”

There's No Speed Limit 0 How I Became The Honest Broker 1 Running with Bruce Lee 2 This excerpt from Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman 3 Before The Startup 4 (also available in video form5) 0 link 1 link 2 link 3 link 4 link 5 link to this video

BrandiATMuhkuhon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Typical Startup Mistakes – A YC-Collection”

Hi HN, I was the technical co-founder of a couple of startups that showed early promise but didn’t ultimately succeed. After my last attempt, I started digging into the reasons why, and found that YC pretty much has all the advice I wish I had from the start. One thing that really stood out was their list of “What not to do as a startup” (aka “Typical Startup Mistakes”). It’s a goldmine of advice that could have saved me a lot of headaches. I’ve put these insights together in a presentation and thought this would be the right place to share them. --- For convenience, I’ve added the presentation content as text below. --- Y Combinator Advice Authors - Michael Seibel (YC Partner and Managing D…