English - Scientist | November 13, 1964 -
Dressing up is inevitably a substitute for good ideas. It is no coincidence that technically inept business types are known as 'suits'.
Paul Graham
GoodBusinessIdeasSuitsDressing
If you imagine someone with 100 percent determination and 100 percent intelligence, you can discard a lot of intelligence before they stop succeeding. But if you start discarding determination, you very quickly get an ineffectual and perpetual grad student.
DeterminationIntelligenceStartYou
It's hard to say exactly what it is about face-to-face contact that makes deals happen, but whatever it is, it hasn't yet been duplicated by technology.
TechnologySayHardContactWhatever
For the most ambitious young people, the corporate ladder is obsolete.
PeopleYoungLadderYoung People
I suppose I should learn Lisp, but it seems so foreign.
LearnSeemsShouldForeignSuppose
A programming language is for thinking about programs, not for expressing programs you've already thought of. It should be a pencil, not a pen.
ThinkingThoughtLanguageYouPen
Everyone by now presumably knows about the danger of premature optimization. I think we should be just as worried about premature design - designing too early what a program should do.
ThinkDesignEarlyNowEveryone
Small-business customers are very conservative and very cheap. We don't have to explain ourselves for the most part.
ConservativeCheapExplainCustomers
We don't have to go that far to sell our beer because our immediate accounts sell so much. Places that sold 10 cases before, now they're selling 30.
BeerSellingGoNowPlacesSell
In the startup world, 'not working' is normal.
WorldNormalWorkingStartup
If you really understand something, you can say it in the fewest words, instead of thrashing about.
WordsYouSayUnderstandSomething
When Facebook first started, and it was just a social directory for undergrads at Harvard, it would have seemed like such a bad startup idea, like some student side project.
BadStudentFirstProjectSideJust
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