Startup lessons from the ubiquitous Paul Graham [www.paulgraham.com]

I knew I liked Paul Graham, but quoting Richard Feynman truly confirms that I like his way of thinking!

One very interesting footnote is an important lesson for any old-school technology and business people to learn. The populace in general have begun to "get" this web thing - and it's not like distributing shrink-wrapped software or a broom, it's much more like real life or perhaps a reflection of it:

[3] A web site is different from a book or movie or desktop application in this respect. Users judge a site not as a single snapshot, but as an animation with multiple frames. Of the two, I'd say the rate of improvement is more important to users than where you currently are.

I don't like the title of lesson #7 (Don't get your hopes up) but I have learn't the value of this part of the lesson:

Startup founders are naturally optimistic. They wouldn't do it otherwise. But you should treat your optimism the way you'd treat the core of a nuclear reactor: as a source of power that's also very dangerous. You have to build a shield around it, or it will fry you.

The shielding of a reactor is not uniform; the reactor would be useless if it were. It's pierced in a few places to let pipes in. An optimism shield has to be pierced too. I think the place to draw the line is between what you expect of yourself, and what you expect of other people.

And not only in the context of being let down, but in the context that if you have extremely high standards you just can't expect everyone to be the same. If you find some people the same, happy days, but if you expect people to be who are not - well that's just an exercise in frustration and will reduce your productivity and theirs.

Paul continues with:

Shielding your optimism is nowhere more important than with deals. If your startup is doing a deal, just assume it's not going to happen. The VCs who say they're going to invest in you aren't. The company that says they're going to buy you isn't. The big customer who wants to use your system in their whole company won't. Then if things work out you can be pleasantly surprised.

Which I also know something about ;) It is especially important in that latter context of customers - when you're new and naive to business you can spend a lot of time on a few big customers who end up not being what you thought and in the mean time you have passed up the 50 annoyingly small customers who would have paid your rent, leaving you with nothing (sob).

The only way a startup can have any leverage in a deal is genuinely not to need it. And if you don't believe in a deal, you'll be less likely to depend on it.

So true. It works.