Daily wisdom from @paulgβs essays, interviews and lectures to help you think clearer, build better and make smarter decisions. threads.net/pgessays
Joined March 2024
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26 Mar 2024
One of the most valuable things my father taught me is an old Yorkshire saying: where there's muck, there's brass. Meaning that unpleasant work pays. β @paulg
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9 Dec 2024
We'll be back soon. Thank you all for your support ππ
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13 Nov 2024
"As Ben Franklin said, if you love life, don't waste time, because time is what life is made of." β @paulg
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13 Nov 2024
"You're all smart and working on promising ideas. Whether you end up among the living or the dead comes down to the third ingredient, not giving up." β @paulg
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12 Nov 2024
"Curiosity is unlike most other appetites in this respect: Indulging it tends to increase rather than to sate it. Questions lead to more questions." β @paulg
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12 Nov 2024
"Don't decide too soon. Kids who know early what they want to do seem impressive, as if they got the answer to some math question before the other kids. They have an answer, certainly, but odds are it's wrong." β @paulg
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11 Nov 2024
"Since startups make money by offering people something better than they had before, the best opportunities are where things suck most. And it would be hard to find a place where things suck more than in corporate IT departments." β @paulg
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8 Nov 2024
"In a world with superlinear returns, it's even more valuable to know what you're interested in, and to find ways to work on it." β @paulg
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7 Nov 2024
"The very best startup ideas tend to have three things in common: They're something the founders themselves want, that they themselves can build, and that few others realize are worth doing." β @paulg
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7 Nov 2024
"It's obvious why investors delay. Investing in startups is risky! When a company is only two months old, every day you wait gives you 1.7% more data about their trajectory." β @paulg
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6 Nov 2024
"What nerds like is other nerds. Smart people will go wherever other smart people are." β @paulg
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6 Nov 2024
"Attention is a zero sum game. If you can choose what to work on, and you choose a project that's not the best one (or at least a good one) for you, then it's getting in the way of another project that is." β @paulg
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5 Nov 2024
"The way not to have to raise money is not to spend money. Do everything as cheaply as you possibly can. What you want in a startup is this feeling of cheap and hip. Not miserly cheap, but cool, bohemian cheap. Thatβs what we strove for." β @paulg
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5 Nov 2024
"Running a startup is like walking on your hands: It's possible, but it requires extraordinary effort." β @paulg
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4 Nov 2024
"Any investor who co-invests with you is one less investor who could fund a competitor. Apparently Kleiner and Sequoia didn't like splitting the Google deal, but it did at least have the advantage that there probably wouldn't be a competitor funded by the other." β @paulg
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4 Nov 2024
"One of the biggest mistakes ambitious people make is to allow setbacks to destroy their morale all at once, like a balloon bursting. You can inoculate yourself against this by explicitly considering setbacks a part of your process." β @paulg
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1 Nov 2024
"The easy, conversational tone of good writing comes only on the eighth rewrite." β @paulg
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1 Nov 2024
"A lot of startups have that form: Someone comes along and makes something for a tenth or a hundredth of what it used to cost, and the existing players can't follow because they don't even want to think about a world in which that's possible." β @paulg
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31 Oct 2024
"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." β @paulg
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