14 Curated Essays From Y Combinator's Paul Graham

Paul Graham cofounded Y Combinator and has written over 200 essays (mostly) about startups.

He's a legend in Silicon Valley (so much so that Elon Musk called him to personally apologize after he was "mistakenly" banned from Twitter recently).

As I gear up for a fresh year of building in 2023 (big things planned for my newsletter 👀), I reread a bunch of my favorite essays of his.

I'm sharing them below and also including my thoughts on each one 👇

Read time: 5 minutes

🤝 Meet More Founders

Being a founder is incredibly hard and it can be super lonely.

When I was just getting started on my founder journey, the number one thing I sought out was community. I've found that there's nothing quite as beneficial to learning how to be a founder than being around other founders who are at a similar stage, or maybe just one step ahead.

I ended up founding a coliving house that became Launch House — a curated, year-round membership community for founders that's backed by a16z. Apply to join here.

⚡️ 14 Essays From Y Combinator's Paul Graham

Do Things That Don't Scale | Full Essay

Startups don't get started on their own, and many founders make the mistake of investing in a scalable growth channel before even knowing if they're making something people actually want.

Airbnb's founders went door to door to recruit and learn from prospective hosts. By having these candid conversations, they better understood the type of people who would be interested in hosting strangers at their home, vs those who wouldn't — and what they wanted out of a platform like Airbnb.

The best way to reach scale is to first do things that don't scale.

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