<story><title>Follow boring advice</title><url>http://nywkap.com/other/follow-boring-advice.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tomhoward</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve seen PG [1] say&amp;#x2F;write versions of this: &amp;quot;The Y Combinator founders who followed our advice succeeded. The ones who didn&amp;#x27;t, didn&amp;#x27;t.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;The advice is so simple, it&amp;#x27;s hard for a lot of outsiders to believe it&amp;#x27;s worth anything. &amp;quot;Make something people want.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Talk to your users.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Do things that don&amp;#x27;t scale.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Keep typing and avoid dying.&amp;quot; People hear about this and ask &amp;quot;You gave away 7% of your company for that?&amp;quot; No, you give away 7% of your company to join a network of people showing you what it really looks like to do that.&lt;p&gt;My company got into the Winter 2009 batch of YC, the same batch as Airbnb. They weren&amp;#x27;t around for many of the dinners; they spent a lot of their time away from the Bay Area doing exactly those things that PG advised, mostly in NYC, where many of their most active users were. They just did that stuff, over and over, for several years. Now they have one of the most successful companies out of Silicon Valley in the last 15 years. (I saw PG tweet a couple of years ago that he&amp;#x27;d recently dinner with them, and Brian would still write down PG&amp;#x27;s suggestions in a notebook.)&lt;p&gt;During that batch, I was flailing about trying to find some magical trick to make our company work. I remember one office-hours session with PG, excitedly telling him some buzzword-filled story I&amp;#x27;d dreamed up about how our company could be a brilliant success. &amp;quot;Just make a good website&amp;quot; he replied.&lt;p&gt;It took me a while to work out how the Airbnb guys were able to follow the advice so effectively whilst we and so many others got stuck in the weeds, but looking back now it&amp;#x27;s pretty obvious. They were just very comfortable in their own skin. They didn&amp;#x27;t have ego issues around needing to seem like geniuses, needing validation all the time, fearing rejection or embarrassment. &amp;quot;Talk to your users&amp;quot; was easy, as they were sociable, likeable people who put on cool parties and who were naturally able to make everyone in their company feel welcome and valued, and everything else emerged out of that.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Paul_Graham_(programmer)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Paul_Graham_(programmer)&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Angostura</author><text>Could someone expand on &amp;quot;Do things that don&amp;#x27;t scale.&amp;quot; - that seems somewhat counterintuitive.</text></comment>
<story><title>Follow boring advice</title><url>http://nywkap.com/other/follow-boring-advice.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tomhoward</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve seen PG [1] say&amp;#x2F;write versions of this: &amp;quot;The Y Combinator founders who followed our advice succeeded. The ones who didn&amp;#x27;t, didn&amp;#x27;t.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;The advice is so simple, it&amp;#x27;s hard for a lot of outsiders to believe it&amp;#x27;s worth anything. &amp;quot;Make something people want.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Talk to your users.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Do things that don&amp;#x27;t scale.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Keep typing and avoid dying.&amp;quot; People hear about this and ask &amp;quot;You gave away 7% of your company for that?&amp;quot; No, you give away 7% of your company to join a network of people showing you what it really looks like to do that.&lt;p&gt;My company got into the Winter 2009 batch of YC, the same batch as Airbnb. They weren&amp;#x27;t around for many of the dinners; they spent a lot of their time away from the Bay Area doing exactly those things that PG advised, mostly in NYC, where many of their most active users were. They just did that stuff, over and over, for several years. Now they have one of the most successful companies out of Silicon Valley in the last 15 years. (I saw PG tweet a couple of years ago that he&amp;#x27;d recently dinner with them, and Brian would still write down PG&amp;#x27;s suggestions in a notebook.)&lt;p&gt;During that batch, I was flailing about trying to find some magical trick to make our company work. I remember one office-hours session with PG, excitedly telling him some buzzword-filled story I&amp;#x27;d dreamed up about how our company could be a brilliant success. &amp;quot;Just make a good website&amp;quot; he replied.&lt;p&gt;It took me a while to work out how the Airbnb guys were able to follow the advice so effectively whilst we and so many others got stuck in the weeds, but looking back now it&amp;#x27;s pretty obvious. They were just very comfortable in their own skin. They didn&amp;#x27;t have ego issues around needing to seem like geniuses, needing validation all the time, fearing rejection or embarrassment. &amp;quot;Talk to your users&amp;quot; was easy, as they were sociable, likeable people who put on cool parties and who were naturally able to make everyone in their company feel welcome and valued, and everything else emerged out of that.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Paul_Graham_(programmer)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Paul_Graham_(programmer)&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>baxtr</author><text>Thanks for being so upfront and transparent. Very inspiring comment.</text></comment>