Are there any bad habits that many Y Combinator founders share?
They don't realize how independent they can be. When you're a child, your parents tell you what you're supposed to do. Then, you're in school, and you're part of this institution that tells you what to do. Then, you go work for some company, and the company tells you what to do. So people come in like baby birds in the nest and open their mouths, as if they're expecting us to drop food in. We have to tell them, "We're not your bosses. You're in charge now." Some of them are freaked out by that. Some people are meant to be employees. Other people discover they have wings and start flapping them. There's nothing like being thrown off a cliff to make you discover that you have wings.
- Read the whole interview with Paul Graham here and Dustin Curtis on the importance of learning how to think:
The single largest difference I’ve noticed between successful founders and failed ones is hidden between the lines of Graham’s response: it’s knowing how to think. Most people don’t know how to strategize. Most people don’t know how to take what they see in the world and use it to invent something new. Most people don’t take everything they learn, and think “Why?”, “How?”, and “What does this mean for the future?”. But to be a successful executive, you have to ask those questions about everything you read and see, because, if you don’t, you’ll build the wrong thing.
Learning how to think like this is like discovering halfway through your life as a flightless bird that you have wings and can fly. And once you discover it, there is no going back. It’s addictive and powerful. It ruins your ability to be a worker bee, because you’ve tasted blood: you become a killer bee, intent on understanding why things are the way they are, finding their flaws, and pushing the universe forward by fixing them.
They don't realize how independent they can be. When you're a child, your parents tell you what you're supposed to do. Then, you're in school, and you're part of this institution that tells you what to do. Then, you go work for some company, and the company tells you what to do. So people come in like baby birds in the nest and open their mouths, as if they're expecting us to drop food in. We have to tell them, "We're not your bosses. You're in charge now." Some of them are freaked out by that. Some people are meant to be employees. Other people discover they have wings and start flapping them. There's nothing like being thrown off a cliff to make you discover that you have wings.
- Read the whole interview with Paul Graham here and Dustin Curtis on the importance of learning how to think:
The single largest difference I’ve noticed between successful founders and failed ones is hidden between the lines of Graham’s response: it’s knowing how to think. Most people don’t know how to strategize. Most people don’t know how to take what they see in the world and use it to invent something new. Most people don’t take everything they learn, and think “Why?”, “How?”, and “What does this mean for the future?”. But to be a successful executive, you have to ask those questions about everything you read and see, because, if you don’t, you’ll build the wrong thing.
Learning how to think like this is like discovering halfway through your life as a flightless bird that you have wings and can fly. And once you discover it, there is no going back. It’s addictive and powerful. It ruins your ability to be a worker bee, because you’ve tasted blood: you become a killer bee, intent on understanding why things are the way they are, finding their flaws, and pushing the universe forward by fixing them.
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