Be relentlessly resourceful

Words of wisdom from Paul Graham, not just for startups but for making things and making things happen:

What would someone who was the opposite of hapless be like? They’d be relentlessly resourceful. Not merely relentless. That’s not enough to make things go your way except in a few mostly uninteresting domains. In any interesting domain, the difficulties will be novel. Which means you can’t simply plow through them, because you don’t know initially how hard they are; you don’t know whether you’re about to plow through a block of foam or granite. So you have to be resourceful. You have to have keep trying new things.

Be relentlessly resourceful.

15 Roles Every Startup Needs Filled

This post goes through 15 critical roles then suggests which ones can be added later. Lots of discussion in the comments too…

I’ve been thinking about how to prepare for Startup Weekend, which is approaching quickly. Part of the registration process was assigning yourself a “specialty”. Of the seven designations, I chose architect for myself, whatever that means. But the role-designation question might be useful, and I think it’s worth looking at all the hats to be worn and shared in a startup.

In my previous startup I tried to wear so many hats — too many — and we failed.

Looking for a reason to hide

“I’ve seen it before and I’m sure I’ll see it again.

Whenever a business cycle starts to falter, the media start wringing their hands. Then big businesses do, freelancers, entrepreneurs and soon everyone is keening.

People and organizations that have no real financial stress start to pull back, ‘because it’s prudent.’ Now is not the time, they say. They cut budgets and put off investments. It’s almost as if everyone is just waiting for an excuse to do less.

In fact, they are.”

The secret of the web (hint: it’s a virtue)

“Patience.

Google was a very good search engine for two years before you started using it.

The iPod was a dud.

I wrote Unleashing the Ideavirus 8 years ago. A few authors tried similar ideas but it didn’t work right away. So they gave up. Boingboing is one of the most popular blogs in the world because they never gave up.

The irony of the web is that the tactics work really quickly. You friend someone on Facebook and two minutes later, they friend you back. Bang.

But the strategy still takes forever. The strategy is the hard part, not the tactics.”

Startup Ideas We’d Like to Fund

“When we read Y Combinator applications there are always ideas we’re hoping to see. In the past we’ve never said publicly what they are. If we say we’re looking for x, we’ll get applications proposing x, certainly. But then it actually becomes harder to judge them: is this group proposing x because they were already thinking about it, or because they know that’s what we want to hear?

We don’t like to sit on these ideas, though, because we really want people to work on them. So we’re trying something new: we’re going to list some of the ideas we’ve been waiting to see, but only describe them in general terms. It may be that recipes for ideas are the most useful form anyway, because imaginative people will take them in directions we didn’t anticipate. “

Coding Horror: Paul Graham’s Participatory Narcissism

“I have tremendous respect for Paul Graham. His essays– repackaged in the book Hackers and Painters– are among the best writing I’ve found on software engineering. Not all of them are so great, of course, but the majority are well worth your time. That’s more than I can say for 99.9-infinitely-repeating-percent of the content on the web. He’s certainly a better and more authoritative writer than I.

But lately I’ve begun to wonder whether Mr. Graham, like Joel Spolsky before him, has devolved into self-absorption and irrelevance. Consider his latest essay, You Weren’t Meant to Have a Boss, which opens with this distasteful anecdote…”

Will it fly? How to Evaluate a New Product Idea

“I’ve been thinking about a number of new product ideas lately. In doing so, I’ve been trying to come up with a way more structured way of evaluating them. Here’s a first attempt at defining that. It’s not as clear as I’d like it to be. But perhaps you’ll find it useful.”

Why to Move to a Startup Hub

“I’m not claiming of course that every startup has to go to Silicon Valley to succeed. Just that all other things being equal, the more of a startup hub a place is, the better startups will do there. But other considerations can outweigh the advantages of moving. I’m not saying founders with families should uproot them to move halfway around the world; that might be too much of a distraction.”

Getting a startup right the second time

“The road to success is hard. We all know this, but still hope for the quick success of a Twitter instead of the starting and stopping of a flickr (started as a game). ImThere is a startup that started and stopped, and David Gorman documents their eventual success.”

Ask 37signals: Pressure to grow?

“Just about every journalist I’ve talked to recently asks about the growth at 37signals. ‘You’re still just 8 people, how do you plan on growing?’ ‘When will you begin to really grow the company?’ ‘Why have you decided not to grow the company?’

The answer is always the same: We are growing, but not physically. You can grow without ‘growing.’ In fact, I think it’s a healthier path.”