/essays
YC Essays, Distilled.
Every YC partner essay you keep meaning to read. Summarized with the takeaways that actually matter, the quotes worth taping above your monitor, and a link to the source so you can dive deeper.
- 01.Do Things That Don't Scale
Paul Graham · 2013 · 8 min · paulgraham.com
The most common cause of startup failure is founders refusing to do unscalable manual work in the early days.
- 02.How to Get Startup Ideas
Paul Graham · 2012 · 12 min · paulgraham.com
Don't try to think of startup ideas. Notice them — by being at the leading edge of a fast-changing field.
- 03.Schlep Blindness
Paul Graham · 2012 · 5 min · paulgraham.com
Founders unconsciously avoid problems that involve schleps — and that's exactly where the best startups hide.
- 04.Default Alive or Default Dead?
Paul Graham · 2015 · 6 min · paulgraham.com
The most important question a founder can ask: at current burn and current growth, will we make it to profitability before money runs out?
- 05.Ramen Profitable
Paul Graham · 2009 · 4 min · paulgraham.com
Make enough revenue to pay the founders' living expenses. Suddenly, you have infinite runway.
- 06.Founder Mode
Paul Graham · 2024 · 7 min · paulgraham.com
Founders who try to run their company like a 'professional manager' destroy the very thing that made the company work.
- 07.Tar Pit Ideas (and How to Spot Them)
Michael Seibel + Dalton Caldwell · 2023 · 6 min · YC Startup School
Some ideas seem obviously good but trap founders for years with no real product-market fit.
- 08.How to Talk to Users (Without Lying to Yourself)
Eric Migicovsky / Rob Fitzpatrick · Lecture, ongoing · 9 min · YC Startup School + The Mom Test
User interviews fail because founders pitch instead of listen. The Mom Test fixes that.
- 09.Startup = Growth
Paul Graham · 2012 · 10 min · paulgraham.com
A startup is a company designed to grow fast. Anything not designed for growth isn't a startup, it's a small business.