Article · ~8 min read

Startups in 13 Sentences

Paul Graham · paulgraham.com Free Beginner

The most-quoted primary source on why founders should launch fast and iterate, short, canonical, and from the co-founder of YC. Read it when you're tempted to keep polishing before launch.

  • Launch fast, you haven't really started until you launch.
  • Most ideas appear in the implementing, so ship to learn.
  • Make a few users love you rather than many ambivalent.
Open on paulgraham.com ↗

It answers 8 questions

  1. When is my product 'ready' to launch?
  2. How often should an early-stage startup ship?
  3. Should we ship an ugly, half-working version now or wait until it feels good enough to be proud of?
  4. How much of my week should I spend on sales versus building the product in the early days?
  5. How do I recruit and interview my competitor's customers without it getting weird or them shutting down?
  6. What are the warning signs a developer is building the wrong thing?
  7. How do I cold email my first ten customers when I have no logos, no traction, and no case studies?
  8. How many customer conversations should I do before I start building versus building a rough version to learn faster?

Read with it

  1. The single best thing ever written on customer conversations. It teaches you to ask about the customer's life and past... momtestbook.com Book · ~130 pages The Mom Test Rob Fitzpatrick
  2. The permission slip to recruit users by hand, do things manually, and deliver 'insanely great' experiences to your first few... paulgraham.com Essay · ~15 min read Do Things That Don't Scale Paul Graham
  3. The origin text for the modern MVP and validated-learning vocabulary every founder now uses. Read it for the mental model that... theleanstartup.com Book · ~330 pages The Lean Startup Eric Ries
  4. Turns the vague feeling of product-market fit into a number you can move. Ask users how they would feel if they could no longer... First Round Review Article · ~20 min read How Superhuman Built an Engine to Find Product/Market Fit Rahul Vohra
  5. A YC partner turns 'talk to users' into a repeatable 5-question interview script you can use this afternoon. It's The Mom Test... YC Startup Library Video · ~25 min How to Talk to Users Eric Migicovsky (YC / founder of Pebble)
  6. The essay that put 'product-market fit' into the startup vocabulary. Read it for the gut-level description of what PMF feels... pmarchive.com Essay · ~15 min read The Only Thing That Matters Marc Andreessen
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