Today I read the latest Paul Graham’s essay that’s lying in my Read Later list.
Before the startup is a good read even if you have no plans to start up.
Following are few paragraphs that couldn’t be more correct:
Larry Page may seem to have an enviable life, but there are aspects of it that are unenviable. Basically at 25 he started running as fast as he could and it must seem to him that he hasn’t stopped to catch his breath since. Every day new shit happens in the Google empire that only the CEO can deal with, and he, as CEO, has to deal with it. If he goes on vacation for even a week, a whole week’s backlog of shit accumulates. And he has to bear this uncomplainingly, partly because as the company’s daddy he can never show fear or weakness, and partly because billionaires get less than zero sympathy if they talk about having difficult lives. Which has the strange side effect that the difficulty of being a successful startup founder is concealed from almost everyone except those who’ve done it.
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Mark Zuckerberg will never get to bum around a foreign country. He can do other things most people can’t, like charter jets to fly him to foreign countries. But success has taken a lot of the serendipity out of his life. Facebook is running him as much as he’s running Facebook. And while it can be very cool to be in the grip of a project you consider your life’s work, there are advantages to serendipity too, especially early in life. Among other things it gives you more options to choose your life’s work from.
I try not to forget these lines:
The way to become Larry Page was to become an expert on search. And the way to become an expert on search was to be driven by genuine curiosity, not some ulterior motive.
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So here is the ultimate advice for young would-be startup founders, boiled down to two words: just learn.
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