Paul Buchheit

It kind of reminds me of this article which I think was also shared on HN couple of weeks ago. https://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2010/02/if-your-product-is-great-it-…

Stripe likely has pick of the cream for open positions. It has been public knowledge for a while that they're a rocket ship, and that attracts top talent by definition (in addition to sharks and wolves [0] I'd presume). [0] https://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2007/06/great-story-from-steve-yegge…

> The "flow" that imaginative people love so much has a darker cousin that prevents you from pausing to savor life... I'm glad he pointed out this seemingly small detail. This took me a very long time to understand. EDIT: It reminds me of another great post by Paul Buccheit. It's so important to have the 'heroes' of startup culture explicitly spell out these values: > I worry that perhaps I'm communicating the wrong priorities. Investing money, creating new products, and all the other things we do are wonderful games and can be a lot of fun, but it's important to remember that it's all just a game. What's most important is that we are good too each other, and ourselves. If we "win", but have failed to do that, then we have lost. Winning is nothing. http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.fr/2012/03/eight-years-today.html

600+ music composers is a lot, but it's difficult to measure the quality if they have no buyers. A more simple question is: Who is your best composer? Somewhat related " If your product is Great, it doesn't need to be Good. " http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com.ar/2010/02/if-your-product-is-great-i…

Reminds me of Paul Buchheit's article: http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2010/02/if-your-product-is-great-it-d…

I don't think this is necessarily the PDF you were looking for, but the Paul Buchheit guide to Founder's Equity is a pretty great place to start: http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.co.uk/2007/03/equity-math-for-startups.ht…

Best post on luck, similar to this one, is by Paul Buchheit, "Serendipity finds you" - http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2010/10/serendipity-finds-you.html And the best book IMO is by Michael J. Mauboussin, "The Success Equation: Untangling Skill and Luck in Sports, Business, and Investing" - http://www.amazon.com/Success-Equation-Untangling-Business-Investing/d… Way better than Nassim Nicholas Taleb's work, he's got his head up his ass way too much and makes too many hyperbolic remarks.

Almost all of Paul Graham's essays. Especially How to Make Wealth - http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html How to Do What You Love - http://paulgraham.com/love.html Inequality and Risk - http://paulgraham.com/inequality.html and Paul Buchheit's My startup path - http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.in/2007/03/my-startup-path.html (I have actually printed a hard copy of this and have it my wallet. This is what finally convinced me to join a startup.)

>Well, I mean, given that most new product launches and most new business ventures fail, of course the naysayers will be right more often. That doesn't mean they actually have insight into why products fail. Here's a great article on that subject "How to be right 90% of the time, and why I'd rather be wrong": http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2007/03/how-to-be-right-90-of-time-an…

A counterpoint. Search for Stephen Conn's comment. http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2012/03/eight-years-today.html "We are surrounded by an ideology of exceptionalism that teaches us that we will find fulfillment through great personal achievement. But this is a terrible way to build identity. Not because it is crassly inhumane--though it is--but because it is false."

More features != better: http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2010/02/if-your-product-is-great-it-d… That being said, I'm content with my 4s, although I will probably buy my wife a Nokia 920 so I can get a taste of the other side.

I see this new notion of interviewing people before working on an idea is becoming quite popular. I know it's useful to know if people would find something useful, but I think there's the danger of never trying out really innovative ideas. Much like writing, building things is an exploratory process. Typically my own ideas evolve and improve only once I actually start building them. This is especially true for things that are useful to myself and not just other people. There is the risk that you will waste your time. But doing something new and useful often involves risks. And seemingly silly or bad ideas are often the best - http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2007/06/three-types-of-ideas.html

Wonder what Paul Buncheit has to say about Buzz :) http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2010/02/if-your-product-is-great-it-d… (via HN)

"Some objected to the way I asked the question...." Here Atwood links to a very insightful blog post by Paul Buchheit: http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2009/01/question-is-wrong.html To continue the quote: "...but it was a simple question asked in simple language." Yes, a simple question, with two perfectly valid interpretations, as described by Buchheit. When I first read the question, I interpreted it the "wrong" way. The simple language that is used to ask the question is too simple, to the point of not being specific. "I think what they're really objecting to is how unintuitive the answer is." No sir. I am in fact objecting to the wording.

Moreover, the extent to which you predict who the world-changers will be does not have to be great. http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2007/03/how-to-be-right-90-of-time-an… One reason that applicants should not take rejection personally is that YC would be wasting time trying to evaluate them with 100% accuracy.

Exactly. Spacer gifs may be lame, but I don't think that they have held back the site much, so no need to worry. I think it's a kind of religious thing, and having successful sites around that don't follow the rules threatens their religion. http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2007/06/dogmatic-programmer-when-soft…

Congrats to all winners. For anyone who won't be in this YC batch, here is an idea. I suggest joining my YC alum startup, Xobni, instead. Sometimes great hackers joinup instead of startup. That is what Paul Buchheit did : http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2007/03/looking-for-co-founder-try-at… send resumes: http://www.xobni.com/jobs.php

One way is to approach it as two deals in one: 1) getting VC money in exchange for equity 2) paying for PR There is a lot of advice on the first item on the Internet. The second item is somewhat covered in the following pg's essay: http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html pg seems to believe offline coverage is somewhat obsolete for online startups. This may or may not apply to you. Another way to think about it is to consider how important is the pr service for your expected outcome. See http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2007/03/equity-math-for-startups.html

It's often said that you should "Do what you love", but that's mostly bad advice. It encourages people to grind away their lives in pursuit of some mostly unattainable goal, such as being a movie star or a billionaire startup founder. And even if they do make it, often the reality is nothing like they imagined it would be, so they're still unhappy. Do what you love is in the future. Love what you do is right now. As with the other patterns, it's meant to guide the small decisions that we make every moment of every day. It's less about changing what you do, and more about changing how you do it. "Do what you love" treats "what you love" as a fixed thing, but it's not. I used to hate running. I would sometimes force myself to run a few miles because it's supposed to be healthy, but I never liked it. Then I read a book that said we are born to run, and that it can be fun. Inspired, I decided to try running just for fun, focus on the quality of every step, and forget about the goal completion aspect of it. Very quickly, I learned to enjoy running, and over time I've transformed my entire relationship with fitness and exercise to be oriented more toward enjoyment. Naturally, this more intrinsic approach ultimately improves the quality of our efforts, which generally leads to greater extrinsic rewards as well. Intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation are best when they are both pointed in the same direction. ... Real work always seems to involve a certain amount of…

I met Nikki while I lived at a Hacker House in Mountain View for a few weeks in January 2012, having recently moved to the Bay Area. I remember being impressed at the time by her intensity, and by the fact that she actually had a real product with real users that solved a real problem. An audible "oh no" came out of my lips when I clicked this link and realized I was reading about someone I had shared a few dinners with. It's important for little pieces of history such as this one to be recorded. For the founders, to whom it gives a sense of closure, and for the community. So that we don't forget our comrades who didn't make it to the other side, but still have insightful lessons to share. The press likes to glorify the AirBnBs, the Googles, the Facebooks - but as founders, I think it's important for us to be realize that this is only a tiny visible part of the iceberg, and that at the end of the day, there are so many factors at play that it would be foolish for us to focus solely on the "how many millions did they make". Human stories are never boring, and experience is one of the most precious thing others can share. Thanks for taking the time and effort to write this, Nikki. We're with you. --- "Investing money, creating new products, and all the other things we do are wonderful games and can be a lot of fun, but it's important to remember that it's all just a game. What's most important is that we are good too each other, and…

> Opening a file and reading from it takes tens of lines in Java, Some of the bad Java is because of missing abstractions, most of it is because of badly designed api. http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.in/2007/05/amazingly-bad-apis.html For your particular example, the api has been better since Java 5. import java.util.Scanner; import java.io.*; public class ScannerTest { public static void main(String[] args) throws FileNotFoundException { Scanner in = new Scanner(new File("some_file")); while (in.hasNextLine()) { System.out.println(in.nextLine()); } } } > You don't learn Java these days, you just learn eclipse. Much of the magic is happening in auto complete. I code in vim with eclim. There is nothing to be gained by manually writing the code for getter setter, or find-replace an identifier, or write placeholders for n methods of an interface... > I am not sure who picks up a book to learn java these days. It was some time ago(about 8 years ago), but I learned Java from a book(multiple books; I liked Core Java best http://www.amazon.com/Core-Java-Volume-I-Fundamentals-Edition/dp/01323… Also, what good would eclipse do to someone who doesn't know what to write? Consider my example above. Unless you know how to read a file, how can eclipse generate the code for you? Or consider generics. How will eclipse help you understand what does <T extends Comparable<? super T>> mean?…

Paul Buchheit wrote a good essay on identity called "I am nothing" which is closely related to "don't become anything": http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.ca/2011/08/i-am-nothing.html I think that's the best part of this article. The criticism of Jeff Atwood's post is off the mark. Atwood wasn't being elitist, he was pointing out flaws in the theory that everybody ought to "learn to code" at a superficial level by putting in a few hours learning Javascript. For many people, more abstract problem solving skills would be more useful and the technical details will change or be forgotten. The criticism of K&R C and so on also rubbed me the wrong way. That is a great, concise book that is still relevant in a lot of ways. If you're really good with high-level languages like Javascript or Ruby you might be able to do some good work but, all else being equal, you're more limited than somebody who also understands a wider array of programming concepts and more fundamental aspects of how computers work.

This is a great question. I'll share a couple thoughts and experiences. 1. A great post was written by Paul Buchheit that called things like fear of public speaking, which may be an inflamed variation of fear of conversation, 'ego-fear'. While this may not be technically correct, it could be a useful psychological framework. See post here: http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2010/10/serendipity-finds-you.html. 2. When I was young I was very nervous around girls, and hated public speaking. Along the way I became pretty good with girls and captain on my debate team. The key ingredients were a willingness to keep trying to improve and being willing to shrug off failure. The first times I approached women I was an absolute fool but I eventually improved by gaining a sense of what's socially viable. With regards to public speaking, I was very nervous when I started out. But, once I had looked like a quite a few times, I got pretty good and ended up being the leader of several organizations in high school and college. 3. A friend of mine who is quite brilliant but very introverted suggested the book "The Game," which basically describes how to hack romance. I wouldn't suggest applying this book to your love life, but some of its insights might be worth checking out. When you understand that your interactions with other people of the same sex are often as complex as those of the opposite, it becomes a fundamentally different (and often more tractable) problem. My friend…

This deserves another mention: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=469940 Is K. right? Maybe. That depends on what context he's thinking about - the kind of startups he's done, probably. I suspect that he's likely making an attempt (a regretful one, I must add) to generalize whatever it is he's learnt, and apply that to every single bloody startup there is out there. Because almost everything he's saying is utter rubbish, applied to web startups. The context isn't right. Google won because of cleaner design? Right. Sure. The iPod was a lousier product? Right. Sure. Microsoft and Windows as an example of how to do things? I'm not sure if that's the right advice he should be giving to a young student-entrepreneur. 'Be like Microsoft' doesn't make much sense when you consider the fact that Microsoft wasn't much like Microsoft when they first started out. Paul Buchheit has an opposing view point (http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2010/02/if-your-product-is-great-it-d… that you should consider - one of the many people who say things that run contrary to K.'s advice, I must add. (See also pg's How to Start a Startup http://www.paulgraham.com/start.html) I suppose it all boils down to: a) what kind of business do you want to build? Because that determines b) who you listen to. If you want to get into K.'s space, that's fine. He's probably right. But if you want to build a Google, or an Apple - heck, even a Microsoft ... well you should consider looking elsewhere.

The article handles the case of people who derive a meaning from outside of their work and the people who are looking for financial success and power/status within a corporation. As I've mentioned in a previous comment, the article doesn't take into account the fact that there are people who a) look for a meaning that isn't centered around money or power b) derive it from their work If you're an engineer working for a start-up (taking a below market wage, working long hours, so on) only because you are hoping for a large pay day, then you are a fool. If you're working for a start-up because you enjoy programming or because you're looking to learn what it takes to run your own start-up then you can get a lot of a start-up so the equation doesn't apply. On the topics of start-ups and money, Paul Buchheit said best: http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2007/12/is-there-more-to-life-than-mo…

This may sound too basic, but for most people, going through these links[1][2] is more than enough to know what to do. Once you have understood them, learn the tools of the trade. Come up with clever ideas. "There are always shortcuts and loopholes"[3]. Good tools and execution of effective ideas make all the difference. [1] https://developers.google.com/search/docs/beginner/get-started [2] https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/guidelines/get-star… [3] http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2009/10/applied-philosophy-aka-hackin…

Imagine 9 passengers sitting like this: *** *** *** Now lets remove 4 of them: * * * * * I would say every one has at least a 50% reduction in the number of people close to them. On top of that, minimum distance and average distance both went up. I wouldn't be surprised if the infection rate in the second example is only 10% of the first. Pair that with everyone wearing a mask. I have read that the infection rate goes down by 95% between two people wearing a mask in comparison to two peole wearing no mask. Pair that with a 10-minute test [1] which everyone has to take at the airport and let only negatively tested passangers on board. I think instead of trying to wait it out and print money, we should start to engineer ourselfes out of this crisis. [1] https://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2020/04/a-third-solution.html

8 Years Today - Paul Buchheit It's a very personal post about death & loss & mourning. It helped me navigate through a tough time. http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2012/03/eight-years-today.html

From the man himself - http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2009/01/communicating-with-code.html