(2005-12-22) Graham Creating Wealth

Paul Graham on Creating Wealth for yourself by forming a Start Up. Someone graduating from college thinks, and is told, that he needs to get a job, as if the important thing were becoming a member of an institution. A more direct way to put it would be: you need to start doing something people want. You don't need to join a company to do that. All a company is is a group of people working together to do something people want... To get rich you need to get yourself in a situation with two things, measurement and leverage. You need to be in a position where your performance can be measured (Metrics), or there is no way to get paid more by doing more. And you have to have Leverage, in the sense that the decisions you make have a big effect... A Start Up is not merely ten people, but ten people like you. (he means people who are smart and work hard, not people who are "like you")... Venture capitalists have a list of danger signs to watch out for. Near the top is the company run by techno-weenies who are obsessed with solving interesting technical problems, instead of making users happy. In a startup, you're not just trying to solve problems. You're trying to solve problems that users care about.