articles

In 2005, I cofounded Y Combinator, the first "accelerator." Today there are hundreds of them all over the world, but in 2005 what we were doing was so unusual that most people in Silicon Valley...

When hiring a team, we tend to favor the geniuses who hatch innovative ideas, but overlook the butterflies, the crucial ones who share and implement them. Here’s why it’s important to be both smart AND social. *** In business, it’s never enough to have a great idea. For any innovation to be successful, it has […]

In 1995, Craig Newmark started sending an email to a few friends. That missive led to one of the most important--and profitable--internet companies of all time. An exclusive, in-depth conversation with the founder of Craigslist.

The most common mistake people make when evaluating new technologies is to focus too much on how they improve existing use cases.

Building a culture of relentless execution

Background This speech was originally given by Charlie Munger at USC Business School in 1994. The full title of the talk is “”A Lesson on Elementary, Worldly Wisdom As It Relates To Investment Management & Business”. Speech Transcript I'm going to play a minor trick on you today because the subject of my talk is […]

In The Psychology of Human Misjudgment, Charlie Munger explains why we behave the way we do. This is a transcript of the fully updated talk.

What can you do to lift someone up?

In college I first heard Jason Fried from Basecamp talk about how making money is a skill—like playing the drums or piano—that you can get better at over time. That resonated with me immediately. I wouldn’t expect to be able to sit down at a piano for the first time an

Plus Minus Next is a simple journaling method. At the top of each column, write + for what worked, – for what didn’t, and → for what you plan to do next.

I don't remember when I first read The War of Art, but I know it changed my life. Of all of the books I have read since then, there are few I have returned to more often. Why? Because Steven Pressfield teaches you how to be an artist—a professional one. [...]

By: Stephen Hanselman [1] If You Want a Smooth Flow of Life, Live According to Nature At the core of Stoic teaching is the founder Zeno’s idea that a smooth flow of life (euroia biou) comes from “living in agreement with nature.” It was the second leader of the Stoics, Zeno’s student Cleanthes, who added the last part, “with nature” (te phusei; or […]

“You start when you’re young and you copy. You straight up copy.”

Daniel Ek on how he spends his time, learns and makes decisions.

Margin for your time, your emotional and physical health, your relationships, your sanity, and your integrity.

Don't control the spike. Control the duration of the long tail.

“There is a great deal that either has to be given up or be taken away from you if you are going to succeed in writing a body of work.”

YouTuber Ali Abdaal shares how he makes the productivity videos that have netted him 1M subscribers

This is a story about when big innovations happen. Not how, but when. And to some extent, why. Hopefully you find it counterintuitive at first before it quickly seems obvious. That’s how most important ideas work. And hopefully you’ll see why 2020, for all the hell its brought, could be the new beginnings of something promising. Cars and airplanes are two of the biggest innovations of modern times. But there’s an interesting thing about their early years. Few looked at early cars and said, “Oh, there’s a thing I can commute to work in.” Few saw a plane and said, “Ah-ha, I can use that to ge...

Dr. Jordan Peterson’s essay writing guide will help you build informed, coherent & sophisticated sets of ideas.

Some of Stephen Wolfram’s “productivity hacks” to make his days and projects more productive. Daily life, desk environment, outside the office, presentation setup, filesystem organization, Wolfram Notebook systems, databases, personal analytics.

Is the head of Y Combinator fixing the world, or trying to take over Silicon Valley?

Don’t reserve your best business thinking for your career.

Background This speech was delivered as the keynote address for the May 17, 2012 commencement ceremony at The University of the Arts. Speech Transcript I never really expected to find myself giving advice to people graduating from an establishment of higher education. I never graduated from any such establishment. I never even started at one. […]

Learn how to write a good first draft. This guide explains the process for generating writing ideas, exploring their potential, and practicing the writing process.

Learn how to practice writing and rewriting. Aim for quality of input over of quantity of output. And find authors whose work you enjoy, then reverse engineer what makes them great.