Board

Talking to users usually yields a long, complicated list of features to build. One piece of advice that YC partner Paul Buchheit (PB) always gives in this case is to look for the “90/10 solution”. That is, look for a way in which you can accomplish 90% of what you want with only 10% of the work/effort/time. If you search hard for it, there is almost always a 90/10 solution available. Most importantly, a 90% solution to a real customer problem which is available right away, is much better than a 100% solution that takes ages to build.

That said, this declaration is only unilteral — it is unclear if Google’s users (who have high expectations of privacy, speed, and quality) will give Google the permission to innovate as fast as an independent startup.

There is also another, more niche (Masad, Karpathy) view that transformers are a new type of computer. Put those two together and it is ground for a Cambrian explosion in new tech.

Capitalism understands scarcity. We’ll need a new model for infinity.

However you can smooth this path by presenting AI as an assisting factor rather than sole decision maker.

Two forms of the human-machine contract: “bicycle for the mind” is more humanizing and more antifragile/hallucination-tolerant

What makes this observation particularly ironic is that Acer is the epitomical company at the bottom of the curve. They put PCs together, but it was the critical component makers like Intel and Windows that captured most of the value on the left, and systems integrators and value-added resellers like IBM or Accenture that captured the rest of the value on the right. Acer and its merry band of 8 OEMs 1 competed themselves to single digit margins and ultimately stagnant growth; there simply isn’t any money in the undifferentiated middle.

Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were once interviewed on stage. The host pointed out that each man had built a defining company of their generations. Gates responded: “Steve and I will always get more credit than we deserve, because otherwise the story gets too complicated.”

One of the reasons people discount the possibility of big, crazy events is that we assume big events need big causes. A huge recession, in our minds, must be caused by a huge, rare, risk hitting us at once. But most big things – companies, events, careers, pandemics, etc – are just a bunch of small, random, boring things that compound at just the right time and explode into something bigger and more powerful than anyone imagined.

Life is also a form of self storytelling. We're continually retelling ourselves our life story, but very few people think of themselves as authors of their story, not mere subjects. People with extraordinary high-agency realize this early in life and start maximizing the interestingness of their life story.

Another thing that I've detected in myself that would make me fallback on the "I'm a perfectionist" excuse is decision fatigue. You can get tired from just making decisions if you had to do so many of them while working on something.

That people much smarter than me will look at it and laugh about how bad it is. That's almost never the case. I've written some really silly posts and code and it rarely gets ridiculed

likes to say: "under-promise, over-deliver".

In conclusion I think that perfectionism is mostly a thin veil hiding a multitude of insecurities, fears, and logical fallacies. And it's something we need to face in order to reach self-actualization.

To make a hyperreal object from a real one, take only the details that excite the mind — like getting praise — intensify them, and drop everything else. When you reduce food to its most intense elements — sweet & salt — you get hyperreal (junk) food. That is the formula for hyperreality.

Communism produces hyperreality too. It is hyperreality. It takes a naturally occurring thing — family and community — and intensifies its most attractive elements. It's an intoxicating hyperreal vision.

In prior eras, a b2b startup founder might've been a skilled trader. Whereas a successful culture-changing founder would've started a revolution or a religion.

Tell your story. Don't rely on the media machine to tell it for you because, ultimately, they're part of the gatekeeping class. Many are owned by the priesthood.

Enjoy yourself. And remember that quitting is never an option. When it's darkest and most intense, you're closest to victory.

If your IDE is a car, Repl.it is a motorcycle. If your IDE is a desktop computer, Repl.it is an iPad. If your IDE is a skyscraper, Repl.it is a cozy vacation house.

Repl.it is a tool for exploratory programming. It's for playing with ideas.