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Collection · 01
Finding ideas / life's work
Six essays on how to pick what to work on — from organic startup ideas to choosing a life's work.
Open
Collection · 02
Cold start
Six pieces on going from zero to one — what to build first, what matters, what doesn't.
Open
Collection · 03
Founder mode
Eight essays on the CEO's job — running people, holding the company together, and managing yourself.
Open
Collection · 04
Time management / productivity
Five pieces on focus, prioritization, and getting the right things done.
Open
Database
Letter2014 Letter to Shareholders
Jeff Bezos
Apr 2015 · 22 min read
The four traits of a dreamy business, and how Marketplace, Prime, and AWS each earned the label.
Letter2011 Letter to Shareholders
Jeff Bezos
Apr 2012 · 16 min read
Why self-service platforms beat gatekeepers: AWS, FBA, and KDP let improbable ideas get tried.
Letter2003 Letter to Shareholders
Jeff Bezos
Apr 2004 · 11 min read
Why long-term thinking is the mark of true ownership — owners are different from tenants.
Letter2002 Letter to Shareholders
Jeff Bezos
Apr 2003 · 12 min read
How Amazon turned customer experience into a fixed cost to deliver both great service and low prices.
Letter1997 Letter to Shareholders
Jeff Bezos
Mar 1998 · 7 min read
Jeff Bezos' original letter to shareholders is reprinted from Amazon's 1997 Annual Report.
Essay7 Rejections
Brian Chesky
Jul 2015 · 1 min read
On June 26, 2008, our friend Michael Seibel introduced us to 7 prominent investors in Silicon Valley.
EssayDon't Fuck Up the Culture
Brian Chesky
Apr 2014 · 3 min read
Why culture matters more than anything else — the letter Chesky sent the entire Airbnb team in 2013.
EssayMaking Money Isn't About Luck
Naval Ravikant
Mar 2019 · 5 min read
The four kinds of luck, and how to build a character that makes wealth find you.
EssayLabor and Capital Are Old Leverage
Naval Ravikant
Apr 2019 · 4 min read
Labor and capital are old leverage: both must be granted by others and are hard to scale.
EssaySeek Wealth, Not Money or Status
Naval Ravikant
Feb 2019 · 6 min read
The difference between wealth, money, and status — and why only wealth buys freedom.
EssayGuide to Career Planning, Part 2: Skills and education
Marc Andreessen
Oct 2007 · 17 min read
Which skills actually compound in a career — and what formal education is and isn't good for.
EssayGuide to Career Planning, Part 1: Opportunity
Marc Andreessen
Sep 2007 · 11 min read
Why planning a career is pointless — and why seizing opportunities beats following a plan.
EssayGuide to Career Planning, Part 3: Where to go and why
Marc Andreessen
Oct 2007 · 9 min read
How to pick the industry, company, and role where your opportunities will compound.
EssayGuide to Big Companies: Retaining great people
Marc Andreessen
Jul 2007 · 12 min read
How big companies lose their best people, and what it takes to keep them.
VideoSteve Jobs on Focus
Various Founders
Sep 1997 · 3 min
Steve Jobs's philosophy on the power of saying no and eliminating distractions to achieve excellence.
EssayCEOs Should Tell It Like It Is
Ben Horowitz
Jul 2010 · 11 min read
CEOs who hide bad news destroy trust and prevent their best people from solving hard problems.
EssayMaking Yourself a CEO
Ben Horowitz
Oct 2012 · 12 min read
Being a CEO requires mastering unnatural skills, especially the foundational practice of giving honest, authentic feedback.
EssayManaging Your Own Psychology
Ben Horowitz
Mar 2011 · 16 min read
Managing your own psychology is the hardest CEO skill, harder than organizational design or hiring, because everything wrong is your fault.
EssayHow Things Get Done
Sam Altman
3 min read
Things get done through focus on two or three priorities and strong personal relationships.
EssayEmployee Retention
Sam Altman
5 min read
Why keeping early employees matters more than hiring them, and three strategies that actually work.
EssayHow to Hire
Sam Altman
12 min read
Hiring is the most important thing a founder does; spend a third to half your time doing it well.
EssayStartup Advice, Briefly
Sam Altman
4 min read
Start with a project, not a company, so you can find something great to work on without premature commitment.
EssayAdvice for Ambitious 19 Year Olds
Sam Altman
4 min read
Build something real while staying around smart people, regardless of whether you choose college, a company, or a startup.
EssayBillionaires Build
Paul Graham
Dec 2020 · 15 min read
Becoming a billionaire requires building something people genuinely want, not exploiting them.
EssayThe Hardest Lessons for Startups to Learn
Paul Graham
Apr 2006 · 21 min read
The counterintuitive lessons startups repeatedly fail to learn: release early, keep improving, make users happy, and fear the right threats.
EssayStartups in 13 Sentences
Paul Graham
Feb 2009 · 6 min read
Thirteen principles for building a startup, from picking cofounders to understanding your users above all else.
EssayWhen to Do What You Love
Paul Graham
Sep 2024 · 7 min read
When to pursue work you love versus work that pays well depends on your ambitions and the actual odds of success in your chosen field.
EssayOrganic Startup Ideas
Paul Graham
Apr 2010 · 4 min read
The best startup ideas come from problems you encounter in your own life, not from trying to guess what others want.
VideoJony Ive recounts the time Steve Jobs called him vain
Jony Ive
Mar 2026 · 1 min read
In the clip below, Jony Ive recounts the time he asked Steve Jobs to be less harsh in his critique of a piece of work.
VideoEric Schmidt on why most companies get strategy wrong
Eric Schmidt
Mar 2026 · 1 min read
Why strategy should start from what the world will look like in five years, not from your products.
VideoMark Zuckerberg: “You can’t 80/20 everything”
Mark Zuckerberg
Mar 2026 · 1 min read
Why some problems demand 100% of the work — you can't 80/20 everything.
VideoKeith Rabois on how to identify great talent
Keith Rabois
Mar 2026 · 1 min read
How to spot great talent: expand each person's responsibilities until they break.
VideoTobi Lutke explains what the VCs who passed on Shopify got wrong
Tobi Lütke
Mar 2026 · 1 min read
“What a lot of free-market thinkers don’t understand is that between the demand and eventual supply lies friction."
VideoPaul Graham on why starting with a “small, intense fire" is the key to startup growth
Paul Graham
Mar 2026 · 1 min read
"You have to know who those first users are and how you're going to get them."
VideoSam Altman explains how he decides to invest in a startup after 10 minutes
Sam Altman
Mar 2026 · 1 min read
What a 10-minute YC interview reveals about a founder's potential.
VideoMarc Andreessen on the 5 personality traits of an innovator
Marc Andreessen
Mar 2026 · 1 min read
The five personality traits that separate true innovators from everyone else.
VideoSteve Jobs explains the importance of both thinking and doing
Steve Jobs
Mar 2026 · 1 min read
Why the people who change industries are thinkers and doers in one person.
VideoJeff Bezos’s two pieces of advice for aspiring entrepreneurs
Jeff Bezos
Mar 2026 · 1 min read
Why entrepreneurs shouldn't chase the hot thing — position for the wave, then wait.
EssayWhat's The Most Difficult CEO Skill?
Ben Horowitz
9 min read
No essay prose was present in the provided resource.
EssayHiring Executives
Ben Horowitz
9 min read
The hard decisions and strategies for hiring and promoting executives as your company scales.
EssayWhy Startups Should Train Their People
Ben Horowitz
9 min read
Training employees builds competitive advantage and reduces turnover in high-growth startups.
EssayWhy We Prefer Founding CEOs
Ben Horowitz
9 min read
Founding CEOs outperform professional CEOs because they're more committed to the company's mission and better able to navigate uncertainty.
EssayThe Case for the Fat Startup
Ben Horowitz
9 min read
Lean startups can thrive by spending more strategically instead of cutting costs everywhere.
EssayHow to Minimize Politics in Your Company
Ben Horowitz
9 min read
Strategies for reducing destructive internal power dynamics and factionalism in growing companies.
EssayLead Bullets
Ben Horowitz
9 min read
Leaders should deliver hard truths to their teams even when doing so risks unpopularity.
EssayA Good Place to Work
Ben Horowitz
9 min read
Ben Horowitz is a cofounder and general partner at Andreessen Horowitz.
EssayThe Struggle
Ben Horowitz
9 min read
No essay body was included in the scrape.
EssayPeacetime CEO / Wartime CEO
Ben Horowitz
9 min read
No essay prose was included — only navigation, bio, and a list of other content titles.
Letter2020 Letter to Shareholders — Farewell
Jeff Bezos
Apr 2021 · 25 min read
Bezos's parting message in his final shareholder letter as CEO, framed via a Richard Dawkins passage on biological homeostasis.
Letter2018 Letter to Shareholders
Jeff Bezos
Apr 2019 · 18 min read
Bezos arguing that risk-taking, not just revenue, must scale with company size.
Letter2016 Letter to Shareholders — Day 1
Jeff Bezos
Apr 2017 · 8 min read
Four practices to prevent organizational stagnation: customer obsession, rejecting proxies, embracing trends, and fast decision-making.
EssayNotes on Stripe's response to SVB
Patrick Collison
1 min read
Only a list of nav links (About, Advice, Blog, Bookshelf, etc.) was provided; no essay prose was included.
EssayAbout
Patrick Collison
1 min read
Patrick Collison's interests and involvement in economic growth, entrepreneurship, climate, housing, and progress studies.
EssayFast
Patrick Collison
7 min read
Collison's single sharpest juxtaposition of what humans used to be able to build versus what we now accept.
EssayQuestions
Patrick Collison
16 min read
A collection of open-ended questions about economics, progress, institutions, and society from a founder's perspective.
EssayAdvice
Patrick Collison
3 min read
Go deep on multiple things, make internet friends, read widely, and resist pressure to follow standard paths.
EssayHappiness Is a Skill
Naval Ravikant
Mar 2021 · 23 min read
Happiness is a skill you can develop by understanding desire and recognizing what's within your control.
EssayDesire Is a Contract You Make With Yourself
Naval Ravikant
Feb 2020 · 1 min read
Desire is a contract to remain unhappy until you get what you want, and satisfaction reverts you to your baseline anyway.
EssayJudgment
Naval Ravikant
Apr 2019 · 6 min read
Why judgment becomes your most important asset once you have leverage.
EssayHow to Find Specific Knowledge
Naval Ravikant
Mar 2019 · 6 min read
Specific knowledge comes from pursuing your genuine curiosity and innate talents, not from school or following others.
EssayHow to Get Rich (Without Getting Lucky)
Naval Ravikant
Dec 2019 · 193 min read
Wealth is assets that earn while you sleep; money is how you transfer it; status is a zero-sum game you should avoid.
EssayUpside Risk
Sam Altman
2 min read
Power law returns mean angel investors should focus on upside risk—missing great deals—not downside protection.
EssaySuper-Successful Companies
Sam Altman
5 min read
The defining traits of founders whose startups become extremely successful.
EssayValue Is Created By Doing
Sam Altman
3 min read
Most work that feels busy—meetings, networking, talking—doesn't create value; only execution does.
EssayThe Days Are Long But The Decades Are Short
Sam Altman
6 min read
Altman's closing line and title — the frame for the entire list of life lessons written on his 30th birthday.
EssayWhat I Wish Someone Had Told Me
Sam Altman
1 min read
How to start and scale ambitious things: recruiting, focus, speed, conviction, and fighting bureaucracy.
EssayHow To Invest In Startups
Sam Altman
9 min read
How to succeed as a startup investor by accessing deals, picking great founders, and getting them to choose you.
EssayHard Startups
Sam Altman
2 min read
Altman's core thesis: ambition is a recruiting and gravitational advantage, not a liability.
EssayResearchers and Founders
Sam Altman
1 min read
The common traits that distinguish the best researchers and founders, from problem taste to persistence to an action bias.
EssayIdea Generation
Sam Altman
3 min read
How to get good at generating startup ideas through environment, tectonic shifts, and founder-company fit.
EssayProductivity
Sam Altman
10 min read
Choosing what to work on matters more than how fast you work, and small gains compound into massive results over time.
EssayHow To Be Successful
Sam Altman
15 min read
Altman's personal filter for what's worth working on next.
EssayStartup Playbook
Sam Altman
34 min read
A founder's guide to the core elements of starting a successful startup: idea, team, product, and execution.
EssayLuck and the Entrepreneur
Marc Andreessen
Aug 2007 · 8 min read
Four distinct kinds of luck shape entrepreneurial success, each requiring different personality traits and behaviors to activate.
EssayAge and the Entrepreneur
Marc Andreessen
Aug 2007 · 11 min read
Andreessen's gloss on Simonton's finding that the 'quality ratio' of hits to misses stays roughly constant throughout a creative career.
EssayHow to Hire the Best People You've Ever Worked With
Marc Andreessen
Jun 2007 · 12 min read
Drive, curiosity, and ethics matter more than raw intelligence when hiring the best people for a startup.
EssayGuide to Startups, Part 9: How to hire a professional CEO
Marc Andreessen
Aug 2007 · 1 min read
Don't hire a professional CEO if no one on your founding team can do it—sell instead.
EssayGuide to Startups, Part 8: Hiring, managing, promoting, and firing executives
Marc Andreessen
Aug 2007 · 16 min read
How to hire, manage, promote, and fire executives at a startup, with specific guidelines for each stage.
EssayGuide to Startups, Part 7: Why a startup's initial business plan matters
Marc Andreessen
Jul 2007 · 6 min read
Andreessen's punchline: the inventor of the phonograph initially filed it under 'speaking telegraph' and missed its true market for months.
EssayGuide to Startups, Part 6: How much funding is too little? Too much?
Marc Andreessen
Jul 2007 · 9 min read
How much funding a startup should raise: enough to reach product/market fit or full exploitation, with a buffer for setbacks.
EssayGuide to Startups, Part 5: The Moby Dick theory of big companies
Marc Andreessen
Jun 2007 · 10 min read
How to navigate unpredictable dealings with large companies as a startup founder.
EssayGuide to Startups, Part 4: The only thing that matters
Marc Andreessen
Jun 2007 · 10 min read
Rachleff's Corollary of Startup Success, as formulated by Andreessen.
EssaySuperlinear Returns
Paul Graham
Oct 2023 · 19 min read
In most fields, small differences in performance create outsized differences in results because of exponential growth and thresholds.
EssayBefore the Startup
Paul Graham
Oct 2014 · 20 min read
Why your instincts about startups will mislead you, and what to trust instead.
EssayThe Top Idea in Your Mind
Paul Graham
Sep 2022 · 10 min read
Most startup problems repeat across companies, so the key to advising founders is helping them focus on what actually matters most.
EssayHow You Know
Paul Graham
May 2003 · 25 min read
Why startups beat incumbents in design wars: design-by-committee deliberately trades away upside to avoid downside.
EssayWhy It's Safe for Founders to Be Nice
Paul Graham
Apr 2004 · 9 min read
Hackers' disobedience and rule-breaking are essential to their brilliance, not flaws to suppress.
EssayLife Is Short
Paul Graham
Apr 2001 · 1 min read
Time is finite, so choose work and people that matter most to you.
EssayHow to Do What You Love
Paul Graham
Jan 2006 · 21 min read
Most people are taught that work must be unpleasant, but the most successful ones have learned to do what they genuinely love.
EssayBlack Swan Farming
Paul Graham
Sep 2012 · 9 min read
Startup investing concentrates returns in a few massive winners, which look like bad ideas until they succeed.
EssayMean People Fail
Paul Graham
Nov 2014 · 5 min read
Meanness correlates with startup failure because it costs you talent and prevents the transcendent thinking startups require.
EssayThe Anatomy of Determination
Paul Graham
Jan 2017 · 1 min read
Smart people take risks that look crazy only in hindsight; Newton's work in alchemy and theology were reasonable bets in his time.
EssayHow to Disagree
Paul Graham
Mar 2008 · 7 min read
Graham's closing observation that climbing the disagreement hierarchy doesn't just make arguments better, it makes the arguers less cruel.
EssayHow to Make Wealth
Paul Graham
May 2004 · 39 min read
Starting a startup is the most reliable way to compress your earning potential by working intensely for a few years instead of a lifetime.
EssayRelentlessly Resourceful
Paul Graham
Mar 2009 · 4 min read
The defining quality of a successful startup founder is relentless resourcefulness.
EssaySchlep Blindness
Paul Graham
Jan 2012 · 4 min read
Great startup ideas fail because our unconscious mind avoids problems requiring tedious, difficult work.
EssayCities and Ambition
Paul Graham
May 2008 · 16 min read
Graham's argument for why where you live matters far more than the 'couple percent' you'd expect.
EssayHow to Start a Startup
Paul Graham
Mar 2005 · 43 min read
Three things determine whether a startup succeeds: good people, a product customers want, and spending little money.
EssayFounder Mode
Paul Graham
Sep 2024 · 5 min read
Founder mode—how founders run companies—works better than manager mode, the standard advice they're given.
EssayMaker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule
Paul Graham
Jul 2009 · 5 min read
Two incompatible ways to use time: the maker's schedule and the manager's schedule.
EssayHow to Get Startup Ideas
Paul Graham
Nov 2012 · 32 min read
The best startup ideas come from problems you have yourself, not from trying to think of startup ideas.
EssayDo Things That Don't Scale
Paul Graham
Jul 2013 · 19 min read
Why successful startups succeed by doing manually unscalable things first, like recruiting users one at a time.
EssayGuide to Startups, Part 3: 'But I don't know any VCs!'
Marc Andreessen
Jun 2007 · 10 min read
Andreessen's prescription for outsiders trying to break into the VC network.
EssayGuide to Startups, Part 2: When the VCs say no
Marc Andreessen
Jun 2007 · 11 min read
How to reduce layers of risk in your startup plan after VCs say no.
EssayGuide to Startups, Part 1: Why not to do a startup
Marc Andreessen
Jun 2007 · 10 min read
The emotional, logistical, and interpersonal reasons why starting a company is much harder than most people realize.