Note: This is the talk I gave at Startup School Europe, which was held last Saturday in London. You've heard a lot of great startup advice today. This is going to be a little different. I often advise startups that it's better to seek deep appeal, to create something that a few people love, even if most people don't get it right away. In that spirit, I've decided to share the technology and dreams…
I love the idea of microlending, small loans of a few hundred dollars made to entrepreneurs in impoverished areas so that they can start or grow businesses of their own, helping them to achieve financial independence. The unfortunate reality though is that many microlending programs charge surprisingly high interest rates, pushing entrepreneurs deeper into debt. This is because early microlending…
It's often said that you should live every day as though it's your last. That always seemed a little impractical to me. But when my brother died , I felt like I had missed my chance. Life could never be the same again. Part of me was already dead. I had always understood death intellectually, but now I felt it at a visceral level, and that's completely different. Death was inside of me now. Steve…
The car in front of me kept hesitating. The driver couldn't seem to decide where to turn. Up ahead I could see that the light was green, but that I wasn't going to make it through in time because this car was in my way. I started to feel slightly agitated, but reminded myself to simply accept the current situation. I can't even see the other timelines, maybe this one is somehow better. It's a…
On a scale of one to ten, how good of a cog are you? How well do you function in your assigned role? How much of a man or woman are you? How do you rate yourself as a son or daughter, father or mother, wife or husband, heterosexual or homosexual, liberal or conservative, black or white, winner or loser, shark or sheep, introvert or extrovert, Christian, Muslim, atheist? How smart are you? How…
The recent WSJ article on the supposedly Chinese style of parenting has generated a lot of interesting discussion. The most amusing commentary comes from The Last Psychiatrist , who also points out that Amy Chua, the "Chinese" mother, was actually born in America. There were also claims that the WSJ misrepresented her views, which may or may not be true, but is ultimately irrelevant since it's the…
I started investing in startups with the assumption that I don't know what I'm doing (which is always true), but that the only way to actually learn anything is through experience. Therefore, my goal was to invest in a variety of startups, learn from the experience, help some startups, and hopefully not lose too much money while doing so. I don't have any single criterion for investing. Sometimes,…
My recent predictions about which Google products will succeed (and which won't) are causing people to think that I'm anti-Google, which makes me sad since Google is probably still the best company of its size, and I really enjoyed my time there. Unfortunately, positive stories are never as popular as negative ones, but regardless, it's worth highlighting some of the things that continue to…
My recent remark about the future of ChromeOS generated a surprisingly passionate response . Some said that my prediction was obvious and boring, but others disagreed, arguing instead that I am ugly and "don't get it". I won't disagree with either side, but I also noticed that my prediction was sometimes inaccurately characterized as me "hating" ChromeOS, Google, or The Cloud, all of which is…
The common theme uniting most of my efforts is the desire to be free. One of the reasons I'm so interested in startups is that they give people the freedom to create, independent of the institutional limitations found in large companies. This is why unexpected new ideas and techniques (such as new languages or development practices) often appear first in startups. Of course the startups don't…
Here is an interesting comment from Hacker News, on a story about someone turning down an early Google offer: Similar thing happened to me in 1999. I realized Google was way cooler than alta vista and better at finding unknown things rather than Yahoo's directory. Truly the future, I thought. I sent in a resume to do some kind of work not development related; data center & sys admin stuff. They…
For her birthday, she wants as many people as possible to donate to her cause , raising $55,555 for the Intensive Care Nursery (ICN) at UCSF Children's Hospital, where our daughter spent the first several months of her life. Proceeds will go towards funding hospital neonatal supplies and monitoring equipment, family-oriented support programs, and neurodevelopmental programs. To donate, go to…
By now, everyone is tired of hearing about the iPad, but the negative responses are so perfectly misguided that it would be wrong to waste this opportunity. Even better, we can look back at the 2001 iPod launch and see the exact same mistakes. But this isn't about the iPad or the iPod -- it's about product design . The most famous iPod review was from Slashdot, which simply declared , "No…
This post is inflammatory and unfair. It argues an extreme position that I don't agree with, but nevertheless find amusing. When writing angry responses, please direct your hate at the straw-man, not at me :) Agree/Disagree: When a powerful group forces information to be removed from the internet, that is censorship. Some acts of censorship are more acceptable than others depending on what…
I'm a slow reader, but that doesn't stop me from buying a lot of books. Inspired by a Blippy review , I thought it might be fun to publish my Amazon order history . My threshold for buying books is very low, so don't interpret these purchases as endorsements. Also, I haven't read most of them yet, so if you spot anything especially good, please let me know. Return to the Little Kingdom: How Apple…
After writing my predictions for the past 10 years , I decided it might be fun to write a few predictions for the next 10 years as well. This is a little more dangerous though, since I now lack the benefit of hindsight and at least one of them will probably turn out to be as dumb as "Palin/Gore win the 2014 presidential election". That said, here are my (random and probably over-optimistic)…
Reviewing old predictions is fun. Unfortunately, I didn't bother to write any down, so I'm working from memory here, and of course human memory is very unreliable and selective, so this is rather bogus. Predictions for the next 10 years, from Jan 1, 2000 (as remembered on Jan 1, 2010): Prediction: Linux will continue expanding into new spaces and will eventually make Microsoft irrelevant. Windows…
I don't know anything about Apple's tablet, and I generally don't pay much attention to the speculation about their unannounced products. However, John Gruber has a nice post today which discusses the hypothetical Apple tablet . The best part is the core product question -- how does this new product fit in with all existing products? Revolutionary products are underestimated because we evaluate…
Last week, TechCrunch published a story about me not yet trying Google Wave (" Gmail Creator Thinks Email Will Last Forever. And Hasn't Tried Google Wave "). The is apparently unacceptable, or as one commenter put it, "Paul may have been trying to be cool and ironic, but really he should be ashamed for not having tried Wave yet." I'm not sure if this is because I have an obligation to try all new…
"Open" is a great thing. Everyone likes it. Unfortunately, nobody agrees what open is. There are many meanings, but in general, I think "open" must be the opposite of "closed". In the world of abstract things like software, protocols and society, closed is secret, hidden, or locked. "Closed" limits our mobility, prevents discovery, and discourages new connections. Imagine being in a building where…
Every system has two sets of rules: The rules as they are intended or commonly perceived, and the actual rules ("reality"). In most complex systems, the gap between these two sets of rules is huge. Sometimes we catch a glimpse of the truth, and discover the actual rules of a system. Once the actual rules are known, it may be possible to perform "miracles" -- things which violate the perceived…
In my head, this post and yesterday's post on risk and opportunity are deeply connected, but logically they needed to be split apart. The theory of the left-brain / right-brain split is that the left hemisphere of our brain handles linear, logical processing (cold logic) while the right hemisphere is more emotional, intuitive, and holistic (evaluating the whole picture instead of considering…
Our lives are full of decisions that force us to balance risk and opportunity: should you take that new job, buy that house, invest in that company, swallow that pill, jump off that cliff, etc. How do we decide which risks are smart, and which are dumb? Once we've made our choices, are we willing to accept the consequences? I think the most common technique is to ask ourselves, "What is the most…
Is your web server using using gzip encoding ? Surprisingly, many are not. I just wrote a little script to fetch the 30 external links off news.yc and check if they are using gzip encoding. Only 18 were, which means that the other 12 sites are needlessly slow, and also wasting money on bandwidth. Check your site here . Some people think gzip is "too slow". It's not. Here's an example (run on my…
Some people can sell their ideas with a brilliant speech or a slick powerpoint presentation. I can't. Maybe that's why I'm skeptical of ideas that are sold via brilliant speeches and slick powerpoints. Or maybe it's because it's too easy to overlook the messy details, or to get caught up in details that seem very important, but aren't. I also get very bored by endless debate. We did a lot of…