Essays

I have a question for all the people that use their iPhone or Android to complain on Twitter, Facebook, or reddit about the lack of innovation… Or message their friends on WhatsApp or Snapchat about how Silicon Valley only builds toys for rich people in between looking at photos...more

I think I am at least somewhat more productive than average, and people sometimes ask me for productivity tips. So I decided to just write them all down in one place. Compound growth gets discussed as a financial concept, but it works in careers as well, and it is magic. A small...more

A lot of people want to replicate YC in some other industry or some other place or with some other strategy. In general, people seem to assume that: 1) although there was some degree of mystery or luck about how YC got going, it can’t be that hard, and 2) if you can get it off th...more

AI has gotten remarkably better in recent years; ChatGPT can do amazing things that we take for granted. This is as it should be, and is the story of human progress. But behind the blinking circle, nicely abstracted away, is the greatest story of human ingenuity I have ever seen....more

Our mission is to ensure that AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) benefits all of humanity. Systems that start to point to AGI* are coming into view, and so we think it’s important to understand the moment we are in. AGI is a weakly defined term, but generally speaking we mean...more

Earlier this year, I noticed something in China that really surprised me. I realized I felt more comfortable discussing controversial ideas in Beijing than in San Francisco. I didn’t feel completely comfortable—this was China, after all—just more comfortable than at home. That sh...more

I’ve heard a lot of different theories about how things get done. I’m interested in this topic, so I pay attention and see how the theories hold up. Here’s the best one: a combination of focus and personal connections. Charlie Rose said this to Paul Graham, who told it to me. It...more

Value is created by doing. It’s easy to forget this. A lot of stuff feels like work—commenting on HN, tweeting, reading about other companies’ funding rounds, grabbing coffee, etc [1]—is not actually work. (If you count that as work, think really hard about the value you’re creat...more

When seated at a table with people you don't know, ask "what are you interested in?" or "what have you been thinking about lately?" instead of "what do you do?". (Surprisingly often you get a look of utter confusion, followed by fifteen seconds of hemming and hawing, and then a v...more

I made a point in this post inelegantly in a way that was easy to misunderstand, so I’d like to clarify it. I didn’t mean that we need to tolerate brilliant homophobic jerks in the lab so that we can have scientific progress. Although there are famous counterexamples, most of the...more

Richard Hamming gave this talk in March of 1986. [1] It's one of the best talks I've ever read and has long impacted how I think about spending my time. I mentioned it to a number of people this weekend who, to my surprise, had never heard of it. So I though I'd share it here: [A...more