Paul Graham’s advice for future startup founders: “Just learn”

“If you make a conscious effort to try and think of startup ideas, you will think of ideas that are not only bad but bad and plausible-sounding—meaning you and everybody else will be fooled by them and you’ll waste a lot of time before realizing they’re no good.”

As Paul Graham explains, the way to come up with good startup ideas is to take a step back:

“Instead of trying to make a conscious effort to think of startup ideas, turn your brain into the type that has startup ideas unconsciously.”

You do this by:

1. Learning a lot about things that matter

2. Working on problems that interest you

3. With people you like and respect (this is incidentally how you get co-founders at the same time as the idea)

“The component of entrepreneurship that really matters is domain expertise. Larry Page is Larry Page because he was an expert on search. And he became an expert on search because he was genuinely interested in it, not because of some ulterior motive.”

PG continues:

“At its best, starting a startup is merely an ulterior motive for curiosity, and you’ll do it best if you introduce the ulterior motive at the end of the process. So here is the ultimate advice for young, would-be startup founders reduced to two words: Just learn.”

Full video: Y Combinator “Before the Startup with Paul Graham” (Mar 2017)

P.S. We’ve put together a YouTube playlist with every Paul Graham insight we’ve ever shared. You can watch it here: "Best startup advice from Paul Graham"