Angus Lin

I love it when people tell me a startup idea that goes against most current trends.

People often ask how long I spend on essays. On average about 2 days per printed page. But it varies a lot. "The Refragmentation" (http://paulgraham.com/re.html ) took 3 months, because it required a lot of research, and "Writing, Briefly" (http://paulgraham.com/writing44.html ) took 67 minutes.

Startup idea for whoever wants it: Now that formerly neutral(ish) "newspapers of record" have been forced to pick a side to avoid going out of business, there may be room for a new publication to serve that need. Can't say for sure it will work, but it's a beachhead.

I found this had disappeared from the web, so I put a copy on my site. How Y Combinator Started: http://paulgraham.com/ycstart.html 

Formula for startup success: Find large highly fragmented industry w low NPS; vertically integrate a solution to simplify value product.

An article in the Financial Times said Silicon Valley's most valuable lesson is hype. This is a common misconception that YC often has to cure in young founders. Actually the most valuable lesson is to focus on users and iterate rapidly to satisfy them.

I failed my first college physics exam and almost dropped the major. Now I have a physics PhD from @Yale and my dream postdoc at @Princeton. Grades are a scam, #STEM is hard for everyone, and real learning involves failurehttps://twitter.com/starstrickenSF/status/1197278309043671041 …

I failed my first PhD qualifier in math. 2nd lowest score. The lowest, was the guy who didn’t show up. Next year was the high score. Hard things are hard. Stick with it and it’s rewarding beyond beliefhttps://twitter.com/starstrickenSF/status/1197278309043671041 …

4 years ago I got a 0 on a quantum physics exam. i met with my professor fearing i needed to change my major & quit physics. today, i’m in a top tier astrophysics Ph.D program & published 2 papers. STEM is hard for everyone—grades don’t mean you’re not good enough to do it.

Being rich doesn't make you happy :) It may shield you from some pain, but it doesn't shield you from all of it (as much as we wish that was different) The sooner we realize this, the sooner we will have peace. For some, this might take getting rich & finding out for themselveshttps://twitter.com/geoffrey___/status/1193981397112737792 …

In college I used emacs. When I showed up in grad school, they had some computers on which control-x or control-s (I forget which) froze the screen. So I used vi while I waited for someone to show up that I could ask about this. I've used vi ever since.

"Life is never more fun than when you're the underdog competing against the giants." --Ross Perot, founder of EDS, RIP

My algorithm for deciding how much to raise was simple: - $225000 fully loaded cost per hire (SF) - times 6 people (max # I'll need for now) - times 2 years of runway (time I need to succeed) - times 1.3x for a buffer (because I'll get something wrong) Raise just what you need.

Everything you know about modern life is just a bunch of abstraction layers that people who came before you invented. Don’t get too caught up in believing the abstraction layers are all real.

If the potential of a startup is proportionate to the size times the incompetence of its competitors, the most promising startup of all would be one that competed with national governments. It's not impossible; this is what cryptocurrencies do.

A fundamental trend in AI is that researchers conceptualize the human mind (and intelligence in general) by using as mental models the current technological tools they have available. This is implicit and insidious.