Do Things that Don't Scale
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One of the most common types of advice we give at Y Combinator is to do things that don't scale. A lot of would-be founders believe that startups either take off or don't. You build something, make it available, and if you've made a better mousetrap, people beat a path to your door as promised. Or they don't, in which case the market must not exist.
Actually startups take off because the founders make them take off. There may be a handful that just grew by themselves, but usually it takes some sort of push to get them going. A good metaphor would be the cranks that car engines had before they got electric starters. Once the engine was going, it would keep going, but there was a separate and laborious process to get it going.
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About this essay
Why startups should focus on doing unscalable things to get started, with examples from successful companies.
“Do Things that Don't Scale” was written by Paul Graham. Read the original at paulgraham.com. Copywork shows the text so you can practice by retyping it word for word; all rights stay with the author.