Thursday, November 10, 2022

It Appears Izabella Kaminska Is Channeling Y Combinator Founder Paul Graham

From Mr. Graham's personal blog, March 2012:

Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas

One of the more surprising things I've noticed while working on Y Combinator is how frightening the most ambitious startup ideas are. In this essay I'm going to demonstrate this phenomenon by describing some. Any one of them could make you a billionaire. That might sound like an attractive prospect, and yet when I describe these ideas you may notice you find yourself shrinking away from them.

Don't worry, it's not a sign of weakness. Arguably it's a sign of sanity. The biggest startup ideas are terrifying. And not just because they'd be a lot of work. The biggest ideas seem to threaten your identity: you wonder if you'd have enough ambition to carry them through.

There's a scene in Being John Malkovich where the nerdy hero encounters a very attractive, sophisticated woman. She says to him:

Here's the thing: If you ever got me, you wouldn't have a clue what to do with me.

That's what these ideas say to us.
This phenomenon is one of the most important things you can understand about startups.

....MUCH MORE

And from Izabella Kaminska at The Blind Spot 

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