One of the most common types of advice Y Combinator gives to founders 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 (paulgraham.com link)
Paul Graham: What does it mean to do things that don’t scale?
Do Things That Don’t Scale: a crowdsourced collection of unscalable startup hacks and stories (dothingsthatdontscale.com link)
Cover art by https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-meaning-of-Paul-Grahams-advice-for-startups-and-entrepreneurs-quoted-as-do-things-that-dont-scale-How-will-it-inspire-them/answer/Michael-T-Foster
If you would like to expand on the topic as a guest post, know of more resources/posts/essays/etc that we should share here or simply spotted an error, please get in touch with us!
