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Reminds one of PG's "just don't die and you become rich" advice for startup founders. FWIW, the best founders I've met within YC or outside of it have this par
by corry 6y ago
Reminds one of PG's "just don't die and you become rich" advice for startup founders.
FWIW, the best founders I've met within YC or outside of it have this paradoxical quality that takes high optimism about the future of their company and combines it with extreme gritty paranoia about the short-term things that could derail or kill you.
- davidrm 6y agoThat reminds me of the foreword in the High Output Management, written by Ben Horowitz and Andy Grover's words "only the paranoid survive": “CEOs always act on leading indicators of good news, but only act on lagging indicators of bad news.” “Why?” I asked him. He answered in the style resonant of his entire book: “In order to build anything great, you have to be an optimist, because by definition you are trying to do something that most people would consider impossible. Optimists most certainly do not listen to leading indicators of bad news.” But this insight won’t be in any book. When I suggested he write something on the topic, his response was: “Why would I do that? It would be a waste of time to write about how to not follow human nature. It would be like trying to stop the Peter Principle.* CEOs must be optimists and all in all that’s a good thing.”