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Interesting to contrast this with PG's most recent essay "Putting Ideas into Words" where he argues that people who don't write don't have fully formed ideas. W

by _xnmw 5y ago

Interesting to contrast this with PG's most recent essay "Putting Ideas into Words" where he argues that people who don't write don't have fully formed ideas. What else is a business plan besides a thoughtful writeup? I think it would give me a good idea into how a person thinks. [1] http://paulgraham.com/words.html http://paulgraham.com/words.html

allenleee 5y ago
I wonder If PG wrote deck/business plan when he pitched LPs for money.
- solarmist 5y ago
  https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1492684063097778182?s=21 https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1492684063097778182?s=21
  - gkop 5y ago
    The cognitive dissonance from pg and people in this thread bending over backwards to square his circle, is incredible.
    - deltree7 5y ago
      It's the opposite. Here's one of the tech influential thinkers literally opening his mind. But, no, we have to hate him and cancel him and pitchfork him.
      - CoffeeOnWrite 5y ago
        What I mean by cognitive dissonance is “I have never read a business plan”, followed by “I wrote something I called a business plan, but is it really a business plan? I don’t know what a business plan is”, to “what I meant by business plan is 20 pages of fluff”. The rhetoric is so incohesive that one could not possibly engage in constructive dialogue. We’re wasting our brain cells here. Words have meaning, and pg has done a poor job articulating himself in this instance, if his goal is to be understood. Since pg is a social media personality and his business ventures stand to benefit from his social media audience, reasonable people may speculate that his goal is NOT to be understood, but rather to drive engagement, and to that end he has been successful here. But it’s not actual thought leadership, it’s purely marketing. The hate/cancel/pitchfork sentiment expressed by some replies, could be seen then as an intended consequence of pg’s remarks - the outrage-driven engagement cycle is a well known dynamic in social media. And the defenders like you are the other side of the same coin. It’s amazing and somewhat sad, but not surprising, seeing smart people get worked up over this.
        deltree7 5y ago
        words have meaning and it also has context. Every time PG tweets, he can't give the entire context for everyone's benefits. You either get PG, Naval, Sam Harris, Jordan Peterson, Tim Ferris, Musk, Bezos ... and understand where they are coming from and extract pearls of wisdom to enrich your life or you can bitch/whine/moan about semantics, sensitivity, political correctness. Oh and I absolutely don't think PG needs to manufacture outrage. He has been a first principle thinker since 1990s and that means he will say things that go against the cargo pants culture.
kevincox 5y ago
Of course these things aren't opposites. Writing a business plan can be incredibly valuable to the author but forcing themselves to really think though their words and formalize the ideas that are floating around in their head. That doesn't mean that it is valuable to investors or anyone else.
gitfan86 5y ago
I know several entrepreneurs who could have saved themselves years of work and millions of dollars by just trying to fill out a business model canvas before starting their business. PG isn't saying that my above statement is false. He is saying that it isn't useful for him when deciding who to invest in.
- milesvp 5y ago
  Writing a business plan saved me from wasting precious years chasing a dog idea. I once had a meeting with an investor years ago. I had a dream of starting an internet cafe back when broadband was hard to come by. So I spent a couple weeks writing a business plan to show him. In the process I came to realize the idea was a dog. At least, it didn’t align with my interests once I ran the numbers, and realized that charging by the hour to use a medium to high end gaming machine could never scale. You can’t easily over subscribe which meant you had a real limit on the ROI you could get from the machines. Which meant that all the profit was in selling consumables. That’s when I realized I had very little interest in running a profitable eatery, I just wanted to work with the computers.
burrows 5y ago
I think if there seems to be a contradiction between the tweet and the essay it’s only a sort of psuedo-contradiction. The point of the essay (as I understand it) is that writing about something (as for example in a business plan) helps the writer understand the topic. The tweet says that pg is not interested in descriptions written by someone else. That writing a business plan can be edifying for the startup founder and at the same time of no interest to an investor, is consistent with both the essay and tweet.

by _xnmw 5y ago

allenleee 5y ago

I wonder If PG wrote deck/business plan when he pitched LPs for money.

solarmist 5y ago
https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1492684063097778182?s=21 https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1492684063097778182?s=21
- gkop 5y ago
  The cognitive dissonance from pg and people in this thread bending over backwards to square his circle, is incredible.
  - deltree7 5y ago
    It's the opposite. Here's one of the tech influential thinkers literally opening his mind. But, no, we have to hate him and cancel him and pitchfork him.
    - CoffeeOnWrite 5y ago
      What I mean by cognitive dissonance is “I have never read a business plan”, followed by “I wrote something I called a business plan, but is it really a business plan? I don’t know what a business plan is”, to “what I meant by business plan is 20 pages of fluff”. The rhetoric is so incohesive that one could not possibly engage in constructive dialogue. We’re wasting our brain cells here. Words have meaning, and pg has done a poor job articulating himself in this instance, if his goal is to be understood. Since pg is a social media personality and his business ventures stand to benefit from his social media audience, reasonable people may speculate that his goal is NOT to be understood, but rather to drive engagement, and to that end he has been successful here. But it’s not actual thought leadership, it’s purely marketing. The hate/cancel/pitchfork sentiment expressed by some replies, could be seen then as an intended consequence of pg’s remarks - the outrage-driven engagement cycle is a well known dynamic in social media. And the defenders like you are the other side of the same coin. It’s amazing and somewhat sad, but not surprising, seeing smart people get worked up over this.
      - deltree7 5y ago
        words have meaning and it also has context. Every time PG tweets, he can't give the entire context for everyone's benefits. You either get PG, Naval, Sam Harris, Jordan Peterson, Tim Ferris, Musk, Bezos ... and understand where they are coming from and extract pearls of wisdom to enrich your life or you can bitch/whine/moan about semantics, sensitivity, political correctness. Oh and I absolutely don't think PG needs to manufacture outrage. He has been a first principle thinker since 1990s and that means he will say things that go against the cargo pants culture.

kevincox 5y ago

Of course these things aren't opposites. Writing a business plan can be incredibly valuable to the author but forcing themselves to really think though their words and formalize the ideas that are floating around in their head. That doesn't mean that it is valuable to investors or anyone else.

gitfan86 5y ago

I know several entrepreneurs who could have saved themselves years of work and millions of dollars by just trying to fill out a business model canvas before starting their business. PG isn't saying that my above statement is false. He is saying that it isn't useful for him when deciding who to invest in.

milesvp 5y ago
Writing a business plan saved me from wasting precious years chasing a dog idea. I once had a meeting with an investor years ago. I had a dream of starting an internet cafe back when broadband was hard to come by. So I spent a couple weeks writing a business plan to show him. In the process I came to realize the idea was a dog. At least, it didn’t align with my interests once I ran the numbers, and realized that charging by the hour to use a medium to high end gaming machine could never scale. You can’t easily over subscribe which meant you had a real limit on the ROI you could get from the machines. Which meant that all the profit was in selling consumables. That’s when I realized I had very little interest in running a profitable eatery, I just wanted to work with the computers.

burrows 5y ago

I think if there seems to be a contradiction between the tweet and the essay it’s only a sort of psuedo-contradiction. The point of the essay (as I understand it) is that writing about something (as for example in a business plan) helps the writer understand the topic. The tweet says that pg is not interested in descriptions written by someone else. That writing a business plan can be edifying for the startup founder and at the same time of no interest to an investor, is consistent with both the essay and tweet.