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"Hackers & Painters" Excerpts [3]

  1. To get rich, you need two things: measurement and leverage.

  2. If you have a job that makes you feel safe, you won't get rich, because without danger, there is almost no leverage.

  3. The meaning of startups: Ideally, you are willing to form a team with other harder-working people to seek higher returns together. Because startup teams often form spontaneously, and many ambitious founders have known each other for a long time (or at least heard of each other), their assessment of each other's contributions is more accurate than in typical small groups. A startup is not just a team of ten people, but a team of ten people of the same kind. Jobs once said that the success or failure of a startup depends on the first ten people who join the company. I basically agree with this view, although I think it's actually the first five people who determine success or failure. The advantage of a small team is not in its smallness per se, but in the fact that you can choose the members. We don't need the "smallness" of a small village, but the "smallness" of an all-star first team.

  4. What is technology? Technology is a means, a way we do things. If you discover a new way of doing things, its economic value depends on how many people use this new way. Technology is the fishing rod, not the fish. This is the difference between a startup and a restaurant or barber shop. A restaurant fries eggs, a barber shop cuts hair; they can only serve one customer at a time. But if you solve a hot technical problem, everyone will use your solution. This is leverage.

  5. Most people who get rich by creating wealth do so by developing new technologies. You can't get rich by frying eggs or cutting hair because the number of people using your service is limited.

  6. When investors consider investing, they will ask you several questions, one of which is whether it is difficult for others to copy your model, that is, how high the barriers you set for competitors are. Otherwise, once big companies see it, they will make their own version, add their brand, capital, and distribution capabilities, and take away your entire market overnight. Then you will be like guerrillas coming into the open, wiped out by the regular army in one fell swoop.

  7. The best defense is offense. If the technology you develop is difficult for competitors to copy, that's enough; you don't need to rely on other defensive means. Choose the harder problem from the start, and choose the harder option for every decision thereafter.

In general, this is also a good principle for handling things. If you have two choices, choose the harder one. So if you have to choose between sitting at home watching TV or going out for a run, go out for a run. The reason this method works may be that when faced with a hard and an easy choice, you tend to choose the easier one due to laziness. Deep down, you actually know that the non-lazy approach will bring better results; this method just forces you to accept this.