founder's mentality

My notes from Hackers & Painters by Paul Graham: The way to create something beautiful is often to make subtle tweaks to something that already exists, or to combine existing ideas in a slightly new way. There are only two things you have to know about business: build something users... See more

highlights from Danny Meyer’s autobiography via David Senra:

1. I had an uncontainable drive to win.

2. The inception of Shake Shack actually began with a humble hot dog cart. Small as the project was, I took this cart quite seriously. I was asking myself, "Who ever wrote that rule that you can't push the envelopes of excellence and hospitality for

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People dramatically under estimate how many decisions one has to make before shipping the v1 of even the simplest product. They all seem obvious in retrospect, but so, so much thinking had to happen to ship something like "press a button, get a ride."

Ev Williams (founder of Twitter, Blogger, and Medium) when asked who inspires him:

“When I think about a commonality of companies and leaders I admire, it is those who—whether they have a bunch of resources or not—come from a position of confidence and an abundance mindset.”

When he got to Google, the thing that most struck him was how big they

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What makes a successful businesswoman? Is it talent? Well, perhaps, although I've known many enormously successful people who were not-gifted in any outstanding way, not blessed with particular talent. Is it, then, intelligence? Certainly, intelligence helps, but it's not necessarily education or the kind of intellectual reasoning needed to

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Doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will.

Jerry Seinfeld started performing stand-up comedy in 1976. Since then and to this day, every day he sits with a yellow legal pad and writes jokes. Given that he’s been honing his craft for 47 years, he was asked, “How do you know a joke is going to work on stage?” Seinfeld said, "You don’t." “You just trust yourself?” the interviewer asked. “No you... See more