Sublime

Any startup that could be described as a marketplace usually has to start in a subset of the market, but this can work for other startups as well. It's always worth asking if there's a subset of the market in which you can get a critical mass of users quickly.

One of the most common types of advice we give at Y Combinator is to do things that don't scale. A lot of would-be founders believe that startups either take off or don't.

But you don’t have to blindly follow the algorithms to get ahead. Consider Paul Graham or Morgan Housel. Both have never spent any time engaging in “growth hacks” or “engagement bait,” yet they are some of the most successful writers on the internet.

I'm usually reluctant to make predictions about technology, but I feel fairly confident about this one: in a couple decades there won't be many people who can write.

The most common unscalable thing founders have to do at the start is to recruit users manually. Nearly all startups have to. You can't wait for users to come to you. You have to go out and get them.

I should mention one sort of initial tactic that usually doesn't work: the Big Launch.