#276 Paul Graham’s Essays Part 2

**David Senra** (0:00)
I want to tell you about a one-time only limited event that I don't think you're going to want to miss. I am doing a live show with Patrick O'Shaughnessy from the Invest Like the Best podcast in New York City on October 19th. Patrick has interviewed over 300 of the world's best investors and founders for his podcast. I've read over 300 biographies of history's greatest entrepreneurs for my podcast. We'll be talking about what we learned from seven years of podcasting, sharing our favorite ideas and stories, and doing a live Q&A. There will also be special event-only swag. If you live in New York City, I think it's a no-brainer. But if not, I think it's a great excuse to fly in. I've already heard from a bunch of people that bought tickets, they're flying in from other cities. Some people are flying in from other countries. That's setting the bar really high, so I will have at least four shots of espresso or four energy drinks before or during the show so we can make it a night that you'll never forget. If you're interested in attending this unique live event, I will leave a link down below. I highly recommend you get your tickets today, and I hope I get to see you in New York on October 19th. There are some kinds of work that you can't do well without thinking differently from your peers.
Your ideas have to be both correct and novel. You see this pattern with startup founders. You don't want to start a startup to do something that everyone agrees is a good idea, or there will already be other companies doing it. You have to do something that sounds to most other people like a bad idea, but that you know isn't, like writing software for a tiny computer used by a few thousand hobbyists, or starting a site to let people rent air beds on strangers' floors.
He's referencing Microsoft and Airbnb there. Do you want to do the kind of work where you can only win by thinking differently from everyone else? Independent mindedness seems to be more a matter of nature than nurture, which means if you pick the wrong type of work, you're going to be unhappy. If you're naturally independent minded, you're going to find it frustrating to be a middle manager. And if you're naturally conventional minded, you're going to be sailing into a headwind if you try to do original research.
One difficulty here is that people are often mistaken about where they fall on the spectrum from conventional to independent minded. Conventional minded people don't like to think of themselves as conventional minded. It genuinely feels to them as if they make up their own minds about everything. It's just a coincidence that their beliefs are identical to their peers.
And the independent minded, meanwhile, are often unaware how different their ideas are from conventional ones, at least till they state them publicly.
Can you make yourself more independent minded? I think so. It matters a lot who you surround yourself with. If you surround yourself with independent minded people, hearing other people say surprising things will encourage you to and to think of more. The independent minded find it uncomfortable to be surrounded by conventional minded people. A place where the independent and conventional minded are thrown together is in successful startups. The founders and early employees are almost always independent minded. Otherwise, the startup wouldn't be successful. But conventional minded people greatly outnumber independent minded ones. So as the company grows, the original spirit of independent mindedness is inevitably diluted.
This causes all kinds of problems, besides the obvious one, that the company starts to suck.
One of the strangest is that the founders find themselves able to speak more freely with founders of other companies than with their own employees. The importance of founders knowing other founders is repeated a lot in Paul's essays. I'm gonna read that one more time because I think it's important. One of the strangest is that the founders find themselves able to speak more freely with founders of other companies than with their own employees.
You don't have to spend all your time with independent minded people. It's enough to have one or two who you can talk to regularly. And once you find them, they're usually as eager to talk as you are. They need you too.
You can expand the source of influences in time as well as space by reading history. When I read history, I do it not just to learn what happened, but to try to get inside the heads of people who lived in the past.
How did things look to them? This is why I say every entrepreneur needs a library. It's a tool for entrepreneurs.