Dressing up is inevitably a substitute for good ideas. It is no coincidence that technically inept business types are known as 'suits'. -Paul Graham Business
If you imagine someone with 100 percent determination and 100 percent intelligence, you can discard a lot of intelligence before they stop succeeding. But if you start discarding determination, you very quickly get an ineffectual and perpetual grad student. -Paul Graham Intelligence
What I tell founders is not to sweat the business model too much at first. The most important task at first is to build something people want. If you don't do that, it won't matter how clever your business model is. -Paul Graham Business
It's hard to say exactly what it is about face-to-face contact that makes deals happen, but whatever it is, it hasn't yet been duplicated by technology. -Paul Graham Technology
