Paul Graham the successful Silicon Valley entrepreneur wrote an insightful post about his design principles for making new things:

“Here it is: I like to find (a) simple solutions (b) to overlooked problems (c) that actually need to be solved, and (d) deliver them as informally as possible, (e) starting with a very crude version 1, then (f) iterating rapidly”

In all his previous start-ups (Viaweb, Y Combinator, Arc) Paul has had the same initial contemptuous reaction – if it’s simple it can’t be good; if it’s a common problem people think it doesn’t matter. That’s the common reaction we have to using psychometric tests to find out what people are like and then go on to tell us all the horror stories they’ve had when recruiting new people.


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Making new things

By Philip

Posted on May 25, 2008 to Recruitment, Start-up. Subscribe to follow comments on this post. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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