Paul Graham on startups as nonprofits and vice versa

Paul Graham (of Y Combinator fame) recently posted an interesting article “Be Good” (which I found via John Gruber’s Daring Fireball site) about the connections between startups and nonprofits: About a month after we started Y Combinator we came up with the phrase that became our motto: Make something people want. . . . Another thing we tell founders is not to worry too much about the business model, at least at first. . . . A couple weeks ago I realized that if you put those two ideas together, you get something surprising. Make something people want. Don’t worry too much about making money. What you’ve got is a description of a charity. ...

2008-04-23 · 5 min · Frank Hecker