Paul Graham’s 13 Pointers for Launching a Successful Startup

February 2009

One of the things I always tell startups is a principle I learned from Paul Buchheit: it's better to make a few people really happy than to make a lot of people semi-happy. I was saying recently to a reporter that if I could only tell startups 10 things, this would be one of them. Then I thought: what would the other 9 be?

When I made the list there turned out to be 13:

1. Pick good cofounders.

Cofounders are for a startup what location is for real estate. You can change anything about a house except where it is. In a startup you can change your idea easily, but changing your cofounders is hard. [1] And the success of a startup is almost always a function of its founders.

Things You Didn't Know About Your Body

NUTRITION
Guzzle -- don't sip -- water: Downing big gulps cues your body to get it into the system faster.

To lose weight, drink cold water. Your body has to expend extra calories to heat up the H2O in your stomach, resulting in a rise in your resting metabolic rate. In fact, in a 2003 German study researchers estimated that drinking two additional icy quarts a day would help you burn about 100 extra calories -- or the equivalent of a pound of fat every five weeks -- with no other changes in exercise or diet.

So that's why we like sushi. By simultaneously eating "bad" high-glycemic foods (pasta, rice, etc.) and protein (fish, meat, etc.), you greatly lower the former's absorption rate -- and reduce their tendency to be stored in the body as fat.