Paul Graham: “Be relentlessly resourceful” (relentlessly resourceful)
In the photo - Terry Fox , ran 5,373 km in 143 days, without a break.
Paul Graham described his vision of what common hackers and artists have in common. This essay will discuss the fundamental quality of a startup founder.
The semantic spectrum of the word " Resourceful " = <resourceful, inventive, productive, dexterous, quick-witted, enterprising, dodgy, cunning>.
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Original - Relentlessly Resourceful
(For the translation, thanks to Andrew Tchernov)
A couple of days ago, I finally found a way to describe a good startup founder: relentlessly resourceful.
Before this, the best that I managed to formulate was to reduce the opposing qualities to one — the unfortunate one. Most dictionaries say it means no success, good luck. But dictionaries do not stand a good service in this case. The team, which beats its rivals, but loses because of the judge, no luck, but she is not unhappy. This term rather means passivity, to be unhappy means to be smeared with circumstances - to bend over to the outside world when you need to go your own way. [1]
Unfortunately, there is no antonym for the word unfortunate, and this makes it difficult to explain to the founders of startups what they should strive for. “Don't be unhappy” is something more like a cry of hopelessness.
It is not difficult to describe this quality with the help of metaphors. The best, probably, will be a comparison with running backwards. A good runner not only seeks forward, but also retains flexibility. They strive for a goal, but at the same time correct their actions on the fly.
Unfortunately, this is just a metaphor, and it is useless for most people outside the United States. “Be like a runner with your back to the front,” no better than “Don't be unhappy.”
But finally, I figured out how to express this quality. I wrote a speech for investors, and I had to explain what I should pay attention to in the organizers of startups. What should a person be as opposed to an unhappy one? Relentlessly resourceful. Not only tireless. This is not enough to make events evolve according to your plan, well, maybe except for a couple of uninteresting situations. In an interesting way, the difficulties will be non-standard. Which means that you cannot simply make your way through them because you initially don’t know how complicated they are; you do not know where you will make your way through a piece of foam, and where you will make it through granite. Therefore, you must be resourceful. You should try to find new solutions.
Be tirelessly resourceful.
It sounds good, but is the description simple, how to be successful in general? I do not think so. For example, this is not a recipe for how to succeed in drawing or writing books. In this kind of work, the recipe is more like being actively curious. In this way of working, the recipe is to be really active. Resourcefulness implies that the obstacles are external, which in most cases they are for startups. But when writing books and drawing, they are usually internal; the obstacle is your own incompetence.
There are probably other areas of activity where “relentless resourcefulness” is a recipe for success. But, despite the fact that it may be suitable for other areas, I think this is the best way to give a short description of those qualities that make a startup founder good. I doubt that this quality can be more accurately described.
Now knowing what we are looking for, we have other questions. For example, is it possible to learn these qualities? After four years of trying to teach people these qualities, I will say yes, it is unexpectedly often possible. Not for all people, but for many. [3] Some people are just naturally passive, but others have a latent ability to be relentlessly resourceful, who are just waiting to be pulled out into the light.
This is especially true of young people who, until now, have always been under the influence of some kind of authority. Being tirelessly resourceful is definitely not a recipe for success in large companies or in most schools. I don’t even want to think about the recipe for success in big companies, but this is undoubtedly something big and dirty, which includes a combination of ingenuity, humility and the ability to create alliances.
The definition of this quality also brings us closer to the answer to the frequently asked question: how many startups can there be? There is, as some people think, some economic frontier, which limits their number. There is no reason to believe that there is any limit on the amount of newly created consumer wealth that can be absorbed, as well as there is no limit to the number of theorems that can be proved. So, probably, the limiting factor for the number of startups is the environment of potential founders. Some people will become good founders, some will not. And now, when we know what a good founder is doing, we know how to set the upper limit on the size of the environment.
This test is also useful for everyone. If you want to know if you are the right sort of person to start a startup, ask yourself if you are tirelessly resourceful. And if you want to know if the co-founder is hired, ask if he is.
You can even use this as a tactic. If I started a startup, it would be a phrase written on a mirror. “Do something that people want” is the destination, but “be tirelessly resourceful” is how you get there.
Notes
[1] I think the reason why the dictionaries are wrong is that the meaning of the word has changed. No author who compiles a new dictionary today will say that failure is also a misfortune. But a few centuries ago they could say so. People in the past were under a great influence of circumstances and as a result a large number of words that we use to describe good and bad results come from the words about luck.
When I lived in Italy, I once tried to tell someone that I hadn’t achieved much success in some business, but I could not remember the word for success in Italian. I spent some time trying to describe the word I had in mind. Finally she said “Oh! Fortune!"
[2] There are aspects of startups where the recipe is very curious. There may be times when what you are doing is an almost perfect discovery. Unfortunately, such times are a very small part of the whole. On the other hand, all this is also part of the study.
[3] I almost said for “most people”, but realized - (a) that I don’t know what most people are and (b) I’m a pathological optimist in relation to a person’s ability to change.
Thanks to Trevor Blackwell and Jessica Livingston, for reading the outline of this.
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Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/302206/
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