Grow the Puzzle Around You
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- One other thing Paul and I had in common was that we weren’t driven by money. We were interested in startups and we wanted to help people start more of them. This was the basis for everything we did at YC. It was what allowed us to do something as weird as YC in the first place.
- A lot of people, perhaps all people, have some distinctive combination of abilities and interests. And a lot of those combinations match some startup idea.
- So if you want to start a startup, I recommend you try asking yourself what’s distinctive about you. What unique combination of abilities and interests do you have? And don’t edit your answers, because as my example shows, the most unlikely ingredients could be the key to the recipe.
- You are a jigsaw puzzle piece of a certain shape. You could change your shape to fit an existing hole in the world. That was the traditional plan. But there’s another way that can often be better for you and for the world: to grow a new puzzle around you. That’s what I did, and I was a pretty weird-shaped piece. So if I can do it, there’s more hope for you than you probably realize.