Topic
Decision Making
Every resource in the archive tagged with decision making.
53 resources
Letter2003 Letter to Shareholders
Jeff Bezos
Apr 2004 · 11 min read
Why long-term thinking is the mark of true ownership — owners are different from tenants.
Letter1997 Letter to Shareholders
Jeff Bezos
Mar 1998 · 7 min read
Jeff Bezos' original letter to shareholders is reprinted from Amazon's 1997 Annual Report.
EssayGuide to Career Planning, Part 1: Opportunity
Marc Andreessen
Sep 2007 · 11 min read
Why planning a career is pointless — and why seizing opportunities beats following a plan.
VideoSteve Jobs on Focus
Various Founders
Sep 1997 · 3 min
Steve Jobs's philosophy on the power of saying no and eliminating distractions to achieve excellence.
EssayMaking Yourself a CEO
Ben Horowitz
Oct 2012 · 12 min read
Being a CEO requires mastering unnatural skills, especially the foundational practice of giving honest, authentic feedback.
EssayManaging Your Own Psychology
Ben Horowitz
Mar 2011 · 16 min read
Managing your own psychology is the hardest CEO skill, harder than organizational design or hiring, because everything wrong is your fault.
EssayHow Things Get Done
Sam Altman
3 min read
Things get done through focus on two or three priorities and strong personal relationships.
EssayStartup Advice, Briefly
Sam Altman
4 min read
Start with a project, not a company, so you can find something great to work on without premature commitment.
EssayAdvice for Ambitious 19 Year Olds
Sam Altman
4 min read
Build something real while staying around smart people, regardless of whether you choose college, a company, or a startup.
EssayThe Hardest Lessons for Startups to Learn
Paul Graham
Apr 2006 · 21 min read
The counterintuitive lessons startups repeatedly fail to learn: release early, keep improving, make users happy, and fear the right threats.
EssayWhen to Do What You Love
Paul Graham
Sep 2024 · 7 min read
When to pursue work you love versus work that pays well depends on your ambitions and the actual odds of success in your chosen field.
VideoJony Ive recounts the time Steve Jobs called him vain
Jony Ive
Mar 2026 · 1 min read
In the clip below, Jony Ive recounts the time he asked Steve Jobs to be less harsh in his critique of a piece of work.
VideoEric Schmidt on why most companies get strategy wrong
Eric Schmidt
Mar 2026 · 1 min read
Why strategy should start from what the world will look like in five years, not from your products.
VideoMark Zuckerberg: “You can’t 80/20 everything”
Mark Zuckerberg
Mar 2026 · 1 min read
Why some problems demand 100% of the work — you can't 80/20 everything.
VideoKeith Rabois on how to identify great talent
Keith Rabois
Mar 2026 · 1 min read
How to spot great talent: expand each person's responsibilities until they break.
VideoSam Altman explains how he decides to invest in a startup after 10 minutes
Sam Altman
Mar 2026 · 1 min read
What a 10-minute YC interview reveals about a founder's potential.
VideoMarc Andreessen on the 5 personality traits of an innovator
Marc Andreessen
Mar 2026 · 1 min read
The five personality traits that separate true innovators from everyone else.
EssayWhy We Prefer Founding CEOs
Ben Horowitz
9 min read
Founding CEOs outperform professional CEOs because they're more committed to the company's mission and better able to navigate uncertainty.
EssayThe Case for the Fat Startup
Ben Horowitz
9 min read
Lean startups can thrive by spending more strategically instead of cutting costs everywhere.
EssayHow to Minimize Politics in Your Company
Ben Horowitz
9 min read
Strategies for reducing destructive internal power dynamics and factionalism in growing companies.
EssayLead Bullets
Ben Horowitz
9 min read
Leaders should deliver hard truths to their teams even when doing so risks unpopularity.
Letter2020 Letter to Shareholders — Farewell
Jeff Bezos
Apr 2021 · 25 min read
Bezos's parting message in his final shareholder letter as CEO, framed via a Richard Dawkins passage on biological homeostasis.
Letter2018 Letter to Shareholders
Jeff Bezos
Apr 2019 · 18 min read
Bezos arguing that risk-taking, not just revenue, must scale with company size.
Letter2016 Letter to Shareholders — Day 1
Jeff Bezos
Apr 2017 · 8 min read
Four practices to prevent organizational stagnation: customer obsession, rejecting proxies, embracing trends, and fast decision-making.
EssayNotes on Stripe's response to SVB
Patrick Collison
1 min read
Only a list of nav links (About, Advice, Blog, Bookshelf, etc.) was provided; no essay prose was included.
EssayFast
Patrick Collison
7 min read
Collison's single sharpest juxtaposition of what humans used to be able to build versus what we now accept.
EssayQuestions
Patrick Collison
16 min read
A collection of open-ended questions about economics, progress, institutions, and society from a founder's perspective.
EssayHappiness Is a Skill
Naval Ravikant
Mar 2021 · 23 min read
Happiness is a skill you can develop by understanding desire and recognizing what's within your control.
EssayDesire Is a Contract You Make With Yourself
Naval Ravikant
Feb 2020 · 1 min read
Desire is a contract to remain unhappy until you get what you want, and satisfaction reverts you to your baseline anyway.
EssayJudgment
Naval Ravikant
Apr 2019 · 6 min read
Why judgment becomes your most important asset once you have leverage.
EssayHow to Get Rich (Without Getting Lucky)
Naval Ravikant
Dec 2019 · 193 min read
Wealth is assets that earn while you sleep; money is how you transfer it; status is a zero-sum game you should avoid.
EssayUpside Risk
Sam Altman
2 min read
Power law returns mean angel investors should focus on upside risk—missing great deals—not downside protection.
EssaySuper-Successful Companies
Sam Altman
5 min read
The defining traits of founders whose startups become extremely successful.
EssayValue Is Created By Doing
Sam Altman
3 min read
Most work that feels busy—meetings, networking, talking—doesn't create value; only execution does.
EssayWhat I Wish Someone Had Told Me
Sam Altman
1 min read
How to start and scale ambitious things: recruiting, focus, speed, conviction, and fighting bureaucracy.
EssayHow To Invest In Startups
Sam Altman
9 min read
How to succeed as a startup investor by accessing deals, picking great founders, and getting them to choose you.
EssayResearchers and Founders
Sam Altman
1 min read
The common traits that distinguish the best researchers and founders, from problem taste to persistence to an action bias.
EssayProductivity
Sam Altman
10 min read
Choosing what to work on matters more than how fast you work, and small gains compound into massive results over time.
EssayLuck and the Entrepreneur
Marc Andreessen
Aug 2007 · 8 min read
Four distinct kinds of luck shape entrepreneurial success, each requiring different personality traits and behaviors to activate.
EssayAge and the Entrepreneur
Marc Andreessen
Aug 2007 · 11 min read
Andreessen's gloss on Simonton's finding that the 'quality ratio' of hits to misses stays roughly constant throughout a creative career.
EssayHow to Hire the Best People You've Ever Worked With
Marc Andreessen
Jun 2007 · 12 min read
Drive, curiosity, and ethics matter more than raw intelligence when hiring the best people for a startup.
EssayGuide to Startups, Part 8: Hiring, managing, promoting, and firing executives
Marc Andreessen
Aug 2007 · 16 min read
How to hire, manage, promote, and fire executives at a startup, with specific guidelines for each stage.
EssayGuide to Startups, Part 7: Why a startup's initial business plan matters
Marc Andreessen
Jul 2007 · 6 min read
Andreessen's punchline: the inventor of the phonograph initially filed it under 'speaking telegraph' and missed its true market for months.
EssayGuide to Startups, Part 5: The Moby Dick theory of big companies
Marc Andreessen
Jun 2007 · 10 min read
How to navigate unpredictable dealings with large companies as a startup founder.
EssayGuide to Startups, Part 4: The only thing that matters
Marc Andreessen
Jun 2007 · 10 min read
Rachleff's Corollary of Startup Success, as formulated by Andreessen.
EssayBefore the Startup
Paul Graham
Oct 2014 · 20 min read
Why your instincts about startups will mislead you, and what to trust instead.
EssayThe Top Idea in Your Mind
Paul Graham
Sep 2022 · 10 min read
Most startup problems repeat across companies, so the key to advising founders is helping them focus on what actually matters most.
EssayHow to Do What You Love
Paul Graham
Jan 2006 · 21 min read
Most people are taught that work must be unpleasant, but the most successful ones have learned to do what they genuinely love.
EssayBlack Swan Farming
Paul Graham
Sep 2012 · 9 min read
Startup investing concentrates returns in a few massive winners, which look like bad ideas until they succeed.
EssayThe Anatomy of Determination
Paul Graham
Jan 2017 · 1 min read
Smart people take risks that look crazy only in hindsight; Newton's work in alchemy and theology were reasonable bets in his time.
EssayHow to Disagree
Paul Graham
Mar 2008 · 7 min read
Graham's closing observation that climbing the disagreement hierarchy doesn't just make arguments better, it makes the arguers less cruel.
EssayFounder Mode
Paul Graham
Sep 2024 · 5 min read
Founder mode—how founders run companies—works better than manager mode, the standard advice they're given.
EssayGuide to Startups, Part 2: When the VCs say no
Marc Andreessen
Jun 2007 · 11 min read
How to reduce layers of risk in your startup plan after VCs say no.