Startup Wisdom

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Growth

Every resource in the archive tagged with growth.

14 resources

2014 Letter to ShareholdersLetter

2014 Letter to Shareholders

Jeff Bezos

Apr 2015 · 22 min read

The four traits of a dreamy business, and how Marketplace, Prime, and AWS each earned the label.

2011 Letter to ShareholdersLetter

2011 Letter to Shareholders

Jeff Bezos

Apr 2012 · 16 min read

Why self-service platforms beat gatekeepers: AWS, FBA, and KDP let improbable ideas get tried.

2002 Letter to ShareholdersLetter

2002 Letter to Shareholders

Jeff Bezos

Apr 2003 · 12 min read

How Amazon turned customer experience into a fixed cost to deliver both great service and low prices.

1997 Letter to ShareholdersLetter

1997 Letter to Shareholders

Jeff Bezos

Mar 1998 · 7 min read

Jeff Bezos' original letter to shareholders is reprinted from Amazon's 1997 Annual Report.

Startup Advice, BrieflyEssay

Startup 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.

Startups in 13 SentencesEssay

Startups in 13 Sentences

Paul Graham

Feb 2009 · 6 min read

Thirteen principles for building a startup, from picking cofounders to understanding your users above all else.

Tobi Lutke explains what the VCs who passed on Shopify got wrongVideo

Tobi Lutke explains what the VCs who passed on Shopify got wrong

Tobi Lütke

Mar 2026 · 1 min read

“What a lot of free-market thinkers don’t understand is that between the demand and eventual supply lies friction."

Paul Graham on why starting with a “small, intense fire" is the key to startup growthVideo

Paul Graham on why starting with a “small, intense fire" is the key to startup growth

Paul Graham

Mar 2026 · 1 min read

"You have to know who those first users are and how you're going to get them."

AboutEssay

About

Patrick Collison

1 min read

Patrick Collison's interests and involvement in economic growth, entrepreneurship, climate, housing, and progress studies.

QuestionsEssay

Questions

Patrick Collison

16 min read

A collection of open-ended questions about economics, progress, institutions, and society from a founder's perspective.

Super-Successful CompaniesEssay

Super-Successful Companies

Sam Altman

5 min read

The defining traits of founders whose startups become extremely successful.

Startup PlaybookEssay

Startup Playbook

Sam Altman

34 min read

A founder's guide to the core elements of starting a successful startup: idea, team, product, and execution.

Superlinear ReturnsEssay

Superlinear Returns

Paul Graham

Oct 2023 · 19 min read

In most fields, small differences in performance create outsized differences in results because of exponential growth and thresholds.

Do Things That Don't ScaleEssay

Do Things That Don't Scale

Paul Graham

Jul 2013 · 19 min read

Why successful startups succeed by doing manually unscalable things first, like recruiting users one at a time.