Topic
Product–Market Fit
Every resource in the archive tagged with product–market fit.
22 resources
Letter2014 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.
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.
EssayBillionaires Build
Paul Graham
Dec 2020 · 15 min read
Becoming a billionaire requires building something people genuinely want, not exploiting them.
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.
EssayStartups 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.
EssayOrganic Startup Ideas
Paul Graham
Apr 2010 · 4 min read
The best startup ideas come from problems you encounter in your own life, not from trying to guess what others want.
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.
VideoTobi 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."
VideoPaul 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."
EssayLead Bullets
Ben Horowitz
9 min read
Leaders should deliver hard truths to their teams even when doing so risks unpopularity.
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.
EssaySuper-Successful Companies
Sam Altman
5 min read
The defining traits of founders whose startups become extremely successful.
EssayIdea Generation
Sam Altman
3 min read
How to get good at generating startup ideas through environment, tectonic shifts, and founder-company fit.
EssayStartup Playbook
Sam Altman
34 min read
A founder's guide to the core elements of starting a successful startup: idea, team, product, and execution.
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 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.
EssayHow You Know
Paul Graham
May 2003 · 25 min read
Why startups beat incumbents in design wars: design-by-committee deliberately trades away upside to avoid downside.
EssayHow to Make Wealth
Paul Graham
May 2004 · 39 min read
Starting a startup is the most reliable way to compress your earning potential by working intensely for a few years instead of a lifetime.
EssayHow to Start a Startup
Paul Graham
Mar 2005 · 43 min read
Three things determine whether a startup succeeds: good people, a product customers want, and spending little money.
EssayHow to Get Startup Ideas
Paul Graham
Nov 2012 · 32 min read
The best startup ideas come from problems you have yourself, not from trying to think of startup ideas.
EssayDo 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.