Entries from August 2007 ↓

Hi! As the senior Senator from Idaho, I travel a lot for work! I know as well as anyone how lonely an airport can be! Over the years I have put together my own personal guidebook for airport satisfaction! And now I have decided to share it with the world! Jiminy!

By Paul Graham:

One of the most interesting things we’ve discovered from working on Y Combinator is that founders are more motivated by the fear of looking bad than by the hope of getting millions of dollars. So if you want to get millions of dollars, put yourself in a position where failure will be public and humiliating.

When we first met the founders of Octopart, they seemed very smart, but not a great bet to succeed, because they didn’t seem especially committed. One of the two founders was still in grad school. It was the usual story: he’d drop out if it looked like the startup was taking off. Since then he has not only dropped out of grad school, but appeared full length in Newsweek with the word “Billionaire” printed across his chest. He just cannot fail now. Everyone he knows has seen that picture. Girls who dissed him in high school have seen it. His mom probably has it on the fridge. It would be unthinkably humiliating to fail now. At this point he is committed to fight to the death.

An article in the Washington Post Magazine about a policy debate team from the Urban Debate League in Baltimore, Md. Very cool!

(via CrunchNotes)