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One sentence about building things, taken apart

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Sentences about what a company earns, what it costs, and what it is for.

20 essays, 2010–2026

Seen from above, hands with pens over printed charts and coffee cups on a table

A short section, since founders’ sayings deal with money less often than with product or pace. Two of its lines play wealth down. Steve Jobs said being the richest man in the cemetery did not matter to him, and Evan Williams boiled a company’s purpose down to changing the world, building a business and having fun. Marco Arment makes a more practical point about pricing: people pay for things they like because they want those things to last. A line credited to James Cash Penney, the retailer, holds that theory is worthless until someone puts it into practice.

The newest piece, from 2026, is about paying for a company’s first months out of a founder’s own pocket, whether from savings, a credit card or a personal loan. It argues for deciding before the money goes in what would end the experiment: a sum, a date or a number that has to be reached.

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2026 1 essay

  1. Borrowing to bootstrap: set the stopping rule firstMoney borrowed to keep an experiment going needs its ending written in advance: the sum, the date and the number that has to move. Chosen afterwards, it never gets chosen.

2011 14 essays

  1. A theory is worth what it does in the shopPenney's chain grew from a cash-only store in a Wyoming mining town. His line is right about business plans and wrong about one useful kind of arithmetic.James Cash Penney
  2. Richest in the cemetery was never the goalA fine standard for choosing what to build, and a poor plan for paying for it.Steve Jobs
  3. The complaint that says the price is rightFounders usually set prices too low, out of fear. A little grumbling from customers who keep paying is the sign the fear was misplaced.Paul Graham
  4. Running out of cash is honest, but lateAn empty bank account settles every argument about what matters. The same clarity is available, for less, from a forecast made while there is still money.David Heinemeier Hansson
  5. Traction attracts investors, but not every good product has the kind they wantUsage is the most persuasive thing a founder can show an investor. Investors are looking for a particular kind of usage, though, and plenty of good businesses do not have it.David Cohen
  6. The business model Instapaper runs onMost startup advice assumes growth first and revenue later. Arment's line assumes the reverse, and for a one-person software company it is hard to argue with.Marco Arment
  7. People pay to keep what they like aliveA one-person software business can sell reassurance as much as features. That works for a small, loyal group and not much beyond it.Marco Arment
  8. Three good goals that pull against each otherThe line lists three aims as if they sit together easily. In most years one of them has to come first.Evan Williams
  9. Money is the fuel for the trip, not the reason for itA company has to watch its cash closely to stay alive. Treating that as the purpose, rather than the constraint, changes what it builds.Tim O'Reilly
  10. Building on land someone else ownsA platform can hand a young company millions of users. It can also change one rule and take most of them away.Spencer Fry
  11. Funding the future is a different job from inventing itA venture investor picks and backs other people's inventions. The job has its own skills and its own blind spots, and clean technology has tested both.John Doerr
  12. Revenue at any cost, and what the cost turned out to beEarly revenue buys a company independence. Zynga's early methods also bought it a public scandal, which is part of the price.Mark Pincus
  13. A cash-only chain that learned to sell on creditPenney built his chain on a refusal to sell on credit. Decades later the company had to drop that rule to keep its customers.James Cash Penney
  14. Other people's winnings are no reason to sit at the tableHsieh drew the rule from poker. It applies with more force to markets, where the players who understand the game are the ones taking the newcomers' money.Tony Hsieh

2010 5 essays

  1. An investor's advice to look past the payoutThe advice came from a partner at one of the largest late-stage investors in the internet business. That context matters for how to read it.Alexander Tamas
  2. Loving the work as the fallback prizeMost advice about passion promises that the money will follow. Cuban's version admits it may not, and offers a smaller consolation.Mark Cuban
  3. Setting out to change the world usually means changing a small part of itA world-changing ambition is cheap to state. Companies that live up to it usually changed one group's habits first, and paid for it with revenue.Angelo Sotira
  4. What a job teaches, and what it leaves outPenney built a retail chain by turning clerks into partners who learned the trade in the store. The method works when feedback is quick and honest.James Cash Penney
  5. Edison's vote recorder and the test of a saleEdison's first patent was for a machine nobody wanted to buy. He drew a rule from it that still sorts useful work from clever work.Thomas Edison