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Plainly Put

One sentence about building things, taken apart

Topic

Founders and teams

Sentences about the people doing the building, alone and together.

75 essays, 2010–2014

Much of what founders tell each other is about temperament, and this section gathers those lines. Failure comes up more than anything else. Drew Houston says a founder only needs to be right once, Seth Godin notes that the road to success is seldom easy and never certain, and an old saying advises failing often so as to succeed sooner. Chris Dixon measures ambition in rejections, which holds only while the rejections teach something.

Other pages deal with how a founder carries themselves. Tony Hsieh warns against being cocky or flashy. Biz Stone says it can take ten years of trying to look like an overnight success, and a line credited to Henry Ford prefers a remedy to a complaint.

On teams, Jeff Atwood argues that few things build mastery like teaching peers, and Dennis Crowley suggests building the nearest workable version when the technology a founder wants does not exist yet.

2014 1 essay

  1. Mark Zuckerberg's lines, and what they meant for building a companyMark Zuckerberg

2011 47 essays

  1. Build the rough version the technology allows todayDennis Crowley
  2. The objection that became the featureAaron Patzer
  3. Someone at the table is better than youTony Hsieh
  4. Acting brilliant is the slow road to being seen as brilliantSeth Godin
  5. Progress runs through the change people resistCharles F. Kettering
  6. Bring a remedy along with the complaintHenry Ford
  7. The team is the hardest part, and the market can still overrule itJohn Doerr
  8. Pick which one to give up: easy or certainSeth Godin
  9. Creativity as the moment an assumption stopsEdwin Land
  10. Pick the table before you play the handTony Hsieh
  11. Listening to complaints without being run by themScott Heiferman
  12. When good enough gets in the way, and when it should notJim Collins
  13. Good hires are what let a founder sleepBijan Sabet
  14. Why chasing competitors makes a product less competitiveKathy Sierra
  15. Pandora's unpaid years and what kept the staffTim Westergren
  16. Giving people jobs slightly too big for themMark Pincus
  17. A founding team, and the people it can attractJim Breyer
  18. Splitting the difference between two visions leaves neitherSean Rad
  19. The case for starting in a slumpReid Hoffman
  20. Fear as something trained down, not wished awayArianna Huffington
  21. Unique is a starting point; better is what keeps peopleAngelo Sotira
  22. When experience starts blocking the wayBoris Veldhuijzen van Zanten
  23. Describing the product you want is not the same as having itLarry Ellison
  24. An idea becomes an innovation only when someone ships itGarry Tan
  25. Freedom works for the people who were hired for itAndrew Mason
  26. Hiring for what someone knows, not what their papers sayAza Raskin
  27. Looking naive is a smaller risk than hedging every ideaScott Belsky
  28. A market with one company in it is a lonely place to sellMarc Benioff
  29. Founder stories get told from the end, and the middle disappearsJessica Livingston
  30. Michael Dell's retail detour and what it taught himMichael Dell
  31. A rough start is normal, which is different from meaningfulSam Altman
  32. Measuring success in fun, and who else gets countedJake Nickell
  33. Customers can judge a product, not invent itSteve Jobs
  34. Asking a team to care as much as the founderScott Heiferman
  35. Investors back teams because one person runs outMark Suster
  36. Rejection as a count, not a verdictMark Cuban
  37. The cheap yes and the expensive one that followsJason Fried
  38. The people around a founder, chosen on purposeShervin Pishevar
  39. Outcomes get remembered; methods get checked laterJason Calacanis
  40. Different is cheap to copy, better is notJonathan Ive
  41. Creative work needs room to fail, and a reason to stopEdwin Land
  42. Keep the optimism and check it against the numbersJoe Kraus
  43. How Yelp adapted to what users did insteadJeremy Stoppelman
  44. The long, uncertain middle of building somethingTim Westergren
  45. A little outside irritation keeps a company inventiveFred Wilson
  46. Mistakes are the price of being awakeIngvar Kamprad
  47. Being called crazy is common, and it proves nothingLarry Ellison

2010 27 essays

  1. What a good partner multiplies, and what a bad one dividesArianna Huffington
  2. Every job looks easy from the outsideJason Fried
  3. Small is a size, doing more with less is a skillGreg McAdoo
  4. A company defined by its rival borrows the rival's shapeOmar Hamoui
  5. Owners who answer to no one still benefit from answering to someoneTim O'Reilly
  6. How a rival can make the sale easierSeth Godin
  7. Confidence in the voice, accuracy in the factsLarry Ellison
  8. Explaining something to a peer shows what you do not knowJeff Atwood
  9. A mentor from the right field beats a famous one from the wrong fieldKyle Bragger
  10. Building the team from the first dayRon Conway
  11. Each new hire adds conversations as well as handsDavid Karp
  12. People judge trust by looks, online as much as in personAaron Patzer
  13. An optimistic founder needs someone on the team imagining disasterEvan Williams
  14. The thousand days before Airbnb looked suddenBrian Chesky
  15. What a resume leaves out, and what fit can hideHoward Schultz
  16. The golden rule as a way to run a team, and its blind spotNolan Ryan
  17. Where the best deals are, conflicts of interest come alongJohn Doerr
  18. Surviving a hard year does not guarantee a stronger companyFriedrich Nietzsche
  19. Leadership as example, and where example runs outIngvar Kamprad
  20. Let the bestsellers pay for the long shotsJen Bekman
  21. Give people a job slightly bigger than the one they expectedRichard Branson
  22. Daily rejection as a sign the goals are big enoughChris Dixon
  23. The ten years behind an overnight successBiz Stone
  24. Plan for a quarter of your projects to failAdam Smith
  25. When launching early is risky, learn early insteadDrew Houston
  26. Being right once only counts if the misses were smallDrew Houston
  27. Cheap failures, early and oftenTom Kelley