Paul Graham: "The best startup ideas seem at first like bad ideas" When Peter Thiel spoke at YC he drew a diagram with two intersecting circles: "seems like a bad idea" and "is a good idea." The intersection is the sweet spot for startups.

Intelligence is local entropy reversal.

Either we align AI, or our escape plan from Skynet will be abstract geometry emerging from moving static noise.

Over time, almost everything in a business changes. The only thing that sticks, by definition, is the determination of the people who built it.

"Clay just crossed $100M in ARR. This was a true 8-year overnight success story: it took us 6+ years to hit our first $1M, and ~2 years to grow from $1M → $100M." [Varun Anand] Keep building, test what works, learn fast: that's how you end up creating something great.

Top 10% at YC but not selected. Still building. Still shipping. Still obsessed.

Help me raise $100M to build the AlphaFold for this problem. Win: $1B revenue. Lose: we pivot these minds to finance. Deal? Ali Partovi , Elon Musk

Business problem: 2-hour interview with domain experts isn’t enough. Industry solution: Let’s have candidates talk to an AI for two minutes instead! The problem is real and huge. First-principle approach needed in a long sales cycle industry -> Contrarian VCs will take the bet