A little over ten years ago Paul Graham published the essay "Do Things That Don't Scale." At the time, it was highly controversial advice that spoke to the drastically different needs of an early startup versus the needs of a much larger, more established company.

YC Partners discuss PG's essay, its influence on Silicon Valley, and some prime examples of YC founders that embraced the mantra "Do Things That Don't Scale."

Read Paul Graham's essay here: http://paulgraham.com/ds.html

Apply to Y Combinator: https://yc.link/OfficeHours-apply
Work at a startup: https://yc.link/OfficeHours-jobs

Chapters (Powered by https://bit.ly/chapterme-yc) -
00:00 Intro
02:09 Paul Graham's Essay
04:17 Prioritizing Scalability
05:38 Solving Immediate Problems
08:53 Fleek's Manual Connections
10:32 Algolia and Stripe
12:25 Learning Over Scalability
15:20 Embrace Unscalable Tasks
17:41 Experiment and Adapt
19:06 DoorDash's Pragmatic Approach
21:26 Swift Problem Solving
22:33 Transition to Scalability
23:30 Consulting Services
25:05 Outro