Hi All -

I received this article about startups, what they really like ... damn ... this is so true.

The source is at: http://www.paulgraham.com/really.html

Enjoy,

Zak

What Startups Are Really Like

October 2009

(This essay is derived from a talk at the 2009 Startup School.)

I wasn't sure what to talk about at Startup School, so I decided to ask the founders of the startups we'd funded. What hadn't I written about yet?

I'm in the unusual position of being able to test the essays I write about startups. I hope the ones on other topics are right, but I have no way to test them. The ones on startups get tested by about 70 people every 6 months.

So I sent all the founders an email asking what surprised them about starting a startup. This amounts to asking what I got wrong, because if I'd explained things well enough, nothing should have surprised them.

I'm proud to report I got one response saying:

What surprised me the most is that everything was actually fairly predictable!

The bad news is that I got over 100 other responses listing the surprises they encounte