Paul Graham: How to Start a Startup

Paul Graham (of Viaweb (which was acquired by Yahoo! and became Yahoo! Store) fame) has a very easy-to-read essay on how to start a startup. His three key ingredients of a successful startup are:

1. Good people.
2. Good product.
3. Good control on spending.

For point 1 I quote:

What do I mean by good people? One of the best tricks I learned during our startup was a rule for deciding who to hire. Could you describe the person as an animal? It might be hard to translate that into another language, but I think everyone in the US knows what it means. It means someone who takes their work a little too seriously; someone who does what they do so well that they pass right through professional and cross over into obsessive.

You know what, Emad and I have been called obsessive about Cornerstone Framework before at Cisco. This is a good sign :). Though we learned showing obsession about our own work may not be the best to do in all situations.

Will add more comments when I finish reading it.