How to start Google

Paul Graham argues that young people can avoid ever needing a conventional job by starting their own company, and he explains how to build the skills and ideas to do so. He says the three requirements are being good at some technology, having a startup idea, and finding cofounders, and that the first two come from working on personal projects rather than classwork, since programming has been the source of the median startup for the last 30 years. Graham cites Facebook, Apple and Google as examples of startups that began as projects, with Mark Zuckerberg building a Harvard photo directory and Larry Page and Sergey Brin trying to improve search. He concludes that the best startup ideas are things the founder and their friends actually want.