Conference Presentation, Keynote
Paul Buchheit
- Paul Buchheit, an early Google employee credited with inventing Gmail, coining "Don't Be Evil," and founding FriendFeed (acquired by Facebook), addresses founders on the philosophy of innovation and decision-making.
- Core Thesis: Technology is defined by "patterns in the head" rather than just silicon; changing these mental patterns allows for small decisions that steer major outcomes.
- Pattern 1: "I don't know anything"
- Warns against the danger of experience, noting that "naive young founders" often succeed because they are unaware that an idea won't work.
- Advises that successful opportunities reside in collective blind spots where most perceive bad ideas or unimportance.
- Cites 1997 as an example where Larry Page and Sergey Brin failed to sell Google for $1 million due to conventional wisdom deeming search unvaluable.
- Identifies dogma and ideology as greater threats to innovation than lack of experience, as they rigidly bound thinking ranges.
- Argues that logic and reason can be traps if used to enforce exclusionary belief systems rather than explore new possibilities.
- Pattern 2: "Kill all demon processes"
- Analogizes internalized voices of doubt, self-loathing, and ridicule to runaway background programs (daemons) consuming mental resources.
- Notes that even within Google, executives initially predicted Gmail would never reach one million users before its success.
- Recommends practices to clear mental noise, including breath observation, walking in nature, and the specific affirmation "Yes, and thank you" to dismiss internal critics.
- Pattern 3: "Yes, and thank you"
- Proposes accepting setbacks as gifts rather than failures, a mindset that distinguishes successful startups that leverage adversity from those that do not.
- Highlights Uber's 2012 London taxi strike as a specific instance where a setback was converted into massive growth opportunity.
- Suggests that accepting a wider range of outcomes opens pathways to discovering unexpected value in negative events.
- Pattern 4: "Choose the more interesting path"
- Identifies "interestingness" as a primary signal for investment decisions, favoring productive uncertainty over predictable outcomes or random gambling.
- Recounts investing in Justin.TV in early 2007 based on curiosity rather than viability, noting the initial absurdity of 24/7 personal streaming.
- Describes Justin.TV's pivot to Twitch.tv for gaming, now generating over 100 minutes of daily viewer time and ranking as the fourth-largest US internet traffic source behind Netflix, Google, and Apple.
- Defines success in investing as the ability to learn something interesting regardless of the startup's financial outcome.
- Warns against founders sacrificing their lives on external success metrics for projects they do not genuinely care about.
- Pattern 5: "Love what you do"
- Contrasts the adage "do what you love" (future-oriented, often leading to unhappiness) with "love what you do" (present-oriented, intrinsic).
- Advises treating the time between now and goal completion as the primary focus rather than an obstacle to be endured.
- Uses the author's transition from hating to loving running as an example of shifting focus from goal completion to the quality of the immediate experience.
- Argues that intrinsic motivation combined with a meaningful vision transforms the "95% dirty diapers" of startup building into heroic effort.
- Pattern 6: "Maintain a healthy disregard for the impossible"
- Traces the concept to Google's early culture, where unrealistic goals like storing the entire web in 256MB RAM became reality due to fast-moving technology (Moore's Law) and ambitious thinking.
- Notes that writing Gmail's interface in JavaScript was considered a bad idea by experts but eventually established the modern web app paradigm.
- Posits that "potentially impossible goals are much more inspiring than realistic ones."
- Economic and Social Vision
- Asserts that technology, capitalism, and government are "patterns" or technologies that require improvement to be beneficial.
- Outlines an "impossible goal": using technology to provide universal food, housing, education, and healthcare, thereby ending wage slavery.
- Estimates that adequate provision for all is achievable using only a fraction of current labor and resources.
- Predicts that freeing humans from survival labor will unleash an "unprecedented boom in human creativity and ingenuity."
- Cites Instagram's growth to 200 million users in under four years as an example of how small, dismissed ideas can scale to larger-than-nation impacts.
- Concludes that founders must start small, work with the "grain of what is," and rely on independent judgment to solve worthwhile problems.