Mark MacLeodFounder, Limitless.ceo · The Startup CEO Coach | Helping ambitious CEOs & founders scale world-changing companies without sacrificing their health, happiness, purpose, or humanity

Ignoring Paul Graham´s advice - Michael Litt, The Startup CEO SHOW

31 May 2024 · 1 min

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Transcript excerpt from a Startup CEO SHOW episode where Michael Litt explains recruiting video-delivery engineers from a local YouTube office in Waterloo and recounts Paul Graham’s metaphorical warning that returning to Waterloo would be like ‘climbing Mount Everest with a 10 pound weight on my back.’ The speaker reflects on the metaphor and its ambiguity.

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We needed some strong video delivery developers, and Google had a small YouTube office there that we knew we could probably at least get one or two engineers from to get us started. And so it started to look pretty attractive. Now, when I told Paul Graham that we were going to do this, he told me that going back to Waterloo would be like climbing Mount Everest with a 10 pound weight on my back. And this is a PG ISM. Like, PG has a way of saying things that are metaphorical, and you kind of walk away from that conversation and think, like, what did he truly mean there? And of course, when you climb Everest, it gets harder with altitude.