Phil Libin tells founders to pick ideas that are "sufficiently epic" to justify years of intense work. Spending your life optimizing ad clicks for money is a waste. Choose problems big enough to be worth the years you'll give them.
When you're in a startup, you're on a quest. And you want to make sure that your quest is sufficiently epic. It really— there's nothing sadder than seeing a talented, young, energetic entrepreneur or wannabe entrepreneur, and you sort of get their idea. Hey, what do you want to work on? And they tell you the idea, and you're like, oh, that's Lame. Like, oh, that's just insufficiently epic. Because you're going to spend your life on it. Whether you think you are or not, whether it's your entire life or 5 years, or 5 years is all you have left, it's going to be really hard. It's a long time. Why would you do it on something that's insufficiently epic? Why would you work on something that's optimizing how many people click on a certain type of annoying ad or something like that? Yeah, maybe you can make money on it, maybe you can't, but it's not worth your life. Don't work on it if it's not worth your life. Make something sufficiently epic.
