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Founders, a true love story

Paul Graham penned a blog post about his wife Jessica Livingston yesterday. The two of them started YCombinator which has been nothing short of amazing. 

Paul gets most of the attention for YC likely because of his big personality and insightful and pointed writing. But for all of us that have met and interacted with Jessica it’s very obvious how special and vital she is to the YC story.

One of the many lines I loved in Paul’s post was this one:

What made YC successful was being able to pick good founders. We thought Airbnb was a bad idea. We funded it because we liked the founders.

Paul goes on to highlight Jessica’s ‘Social Radar’, her superpower to identify great founders. I love their emphasis on the importance of founders. I listed it essentially twice on the four things I look for. 

And it’s clear why YC worked so well. Yes, you can see it in their work. But you can really see it in the quality of their founders. 

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Jason Calacanis once asked Peter Thiel why Paypal produced so many great founders. What was it about Paypal? I loved Peter’s answer — Most people’s experiences with startups fall into one of two categories. Many work for startups that fail and learn that startups are impossible so they never try. Others work for startups like Google or Facebook and learn that startups are easy so they quit when it gets hard. Paypal was “just hard enough”. Early Paypal employees learned that startups are really hard, but it is still possible to succeed.

Henry Ward (via bijan)

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“I’m suspicious of people who don’t like dogs but I trust a dog when it doesn’t like a person.” -Bill Murray

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John Waters commencement address RISD 2015.

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Zookeepers posing like Chris Pratt in Jurassic World

Actual zookeepers taking photos of themselves doing Chris Pratt’s Jurassic World velociraptor taming move is a thing. Here’s the original:

And the imitators:

Found them here and here. If you find others, send them along!

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The Cinder Cone in Skamania County, Washington.

In the spring of 2014, Foster Huntington and a small group of friends broke ground on this property in the Columbia River Gorge. A year later, they finished construction on two treehouses, a wood burning tub, and a bowl for skating. 

Here’s a film about the build, directed by Foster:

There’s also a book in the works.

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It’s widely known that Stewart executed a shift in the Daily Show’s voice when he took over from Craig Kilborn in 1999, changing from a local news magazine format to the issue-driven satire it is today. But that change almost didn’t happen, and Stewart nearly backed out of the gig altogether.

“What I did not realize is, a lot of the people who worked there were assholes,” Stewart recalled.

“I walk in the door, into a room with the writers and producers, and the first thing they say is ‘this isn’t some MTV bullshit’…. And then I was told not to change the jokes or improvise,” he said.

He immediately phoned his agent, James Dixon, telling him to “get me the fuck out of this. These people are insane.”

“How close were you to saying that was it, you weren’t going to do it anymore?,” Colbert asked.

“I had to be talked down from a moderately high cliff,” Stewart said.

Source. 

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"Metolous River Cabin"

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The men and women in these portraits have survived the unimaginable. Seven decades ago, each one passed through Auschwitz, the infamous Nazi concentration camp complex linked forever in history with the phrase that greeted arrivals to the main camp: “Arbeit macht frei,” or “Work makes you free.”

continue

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Floating the Sierra’s infamous 7 Tea Cups on an inflatable dolphin.

Submitted by Devlin Gandy

Instagram @devlin_gandy

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Treehouse built from salvaged materials near Squamish, British Columbia.

Submitted by Jonathan von Ofenheim.

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The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.

Picasso. (via theimpossiblecool)

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This morning, like nearly every morning for the last 5 years, I stepped onto my Withings scale. I’ve been traveling the last few days and I’d added a couple pounds over that time. Interesting.

On my walk to the office this morning I tapped the button on my Nike Fuelband, which I’ve also worn...

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“Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness. Take pride that even though the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place.”

Kurt Vonnegut.