
Schlep Blindness - anateus
http://paulgraham.com/schlep.html
======
mixmax
I think there's a flaw in the premise, namely that one persons schlepp is
another mans passion.

From the Stripe example: _"You'd have to make deals with banks._ " - I know
quite a few people who would love nothing more than the challenge of getting
big banks to sign on to a new payment service. Their passion is selling. The
harder the sell the bigger the challenge. Just like good hackers want to work
on hard technical problems great salespeople like to work on hard sales
problems.

The real takeaway here is that you should find your personal schlepps and
start a company with someone who is passionate about them. If a great hacker,
a great salesman and a great fraud investigator started a company they would
be able to start a company like stripe. And they'd all be doing stuff they
were passionate about.

~~~
pg
I had a paragraph about this in an earlier draft, but I took it out because it
was only half true and the true half seemed obvious. The obvious half is that
one man's schlep is another man's interesting problem, and that once the
company gets going you can hire experts in each of the schleps you need to
deal with.

But not all the schleps a company undertakes are schleps simply in virtue of
not being someone's specialty. You have to satisfy users' needs to make a
successful company, and it is very unlikely that the stuff you have to do to
satisfy users' needs also happens to be exactly what you'd most like to work
on, even if you're the specialist in that problem.

~~~
lrobb
>> Most hackers who start startups wish they could do it by just writing some
clever software

I wonder if the word "hackers" ought to be replaced with "young hackers of the
type to apply to YC"?

If you're fresh out of school, or have only worked in big silicon-valley
companies doing specialized tasks, I can see it. I have a hard time believing
someone with even a few years experience in smaller companies haven't come to
grips with "schlepness".

>> Maybe that's one reason the most successful startups of all so often have
young founders.

I don't think that's what the research shows:

""" Old guys rule. And they are far more likely to be the founder of a
successful technology company than most of you understand. How do I know this?
Research that my team conducted, based on a survey of 549 entrepreneurs in
high-growth industries, showed that the average founder of a high-growth
company launched his venture at age 40. """

[http://techcrunch.com/2009/09/07/when-it-comes-to-
founding-s...](http://techcrunch.com/2009/09/07/when-it-comes-to-founding-
successful-startups-old-guys-rule/)

~~~
pg
Old hackers still _wish_ they could just program. The difference between old
and young is that the old are more likely to know they can't have what they
wish for in that respect.

The research you quote is about moderately successful startups, not about the
most successful of all. You can easily verify I'm right about the outliers by
traversing the Forbes 400.

~~~
lrobb
Ok... with correlation vs. causation out of the way, and a ridiculously small
sample size to boot, it appears the average age of Forbes 400 tech company
founders was almost 32 at the time of the founding their companies
(<http://goo.gl/iHAEe>).

I have a feeling that's not what you meant when you said "young"...? Maybe you
meant to restrict that to only founders that wrote the code their companies
are based on? In which case, yeah, the founders of facebook, google, and
Microsoft were all young when they started... I'd be careful drawing too many
conclusions on that sample size, however.

------
cperciva
Note: "tedious, unpleasant task" != "impossible task".

Back during the first internet bubble, I was playing around calculating Pi and
drew the attention of some VCs: "distributed computing" was big. After asking
if I was interested in starting a company (I wasn't -- I was going off to
Oxford to do my doctorate) one of them asked for my opinion on the technical
feasibility of a business plan.

My advice (which I provided for free, being a foolish 19 year old) was "it is
provably impossible to solve these problems as stated without transmitting
information faster than the speed of light". They funded the company anyway,
and $10M later the company died having never produced anything.

Be the guy who says "this is going to be hard, but I'm sure it's possible".
Don't be the guy who says "I'm sure I can find a way to circumvent the laws of
physics".

~~~
waitwhat
_Be the guy who says "this is going to be hard, but I'm sure it's possible".
Don't be the guy who says "I'm sure I can find a way to circumvent the laws of
physics"._

Why be either guy? If you know that something really isn't possible, just say
so. Hang onto your self-respect and reputation.

~~~
cperciva
I guess I phrased that poorly. I mean that you should work on problems which
are hard but possible, not that you should be dishonest.

------
zapnap
Stripe is an awesome example of a company that addressed a tangible
frustration / real need instead of a desire or a higher-level "want". I've
noticed that companies that provide "Internet plumbing" often fall into this
category:

* SendGrid (bulk email sending)

* Twilio (easy to use telephony / sms)

* Zencoder (video encoding)

* MailChimp (mailing list management)

What others can you think of? Would love to see a list here :).

~~~
pg
Heroku, Mailgun, MongoHQ, Cloudkick, Parse, AeroFS, DotCloud, Vidyard,
AppHarbor, Mixpanel, Cloudant, PagerDuty (we like this type of company).

~~~
d3x
One of the things that I have noticed about all of your examples is that they
are all tools for developers. Do you have any examples of companies that solve
real problems for the general consumer?

~~~
peterarmstrong
Leanpub (self-publishing in-progress ebooks)

[disclaimer: my startup]

~~~
mark_l_watson
That is pretty nice Peter. I have a few short book ideas and I'll try your
service out on one of them.

------
chrisaycock
_Instead of asking "what problem should I solve?" ask "what problem do I wish
someone else would solve for me?"_

PG had another gem some time ago along the lines of:

 _The best startup is the one you needed at your last job._

~~~
Jare
Another plus for young founders - older people have solved more problems by
brute force (often just paying a specialist to solve it for them) and don't
consider them problems anymore.

~~~
skmurphy
"A new broom sweeps clean but an old broom knows the corners." Irish aphorism

------
brc
This is funny because one of the first startup ideas I ever had was 'hey, I
should make a webservices based site for collecting web payments, lots of
people would use that'. This was back when PayPal was still principally
something you used to share money between two people, and was limited
principally to US accounts.

But I made the mistake of talking over the idea with someone who I looked up
to at the time, who seemed older and wiser. They said 'there are already
systems that do that, I would find something else'.

Now I'm not saying I had even the remotest chance of getting such a thing off
the ground - but at the time, I was so ignorant that I thought I could - but
the ignorance worked both ways in that I would blindly accept the word of
someone else, who just highlighted the _schlep_ involved and so I immediately
gave up.

But that's just what the article says : when you're young ignorance can be a
blessing, but you've got to be prepared to put in the hard work and not give
up at even the tiniest hurdle. Getting that rare mix in a young person is the
elusive part. But I'm convinced you can get young people to put in the hard
work - you've just got to give them the encouragement to go ahead and fail big
if need be.

~~~
mixmastamyk
One of the big failures we have as a society is not teaching our young people
that "average" people will do their best to suppress success in others. Almost
everyone I know has a story like this to tell... if only that so-and-so didn't
tell me my dream was impossible, perhaps I could have been successful at it.

------
kmfrk
One of the things that made Seinfeld so successful was his insane tenacity;
what he did in a year most of his fellow comedians did in five. It's not that
he was necessarily the smartest nor the funniest guy in stand-up, but he was
one of the people who worked the hardest. And it's not as if he didn't hone
his craft while doing it.

Skills, talent, money, and ideas are a part of the puzzle, but you can also
beat your competitors on work ethic.

~~~
waitwhat
"Don't break the chain". I've used Jerry Seinfeld's method to just get stuff
done since I first read about it a few years ago.
[http://lifehacker.com/281626/jerry-seinfelds-productivity-
se...](http://lifehacker.com/281626/jerry-seinfelds-productivity-secret)

------
utunga
i worked for a startup (eVend) that tried to tackle the 'hard problem' stripe
tackles way back in 1997. You read that right - 1997!

From Stripe's home page: "you don't need a merchant account or gateway. Stripe
handles everything, including storing cards, subscriptions, and direct payouts
to your bank account."

The problem was - not schlepp blindness - but the fact that this problem was
_completely impossible to solve_ in 1997.

Sure, maybe our execution was lacking (I was just a junior programmer at the
time) but what really killed it was the banks and especially the credit card
companies.

Mastercard and Visa just said _no_. We will not allow this to happen. Whoever
charges the card must be responsible for delivery. We pivoted to take this
into account (digital content delivery anyone) but reality was. This schlepp
was too hard at that time.

People have been banging on the 'making payment easy' door, for a long, long,
time. The fact that Stripe is making progress now is more a fortuitous
confluence of events than the fact that nobody else had tried.

------
kul
I see a pretty big schlep involved in our business (<http://www.tagstand.com>
YCS11). Fulfillment is an absolute pain in the ass.

The closest thing that comes close to solving it is Amazon's fulfillment
services ([http://www.amazonservices.com/content/fulfillment-by-
amazon....](http://www.amazonservices.com/content/fulfillment-by-
amazon.htm#!features-and-benefits)), but it doesn't quite work and is US only.

A hard problem to solve indeed (and one we've discussed).

~~~
mikhaill
Product fulfillment is hard but doesn't have to be a pain. There are plenty of
very sophisticated 3PL warehouses that can do any type of fulfillment you
need. At my last job I managed an e-commerce business and our process was so
streamlined that we'd never actually touch our products. They were delivered
from production directly to the 3PL fulfillment warehouses where the items
were unpacked and stored. When the orders came in items were packed up, and
shipped out, including international delivery. When items were sent out, we
got the tracking numbers for the packages back so we could send customers
e-mails (again all automated).

Some of the newer operations have staff on site that has electronics expertise
and offer troubleshooting of arriving items, etc. It seems that having them
flash NFC stickers shouldn't be soo bad to teach them (but maybe expensive).

~~~
kul
that's amazing, can you share some names/links of recommended warehouses?

~~~
mikhaill
Certainly. None of these require 6 figure payments. There are some setup fees,
(very reasonable) and then they usually charge per action (items packed,
computers checked, etc).

Ones I worked with and would recommend: <http://parcelport.net>,
<http://amplifier.com/>

Ones that I talked with but didn't have personal experience
(yet)<http://www.im-logistics.com>, <http://archway.com>,
<http://www.capacityllc.com/>

Each has their own pros and cons and it depends on what you're trying to
accomplish.

------
tlogan
This is pretty much chicken and egg problem. There is a huge schlep blindess
in world of VCs, advisors, incubators, etc. So many entrepreneurs are actively
discouraged to do things they want and to solve the real hard problems (the
most common theme is: because there is a big company XYZ doing something kinda
similar like that).

~~~
pg
Not at this incubator.

~~~
absconditus
The amount of money provided by YC seems like it would naturally limit the
type of problems that could be solved by a YC startup.

~~~
tptacek
The amount of money more-or-less promised to all YC companies is deceptively
larger than the amount YC itself publishes. Also, until you get to Webvan
sizes, there are existence proofs to pretty much all the possible company
sizes at YC.

~~~
absconditus
I am aware that there are very large companies that were originally funded by
YC. There are some problems that do not begin with throwing some code on EC2
and iterating to success. Hardware design and production is the area that
comes to mind. I realize that there are a few companies that were funded by YC
that did some hardware design and production, but they are certainly not
representative of the entire problem of hardware design and production.

------
revorad
I find online shopping for a lot of things to be really tedious (when you
don't exactly know what to buy). That's why I'm working on a shopping search
engine to make finding the right products much faster and easier. But PG
dismissed my idea as a shopping guide that no one needs.

Almost every new shopping/ecommerce startup is some clone of Pinterest or a
Q&A site. Those are very attractive ideas, but I believe I'm working on the
real schlep, which involves combing product feeds, crawling for furniture
photos, etc. and making life for the average Joe easier.

What do you think?

~~~
AznHisoka
How would you say it's tedious? There are many sites with product reviews,
blogs, forums, etc. Need a new camera? There's dpreviews. Need a new TV? Cnet.
Need a new video game? IGN.

~~~
revorad
Exactly. Deciding what to buy is a research project. I think it's one of those
pains we've got so accustomed to, that we take it for granted.

~~~
AznHisoka
Well, don't be too enthusiastic about this idea.. I've seen lots of sites try
it and fail such as Measy, Gdgt, etc. The ones that succeed are the ones that
thrive in the search engines. People use search engines to find what they
want.. they don't go to a specific destination.

~~~
revorad
Heh, I'm not driven just by my own enthusiasm - that doesn't pay the bills.

------
car
Just a side note: like many Yiddish words, 'schlep' originates from the german
verb 'schleppen', which translates to 'haul','tow','drag','carry' or 'tug'.

~~~
rquantz
Yes, I've never heard schlep defined as an unpleasant task, except in that
schlepping your suitcase all the way to Newark airport and back (or any other
schlep) is unpleasant. The main conclusion I draw from this article: Paul
Graham is not jewish. Either that or I don't know what schlep means.

~~~
motti
It does only mean a "an arduous journey" or, when used literally, "to
pull/drag" but it isn't used to to mean a arduous task in general.

I guess, In an effort to find a Google-able/SEO-friendly unique phrase, pg has
overgeneralised the term.

~~~
drats
It "isn't used to to mean a arduous task in general" says who? The OED defines
it as a "troublesome business, a piece of hard work" with examples of that
particular usage going back to 1964 in the Economist, who I presume wouldn't
have used it unless their audience would understand. Pg has provided
contemporary examples from the web at large using it in this fashion as well.
Also the original German doesn't mean the actual journey but the act of
dragging or being burdened so I don't see how this usage is likely to be at
odds anyway.

~~~
ashirusnw
As a native Yiddish speaker, my experience is that schlep is only used to
describe a journey-related pain in Yiddish - I think TFA statement that this
is a Yiddish word used in this context is what's confusing (has the article
been edited to clarify this since?). It appears that its use has been expanded
by non-Yiddish speakers to refer to "arduous tasks" - although no-one besides
OED seems to think this.

As it happens, in Yiddish, there is a one other use which is more related
which is to describe someone as "a schlepper" (or that they "schlepped") which
means they take a long time do something.

~~~
drats
No-one besides the OED.. There is no central authority for English, but if
there were one it would be the OED. Besides, there are copious examples of
people using it in that way in English for half a century: the OED catalogues
these so it's not really up for debate in English. And that's the point, it's
English not Yiddish we are talking about. You would say "it's Yiddish, not
German" if a German started trying to correct you on things because he's a
"native speaker".

Edit: as far as I can tell the article always said "originally a Yiddish word"
which serves to hold the case I am making.

------
yurylifshits
Just a few other huge schleppy targets:

    
    
        Better elementary/middle/high school
        Better voting (digital democracy)
        Better government procurement system
        Better prisons or prison alternatives

~~~
chintan
Better Electronic Health Record systems

~~~
crdoconnor
The problem with doing one of these (as with all of the ones above) is that
you have a serious principal-agent problem on the buy side.

The people using your products (doctors) aren't necessarily the ones making
the purchasing decisions, and in such situations you won't always win by
providing the best product.

This is why EHR systems especially have a lot of fine grained reporting
systems that let administrators spy on just about everything going on (they
love this) and huge sales teams with budgets to lavish potential buyers with
champagne and horrific user interfaces for doctors.

------
startupfounder
"And schleps should be dealt with the same way you'd deal with a cold swimming
pool: just jump in." (love the metaphor pg)

I did this once outside of my startup on a motorcycle trip to Panama, crossing
the boarder into Mexico was a huge block for me and my riding buddy. We stayed
in the US and drank beer for 2 days straight not realizing what we were doing.
Then one night we had a moment of clarity, jumped on our bikes and headed for
the boarder.

We just jumped right in!

In that moment of clarity I removed the fear and felt total freedom and the
world became my oyster if only for a moment or two.

I think schleps are the reasons why many startups either fail or succeed, the
ones that win hit the wall and learn to break through them.

~~~
gabaix
Schleps is an indicator our work goes towards success. It has to be hard.
Notice this can equally lead the entrepreneur to nowhere. It is the role of
the entrepreneur to understand if this the right schleps.

~~~
startupfounder
That is where focus, vision, listening and filtering come in...

------
psychotik
Would the various AWS services count as the biggest, by far? Not a startup,
but fits the definition.

------
corin_
An interesting piece, but I think a flawed one too.

I am in complete agreement with the section about " _you can't start a startup
by just writing code_ ", and I think that concept could have expanded to
become an entire and valid article.

But then it morphed from that into the idea that people (often subconciously)
avoid "schleps" and pick easier tasks instead, which I think is both obvious
and normal. I also think it is often a lot less subconcious than pg thinks.

To expand on the example of olympic athletes: I don't know about that specific
example, but to expand to "professional athletes", an awful lot of people do
think about being a football star, a top baseball player, whatever. But
ultimately, even children with dreams have a basic understanding of risk vs.
reward.

Saying that starting stripe involves a lot of schleps is one way of putting
it, another way is to say that you're less likely to succeed.

 _Probably no one who applied to Y Combinator to work on a recipe site began
by asking "should we fix payments, or build a recipe site?" and chose the
recipe site. Though the idea of fixing payments was right there in plain
sight, they never saw it, because their unconscious mind shrank from the
complications involved._

Other than gut instinct is there any reason to believe this is the case? Those
people also chose to start a recipe site over becoming journalists, or chefs,
or working in fashion - nobody has ever, before starting either a career or a
startup, gone through every possibility and ticked them all off, so why is it
that in this case we should assign subconcious fear of hard work s the reason?

Personally I find it can often be the reason conciously, to the extent that I
don't believe it has any need to be in my subconcious. Much like when I'm in a
casino and think "let's bet fairly small" rather than "risk my entire savings
to have a chance at getting crazily rich", when it comes to work I conciously
think about how hard something will be, and what rewards it could bring.

Personally I work in content/publishing, and no it never occured to me to work
on Stripe, but thinking about it now, if I could go back in time, I wouldn't
try to build Stripe first, nor would I at this point in time consider a job in
that kind of company. Maybe part of that can be assigned to the schelps
involved, but I'm conciously deciding that.

Regardless, an interesting piece as food for thought.

edit: As a completely unrelated question that doesn't really merit creating an
entire topic to ask, does anyone with showdead enabled have any idea what
comments like <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3465559> are all about? I
see them now and again, and can't work out any logic behind them.

~~~
Geee
Answer to unrelated question: Losethos is a developer of a quite unique
operating system, <http://www.losethos.com/videos.html> which he has been
developing for the past 10 years.

One of his last sane comments were when he asked startup advice here
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1782800> and got zero responses.

Sometimes it passes my mind that maybe someone on HN should help him. It's
quite obvious he has lost his mental health.

~~~
dangrossman
I reached out by e-mail once, out of similar curiosity to the parent, and got
a string of replies that made about as much sense as his comments here. The
mails kept coming, several minutes apart... I was actually worried I'd stepped
into a situation I didn't want to be in. I'm convinced there are some real
psychological problems there that startup advice won't help with...

> I'm some kind of terrorist lab animal, in jail--shrinks abuse me and shit.

> All I can do is post to HN News and yell at my shrinks.

> I get fake downloads and no emails. Total terrorist lab rat abused by
> shrinks.

It is sad. I hope he does see those shrinks.

~~~
meric
From his comments and yours, here is what might have happened:

He developed an operating system by himself, spent a lot of effort in it.

Despite spending a large part of his life on this project, not many people are
interested.

In despair, and alone, all he thinks about everyday is losethos, as you can
see in each comment. In his mind, everything links back to losethos in
someway.

`I could do USB but keyboard and mice aren't any better, possibly worse from a
compatibility state. Memory sticks would be really nice. Now, we're in the
domain of distinctive drivers for similar pieces of hardware. Can't do that.
Might be able to.`

He seems to have related this article to how he didn't implement drivers for
those accessories in his OS. (Schleps)

I am guessing he was sent to a clinic by his parents.

`I don't know. I don't even care. I don't care about one person. Parents are
enemies. I pay them $600 they take care of me, but abuse me, I prolly abuse
them. This is heaven -- argument clinic and I'm telling truth all the time,
except for wild speculation. I don't know shit about reality.`

His frequent references to God suggests someone close has given him a bible,
in an attempt to help him.

He is able to comment on HN probably because he still has access to his
computer and internet.

Pouring your life into a project, only after finding nobody cares much about
it, while living alone for years... I can see how I'd become mentally unstable
too.

=(

`Frustration over my reality being bogus, sucks.`
<http://news.ycombinator.com/x?fnid=K3sfeO8PZb>

He was probably told that by doctors. Could it be caused by long-term denial?

Here's more of him elsewhere:
[http://forum.osdev.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=18514&sta...](http://forum.osdev.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=18514&start=15)

~~~
corin_
See also
[http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/lhefd/losethos_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/lhefd/losethos_64bit_operating_system_v707_released/)
and
[http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/lhefd/losethos_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/lhefd/losethos_64bit_operating_system_v707_released/)
(second link from three years ago, a lot more sanity shown).

------
6ren
Very hopeful. pg wrote similarly in "How to make wealth" (choose hard
problems; choose hard options) <http://awurl.com/HLZs3Bxu7>

my version: life is suffering, so you might as well suffer meaningfully.
Making something tedious into something simple can itself be _extraordinarily_
tedious. But what a great thing to have done!

A problem is an opportunity.

------
davidw
> Most people don't consciously decide not to be in as good physical shape as
> Olympic athletes, for example. Their unconscious mind decides for them,
> shrinking from the work involved.

Being a world-class athlete is essentially a full-time job. Most people quite
consciously do decide not to work two full time jobs, or simply don't have the
energy for it. Not the best example...

~~~
gaius
It's not only a full-time job, those who are successful at it are genetically
suited to it. It wasn't _training_ that gave Michael Phelps his flipper-like
feet...

------
stevenj
pg, would you be willing to share some of the great startup ideas you think
people are overlooking? (In addition to the ones on the Request for Startups
list.)

------
AznHisoka
Generally speaking, the more shlep you're willing to deal with, the less
perfect your marketing can be. Find a cure for cancer, and you won't have to
market it. Work on a recipe site OTOH and your marketing better be tight.

And you definitely have less competition. More shlep acts as barriers to
entry. So does unique insight/expertise in a field outside of technology.
Anyone can build the next Del.icio.us, or Pinterest, but not anyone can build
the next software system that can help currency traders make money, or
software to monitor diabetes patients. But most people just go after the low
hanging fruit.

~~~
ak2012
and this is because of many reasons too... Easier money, lack of time for
harder problems, scared of failure and thus wasting time/money. Agreed to
point one, more shlep now, less marketing required.

------
ez77
"One of the many things we do at Y Combinator is teach hackers about the
inevitability of schleps."

Or, as somebody wisely put it, "All good planning eventually degenerates into
work."

------
vbtemp
Nitpicking: To schlep comes from the German verb "schleppen" - to drag. In
yiddish it refers generally to a commute or journey that is in some way quite
aggravating - for example, I consider my daily commute in which I'm stuck in
traffic a "schlep". Or, "I had to schlep my buby around town all afternoon as
she kvetched about her bad back".

In short, to schlep does _not_ mean a tedious or unpleasant task, it means a
tedious or unpleasant journey.

------
nickpp
Never tried Stripe, but what was wrong with Avangate or ShareIt before that?

Did not seem to me that accepting payments on your website was so painful...

~~~
mnutt
I just looked at Avangate's site and it wouldn't even let you sign up without
"requesting a quote".

Give Stripe a try.

~~~
verroq
If you aren't from the US don't even bother.

~~~
pc
We're working on fixing that part.

~~~
jQueryIsAwesome
If you guys are really, and i mean really looking forward to include other
countries; i know that me and another bunch of people would be willing to give
you money right now as an advance for the service and as incentive to actually
make it happen.

Just be sure to include the big profitable countries: Switzerland, Germany,
Australia, Japan, Canada, France, UK among others.

------
larrys
"If you pick an ambitious idea, you'll have less competition, because everyone
else will have been frightened off by the challenges involved. (This is also
true of starting a startup generally.)"

Given the right set of circumstances of course this is exactly where the
opportunity is with many things.

Take real estate as another example.

If you buy a nice looking, appealing, ready to go condo or home in a well know
building or neighborhood, assuming values aren't rising, there is really no
way to make a killing.

You make a killing by transforming something. By adding value. You take an
unappealing piece of real estate and you transform it. Or you buy a piece of
land and you build something on it ready to go. It's well known that people
buy on an emotional level. And if they can't get attached to something they
won't pay as much. (This is why homes are staged for example or cars are
shined up at the dealer).

------
digisth
Very good article. I think we should also consider the /reasons/ many
consciously avoid "known/well understood" schleps. They have to do with the
motivations for undertaking the work involved with a startup (or anything
else, but startups for this argument) in the first place. Paths of least
resistance are going to be taken if they satisfy the goals. Basically, the
issue in the cases I'm speaking of is _satisficing_.

1) If you want to hang out with "cool startup people" and be involved in "cool
startup culture" just about any startup will do. No need to do something
difficult. That recipe aggregator will do just fine.

2) If you want to work on "interesting" problems, there are lots of those too.
They might not serve many people (dev tools which do the same thing as many
other existing dev tools and do not improve upon them) or change the world in
really useful ways, they can still be /interesting/ to work on.

3) If you just want to make enough money so that you can stop stressing out
every single day of your worry-filled life over having to work yourself to the
bone for the rest of your life/becoming homeless/being able to afford
food/shelter/health insurance, and you think just about any startup can give
you that Startup Lottery Ticket, you don't need to work on the next Stripe.
You just need a couple of million, then you could move into your one room
studio/log cabin/pod and live the rest of your life sans the typical day-to-
day worries about the basics and be just fine. The diminishing marginal
utility of money seems like an excellent bulwark against trying to do those
Schleppier things. If you're going to make at _least_ as much from a
RecipeAggregator472 as you would from a Stripe, the choice is easy.

As pg states, undertaking these sorts of endeavors requires ignorance for
some, but I would also add some other possible useful motivators (ignorance
may also become tougher "motivator" since so much useful data about failure is
so readily available):

1) The need for big money for other goals. If you want to be a mega-
philanthropist/cure cancer/finally solve immortality/whatever, you probably
need BIG BUCKS. The number of people motivated to actually do this (or who
even think it is possible) is probably not very large.

2) Fanaticism. You want to make this project happen because it's just your
dream. The rewards are irrelevant. You will make it so that it's possible to
create coffee from rain no matter what it takes, it's just that important to
you. Probably not that many of these either.

3) Revenge. Everyone told you it could not, can not, and will not be done.
Maybe they told you that you will never be the Coffee From Rain King. Whatever
the reason, you live to prove them wrong and rub their faces in it. You want
to get on the news and blithely tell the world about you invented this genius
thing while making no mention of your detractors, but you secretly giggle with
glee since you know you were Right, and they were Wrong. This one might
actually be the easiest of the bunch, but still requires a delicate balance of
just enough ridicule and scorn to motivate one, but not so much so that one
one thinks said thing is truly impossible.

4) Reinforcing the Peltzman effect. Certainly not a panacea either, but it
could certainly help: [http://www.angrybearblog.com/2012/01/peltzman-effect-
why-eco...](http://www.angrybearblog.com/2012/01/peltzman-effect-why-economic-
growth-has.html)

------
teyc
The problem here is domain knowledge. Everybody understands what a To Do List
is.

------
AdamFernandez
A question to ask may be, is there a more efficient way to discover what these
problems are? I know Y combinator and co. have somewhat of a pre-defined list
of problems they would like to see solved that are not being addressed. For a
lot startups it seems to be random. Their idea occurred to them when 'they',
or someone they knew were having this problem.

I think there are many industries that many talented engineers know nothing
about, and therefore don't know where the problems lie. How can we facilitate
this awareness to the people who want to create startups without it being
happenstance?

~~~
vyrotek
I'm sure many people have gone through the same thought process. The problem
is many people don't know they want something or realize they have a need
until they see a solution. The whole, _I'll know when I see it_ mentality in a
way.

Instead of a _request for proposal_ we need a _request for startup_. But
people want their solutions now because they have the need now.

~~~
AdamFernandez
I agree. Perhaps this particular 'problem' is something that I will work on.

~~~
vyrotek
This site came to mind - <http://wappr.com>

------
ivankirigin
I thought for a moment that the essay was about how to find startup ideas:
solving your own schleps. Solve those things which everyone assumes are an
annoying part of life/business.

The things I do that I find the most tiresome: commute by car, dishes,
laundry, and flossing.

I find it funny that the solution to the first three if you have money are:
1\. Hire a human driver (or move). 2. Hire a human maid. 3. Hire a human maid.

But all might be solved by technology: robot drivers, robot butler, robot
butler, and "vaccines" against tooth decay and halitosis.

If I dug into the less important schleps, I bet I'd find that software is a
solution.

------
sinzone
Even though Braintree (<http://braintreepayments.com>) is not exactly like
Stripe in terms of "speed to be up and running", it was created way before
Stripe and has important features (like Third Party Payment Aggregations - a
must for sites like Airbnb) that Stripe can't have in the short term.

As a result, Braintree is processing billion and billion of dollars a year.

------
ajju
This is the money quote:

"A company is defined by the schleps it will undertake. And schleps should be
dealt with the same way you'd deal with a cold swimming pool: just jump in."

It also helps to think of things like "making deals with banks", which can
initially seem scary, in terms of the basic human actions they really stand
for: "talking to a lot of people who work for banks". To me at least, that is
both less boring and less scary.

~~~
esrauch
For me, "talking to a lot of people who work for banks" is a lot less scary,
but it is also so unimaginably boring. It would be difficult for me to imagine
something more boring that talking to a ton of people who work at banks about
banking.

That's exactly why Stripe is so valuable.

~~~
ajju
I like talking to people. It _can be_ pretty boring if they don't engage with
you and just stay with formal/small talk, but if you can get someone to really
talk, you learn all sorts of new things about the world.

------
mapster
Its about personality and subsequent 'search pattern'. Stripe was never on the
radar for most entrepreneurs, while building the next RecipeBook is. This is
due to most entrepreneurs are not the game changing type whose personalities
lead them to tackle such large and unwieldy issues like Stripe did.

It should be noted that the world will never know how many tried and failed to
do what Stripe succeeded in.

~~~
ak2012
Another problem is, if you are out of university or high school without much
experience in really any field, what exactly are you going to build, you have
no real specializations and are a blank state, so you can work with what you
do know a little about... music? recipes, travel? existing consumer web apps
that are easy to code (and then coding it and realizing marketing is the real
challenge for them).

Wondering what Paul G. thinks of this.

------
sown
I don't mind doing tedious things. I discovered in college that I was an
excellent bureaucrat when I became student treasurer.

I just wish I could come up with ideas, though. A lot of them are hard for me
to relate to. I don't go out and do normal consumer-type things ( not that
there's anything wrong if you do) or have any real friends, so social things
are out.

I just can't relate.

~~~
ajaymehta
Startup ideas are so cheap that there are a bunch of resources for finding
free ones if you don't think you can come up with one (which I'm sure you
could, if you had a good brainstorming session!)

Maybe you could start here at YC's requests for startups:
<http://ycombinator.com/rfs.html>

------
tstyle
I wonder if going after a schlep problem hurts you in the hiring department.
Although founders may be motivated to grind out schlep problems in the hopes
of a large payoff, the talented programmer who is willing be engineer #1 at a
startup is exactly the type of person who is susceptible to schlep blindness.

------
blasdel
At least in the one example you gave, 'blindness' is a terrible way to
describe how hackers avoid it

"fixing payment processing" is not a problem that we subconsciously avoid —
but rather one that we very deliberately stay as far away from as possible. Is
there a more inglorious class of failed internet startups?

------
pnathan
One of the key reasons why I think the US university system is useful is it
demonstrates who can do the schlepp.

And boy howdy, is enterprisey full of schlepping. Talking with my dad, who has
run his own small construction business for the last 20? years, this is just
the nature with work in general.

+1, pg. +1.

------
kkt262
Guess the folks at WePay didn't read this.

Still struggling to see the difference between WePay and Stripe personally.

------
ph0rque
_The most dangerous thing about our dislike of schleps is that much of it is
unconscious. Your unconscious won't even let you see ideas that involve
painful schleps._

"Unconscious" should probably be "subconscious" in these two sentences...

------
zerostar07
The case of Stripe is a rather bad example: most of the work is schleps,
leaving very little for the enjoyment of creating something new, something
unique, something that has the potential to not become an "also ran".

~~~
biot
Wasn't that the point of the article? Most people would avoid creating
something like Stripe because of all the schleps.

------
WhatsHisName
I don't agree. The way to make money is to do the simplest thing that makes
money. Rarely is that the thing that you least want to do.

------
revorad
He comes so close to spelling out some ideas he wants people to do, but for
some reason files them under "What you can't say".

------
VaedaStrike
pg,

How many, or which, of the companies that have had success with Y-combinator
were companies that were, in a manner you could discern early on (such as in
the application process), clearly addressing schleps versus those you took on
simply due to the force of character of the founder(s) (by virtue of their
relentless resourcefulness)?

------
_corbett
this article has a lot of truth to it, but one thing I will always disagree
with PG about is that ignorance is a good thing. perhaps ignorance may produce
a better local maximum than limited knowledge, but as a hacker I believe the
true optimum lies at maximum knowledge.

------
rriepe
Why is it too late to be Stripe?

~~~
dpkendal
Because there's already a Stripe. Doesn't mean you _couldn't_ start a company
to do what Stripe does, but it'd be hard, since people would probably be
saying, "Isn't that what Stripe does?"

~~~
moonlighter
I disagree completely. Stripe is the only one so far who doesn't suck. There's
room for more, and plenty of room for differentiation. Sure, stripe.com set
the bar and has first mover advantage etc., but that doesn't mean they now own
the market. Not at all.

~~~
moe
Agreed. There's room for more than one payment-provider-that-doesn't-suck™.

And let's not forget stripe hasn't even launched in europe, yet. That's quite
a market still waiting to be schlepped.

------
DodgyEggplant
as usual, it's also in the bible
[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/DevelopmentAbstractio...](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/DevelopmentAbstraction.html)

------
macco
I would like to know, what are the schleps of HN readers?

------
njharman
Main reason why (I want to code not schlep) I don't want to run a business,
let alone a startup. I've run business before, btw.

------
FredBrach
Great essay with good lessons. I will work on those for sure.

By the way, can someone explain to me what's the difference between paypal and
stripe? In what paypal don't fix web payment?

~~~
izak30
For me, It's the API and customer (developer) service. Second to none in the
payment industry.

~~~
inuhj
Yep, I spent the last two days hanging out in the Stripe campfire chat while I
was implementing my own billing system. Some of the questions were borderline
bizarre and I was truly shocked at how the Stripe team went above and beyond
to answer every single request. My only other experience is with SagePay who I
spent weeks asking questions on their developer forum to get a handful of
vague responses.

------
noduerme
Point of usage - "Schlep" is most commonly used as a verb. As in, "Oy, you had
to drop out of college and schlep all the way to California, just to listen to
some schmuck make himself a macher?" It's true, you could say "that was a long
schlep" - but other than meaning a long or difficult physical journey, (think
getting home from Vegas on a Sunday), when schlep is used as a noun, it almost
always refers to a person, short for schlepper, or one who schleps. This is
someone at the bottom of the totem pole. As in "what kind of schlep wants to
deal with this guy's verkakte ego?"

------
diego
This essay is very disingenuous. Businesses are hard work, Paul Graham wants
to invest in the next Facebook, he needs younger founders who are ridiculously
ambitious and won't take an early exit.

[http://diegobasch.com/stop-the-presses-essay-shows-that-
hard...](http://diegobasch.com/stop-the-presses-essay-shows-that-hard-work-c)

Edit: pg, don't downvote me :)

~~~
tptacek
I don't think it's disingenuous; I think it's pretty on-the-nose. Also, I
think "early exits" are still win conditions at YC; that's one of the
(salubrious) benefits of being organized like YC and not DFJ; there's a lot of
reasons why a "YC" would want to tune outreach to young people, and none of
them need to be "avoid build-to-flip companies".

