A word of caution [0]: Over the years, I've twice come very close to quitting my job in the wake of reading those essays, and finally quit it this past month. Tread carefully [1].
In addition to this, I'd highly recommend paying close attention to how WhatsApp took on email, numerous copy-cats, the social media, the telecom industry and still won.
Yeah. I quit my job after reading those essays. I did 'succeed', however, in that I made about 3 years salary in one year after exiting. And while I joined several accelerators, the main factor for the victory were the essays.
I joined a few startups after that, none of whom read Paul Graham's essays, and their failure was also for not reading it. It's an extremely frustrating thing because they can do their homework and read a free 1000 word article online but instead choose to pay expensive consultants who lead them down the wrong path.
