Thank you for listening. This audio was created with speech synthesis for humans with startup dreams — founders and aspiring founders who prefer listening to Paul Graham’s essays. It isn’t perfect, but it aims to get as close as possible to his real voice. In this talk, you’ll learn: 🧪 Why “crazy” ideas from reasonable domain experts are disproportionately likely to be important, high-upside bets 🧲 How dominant paradigms make almost everyone too conservative, blinding us to fragile, half-formed new ideas 😈 Why people reflexively dismiss new ideas—envy, status games, vested interests, and the temptation to look clever by attacking hatchlings 🛫 How to “fly on instruments”: instead of saying “that’ll never work,” ask why this smart person believes something that sounds so wrong 🤝 Why learning how big ideas looked at birth—and encouraging those working on them—is one of the best ways to spot or generate breakthroughs yourself