Rob Walling

The obstinate are attached to their ideas about how to reach it.

I love, love those two sentences.

Those two sentences alone describe so many founders that I have seen or tried to give advice to or interacted with on the internet.

And I tell you, the persistent are the ones that they just can figure it out.

And the obstinate are the ones that get in their own way over and over and over.

And the only way they're successful is if they happen to luck upon the right answer from the start because they're so attached to their ideas about how to reach it.

Continuing on with the essay.

Yeah, he says it right here.

Worse still, that means they'll tend to be attached to their first ideas about how to solve a problem.

I wasn't trying to quote him.

It just came to me.

Even though these are the least informed by the experience of working on it.

So the obstinate aren't merely attached to details, but disproportionately likely to be attached to

to the wrong ones.

Paul Graham drops knowledge.

I mean, if you haven't read Paul Graham's essays, they're very well thought out.

But I love it when he has this take because I see these patterns playing out over and over in founders, over and over.

I see it on social media and you see the same people tripping over themselves and getting in their own way over and over.

And it's because they're being obstinate.

So there's a wrong kind of stubborn and a right kind of stubborn.