Error converting content: marked is not a function
- Source - http://www.paulgraham.com/schlep.html - Schlep was originally a Yiddish word but has passed into general use in the US. **It means a tedious, unpleasant task.** - schleps are not merely inevitable, but pretty much what business consists of. A company is defined by the schleps it will undertake. - **Your unconscious won't even let you see ideas that involve painful schleps. That's schlep blindness.** - Why work on problems few care much about and no one will pay for, when you could fix one of the most important components of the world's infrastructure? - The most striking example I know of schlep blindness is [Stripe](http://stripe.com/), or rather Stripe's idea. - 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. You'd have to make deals with banks. How do you do that? Plus you're moving money, so you're going to have to deal with fraud, and people trying to break into your servers. Plus there are probably all sorts of regulations to comply with. It's a lot more intimidating to start a startup like this than a recipe site. - So the reason younger founders have an advantage is that they make two mistakes that cancel each other out. They don't know how much they can grow, but they also don't know how much they'll need to. Older founders only make the first mistake - The trick I recommend is to take yourself out of the picture. Instead of asking "what problem should I solve?" ask "what problem do I wish someone else would solve for me?" - -