Startups are counterintuitive

Graham says in Lecture 3 of the Stanford course that startups are counterintuitive in many ways, including that many founders don’t know the mechanics of investing or fund raising. He says founders also can’t game the system:

They always want to know, since apparently the measure of success for a startup is fundraising, another noob mistake. They always want to know, what are the tricks for convincing investors? And we have to tell them the best way to convince investors is to start a startup that is actually doing well, meaning growing fast, and then simply tell investors so.