TightWind is written by Kyle Baxter. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Paul Graham on what he calls “schlep blindness”:

Probably no one who applied to Y Combinator to work on a recipe site began by asking “should we fix payments, or build a recipe site?” and chose the recipe site. 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.

The “less fun” ideas are increasingly turning out to be the most exciting ones. Square and Nest are two of my favorite new companies, and they’re tackling problems that are ostensibly very boring—payments and thermostats. And yet they’re making a much larger contribution than most new startups.

(Via Connor O’Brien.)