tl;dr: Paul Graham argues that founders should ask not just "how do we make more money?" but "what would make this company more powerful?"—a heuristic that yields order-of-magnitude improvements via strategies like owning the customer relationship, routing money through yourself, creating network effects, going full-stack, extensibility/APIs, and selling to early-stage customers who decide fast and grow with you. He emphasizes playing the long game and generosity (creating more value than you capture), noting that these moves only work if they genuinely improve things for customers—which is precisely why startups tend to be good for the world.