http://www.paulgraham.com Articles by Paul Graham en-us http://www.paulgraham.com/cred.html "Now, thanks to the internet, there's a path. Anyone can publish essays online. You start in obscurity, perhaps, but at least you can start. You don't need anyone's permission." http://www.paulgraham.com/useful.html http://www.paulgraham.com/useful.html Writing 2020-02-21-T12:17:47-07:00 "An epidemic is different. It falsifies your predictions rapidly and unequivocally. ... [T]his is the most accurate test of credibility we're ever likely to have. I hope." http://www.paulgraham.com/cred.html http://www.paulgraham.com/cred.html Politics 2020-04-06-T12:17:47-07:00 "Though it feels unpleasant, and people will sometimes ridicule you for it, the more you feel like a noob, the better.." http://www.paulgraham.com/noob.html http://www.paulgraham.com/noob.html Education 2020-01-31-T12:17:47-07:00 "Haters are just fanboys with the sign bit flipped." http://www.paulgraham.com/fh.html http://www.paulgraham.com/fh.html Haters 2020-01-12-T12:17:47-07:00 "I hate to say this, because being ambitious has always been a part of my identity, but having kids may make one less ambitious. ... On the other hand, what kind of wimpy ambition do you have if it won't survive having kids? Do you have so little to spare?" http://www.paulgraham.com/kids.html http://www.paulgraham.com/kids.html Life 2019-12-15T12:17:47-07:00 "Erosion of [the link between work and authority] is one of the most important trends happening now." http://www.paulgraham.com/lesson.html http://www.paulgraham.com/lesson.html Education 2019-12-07T12:17:47-07:00 "One of the reasons we especially like funding ideas that might be dismissed as "toys" [is] because YC itself was dismissed as one initially." http://www.paulgraham.com/ycstart.html http://www.paulgraham.com/ycstart.html Business 2019-11-28T12:17:47-07:00 "If I had to put the recipe for genius into one sentence, that might be it: to have a disinterested obsession with something that matters." http://www.paulgraham.com/genius.html http://www.paulgraham.com/genius.html Ideas 2019-11-23T12:17:47-07:00 "It's not true that 'there's nothing new under the sun.' There are some domains where there's *almost* nothing new. But there's a big difference between nothing and almost nothing, when it's multiplied by the area under the sun." http://www.paulgraham.com/sun.html http://www.paulgraham.com/sun.html Business 2017-09-13T12:17:47-07:00 "The police often arrest the wrong person. Defendants' lawyers are often incompetent. And prosecutors are often motivated more by publicity than justice. In the real world, about 4% of people sentenced to death are innocent. So this is not about whether it's ok to kill killers. This is about whether it's ok to kill innocent people. A child could answer that one for you." http://www.paulgraham.com/prop62.html http://www.paulgraham.com/prop62.html Politics 2016-11-01T12:17:47-07:00 "What would it take to make Pittsburgh into a startup hub, like Silicon Valley? I feel like I understand Pittsburgh pretty well, because I grew up here, in Monroeville. And I understand Silicon Valley pretty well because that's where I live now. Could you get that kind of startup ecosystem going here?" http://www.paulgraham.com/pgh.html http://www.paulgraham.com/pgh.html Business 2016-04-13T12:17:47-07:00 "Relentlessly prune bullshit, don't wait to do things that matter, and savor the time you have. That's what you do when life is short." http://www.paulgraham.com/vb.html http://www.paulgraham.com/vb.html Politics 2016-01-16T12:17:47-07:00 "I don't think it's pessimistic to think growth in technology will increase economic inequality." http://www.paulgraham.com/klein.html http://www.paulgraham.com/klein.html Politics 2016-01-09T12:17:47-07:00 "As often happens when you say something controversial, there have been some very adventurous interpretations of the essay I just wrote about economic inequality." http://www.paulgraham.com/sim.html http://www.paulgraham.com/sim.html Politics 2016-01-05T12:17:47-07:00 "I've become an expert on how to increase economic inequality, and I've spent the past decade working hard to do it." http://www.paulgraham.com/ineq.html http://www.paulgraham.com/ineq.html Politics 2016-01-05T12:16:47-07:00 "Before we had kids, YC was more or less our life. There was no real distinction between working hours and not. We talked about YC all the time. And while there might be some businesses that it would be tedious to let infect your private life, we liked it." http://www.paulgraham.com/jessica.html http://www.paulgraham.com/jessica.html Business 2015-11-20T12:16:47-07:00 "By limiting their sample to their own portfolio, they were producing a study not of startup trends but of their own biases when selecting companies." http://www.paulgraham.com/bias.html http://www.paulgraham.com/bias.html Business 2015-11-01T12:16:47-07:00 "Before I publish a new essay, I read it out loud and fix everything that doesn't sound like conversation" http://www.paulgraham.com/talk.html http://www.paulgraham.com/talk.html Writing 2015-10-26T12:16:47-07:00 "If the company is default alive, we can talk about ambitious new things they could do. If it's default dead, we probably need to talk about how to save it. We know the current trajectory ends badly. How can they get off that trajectory?" http://www.paulgraham.com/aord.html http://www.paulgraham.com/aord.html Business 2015-10-15T12:16:47-07:00 "One case where it would help to be rapacious is when growth depends on that. What makes startups different is that usually it doesn't. Startups usually win by making something so great that people recommend it to their friends. And being rapacious not only doesn't help you do that, but probably hurts." http://www.paulgraham.com/safe.html http://www.paulgraham.com/safe.html Business 2015-08-30T12:16:47-07:00 "Most people's first impulse when they hear about a lame-sounding new startup idea is to make fun of it. Even a lot of people who should know better." http://www.paulgraham.com/altair.html http://www.paulgraham.com/altair.html Business 2015-02-26T12:39:47-07:00 "If something that seems like work to other people doesn't seem like work to you, that's something you're well suited for. For example, a lot of programmers I know, including me, actually like debugging." http://www.paulgraham.com/work.html http://www.paulgraham.com/work.html Business 2015-01-17T12:39:47-07:00 "The tactics you encounter in M&A conversations can be like nothing you've experienced in the otherwise comparatively upstanding world of Silicon Valley." http://www.paulgraham.com/corpdev.html http://www.paulgraham.com/corpdev.html Business 2015-01-13T12:39:47-07:00 "When experts are wrong, it's often because they're experts on an earlier version of the world." http://www.paulgraham.com/ecw.html http://www.paulgraham.com/ecw.html Business 2014-12-22T12:39:47-07:00 "Your mind is like a compiled program you've lost the source of. It works, but you don't know why." http://www.paulgraham.com/know.html http://www.paulgraham.com/know.html Life 2014-12-10T12:39:47-07:00 "There may be nothing founders are so prone to delude themselves about, as how interested investors will be in giving them additional funding." http://www.paulgraham.com/pinch.html http://www.paulgraham.com/pinch.html Business 2014-12-09T12:39:47-07:00 "Mean founders lose [because] they can't get the best people to work for them. They can hire people who will put up with them because they need a job. But the best people have other options." http://www.paulgraham.com/mean.html http://www.paulgraham.com/mean.html Business 2014-11-29T12:39:47-07:00 "This is one case where it pays to be self-indulgent. Work with people you genuinely like, and you've known long enough to be sure." http://www.paulgraham.com/before.html http://www.paulgraham.com/before.html Business 2014-10-02T12:39:47-07:00 "In the current YC batch, 16 out of 68 companies, or 24%, have female founders. That's almost twice the rate at which VCs fund such companies." http://www.paulgraham.com/ff.html http://www.paulgraham.com/ff.html Politics 2013-01-11T12:39:47-07:00 Second in a pair of essays on fundraising. http://www.paulgraham.com/herd.html http://www.paulgraham.com/herd.html Business 2013-08-13T12:39:47-07:00 "This is one of a pair of essays on fundraising. The next one, on fundraising tactics, is coming soon." http://www.paulgraham.com/convince.html http://www.paulgraham.com/convince.html Business 2013-08-07T12:39:47-07:00 "It's harmless if reporters and know-it-alls dismiss your startup. They always get things wrong. It's even ok if investors dismiss your startup; they'll change their minds when they see growth. The big danger is that you'll dismiss your startup yourself." http://www.paulgraham.com/ds.html http://www.paulgraham.com/ds.html Business 2012-11-20T12:39:47-07:00 "I think the biggest danger for VCs, and also the biggest opportunity, is at the series A stage. Or rather, what used to be the series A stage before series As turned into de facto series B rounds." http://www.paulgraham.com/invtrend.html http://www.paulgraham.com/invtrend.html Business 2012-11-20T12:39:47-07:00 "The way to get startup ideas is not to try to think of startup ideas. It's to look for problems, preferably problems you have yourself." http://www.paulgraham.com/startupideas.html http://www.paulgraham.com/startupideas.html Business 2012-11-20T12:39:47-07:00 "Maybe the advantage of software will turn out to have been temporary. Hackers love to build hardware, and customers love to buy it. So if the ease of shipping hardware even approached the ease of shipping software, we'd see a lot more hardware startups." http://www.paulgraham.com/hw.html http://www.paulgraham.com/hw.html Technology 2012-10-24T12:39:47-07:00 "Startups are so hard that you can't be pointed off to the side and hope to succeed. You have to know that growth is what you're after. The good news is, if you get growth, everything else tends to fall into place. Which means you can use growth like a compass to make almost every decision you face." http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html Business 2012-09-22T12:39:47-07:00 "The two most important things to understand about startup investing, as a business, are (1) that effectively all the returns are concentrated in a few big winners, and (2) that the best ideas look initially like bad ideas." http://www.paulgraham.com/swan.html http://www.paulgraham.com/swan.html Business 2012-09-10T12:39:47-07:00 "The biggest startup ideas are terrifying. And not just because they'd be a lot of work. The biggest ideas seem to threaten your identity: you wonder if you'd have enough ambition to carry them through." http://www.paulgraham.com/ambitious.html http://www.paulgraham.com/ambitious.html Business 2012-03-10T12:39:47-07:00 "Understanding all the implications--even the inconvenient implications--of what someone tells you is a subset of resourcefulness. It's conversational resourcefulness." http://www.paulgraham.com/word.html http://www.paulgraham.com/word.html Business 2012-01-17T12:39:47-07:00 "Instead of asking 'what problem should I solve?' ask 'what problem do I wish someone else would solve for me?'" http://www.paulgraham.com/schlep.html http://www.paulgraham.com/schlep.html Business 2012-01-15T12:39:47-07:00 "The problem is not that most towns kill startups. It's that death is the default for startups, and most towns don't save them." http://www.paulgraham.com/hubs.html http://www.paulgraham.com/hubs.html Business 2011-11-06T12:39:47-07:00 "If it becomes the norm for founders to retain board control after a series A, that will change the way things feel in the whole startup world." http://www.paulgraham.com/control.html http://www.paulgraham.com/control.html Business 2010-01-11T12:39:47-07:00 "If the iPad had come first, we wouldn't think of the iPhone as a phone; we'd think of it as a tablet small enough to hold up to your ear." http://www.paulgraham.com/tablets.html http://www.paulgraham.com/tablets.html Technology 2010-12-02T12:39:47-07:00 "Determination, Flexibility, Imagination, Naughtiness, Friendship" http://www.paulgraham.com/founders.html http://www.paulgraham.com/founders.html Business 2010-10-23T12:39:47-07:00 "After barely changing at all for decades, the startup funding business is now in what could, at least by comparison, be called turmoil." http://www.paulgraham.com/superangels.html http://www.paulgraham.com/superangels.html Business 2010-10-20T12:39:47-07:00 "It's a smart move to put a startup in a place with restaurants and people walking around instead of in an office park, because then the people who work there want to stay there, instead of fleeing as soon as conventional working hours end. They go out for dinner together, talk about ideas, and then come back and implement them." http://www.paulgraham.com/seesv.html http://www.paulgraham.com/seesv.html Business 2010-10-05T12:39:47-07:00 "You can probably take it as a rule of thumb from now on that if people don't think you're weird, you're living badly." http://www.paulgraham.com/addiction.html http://www.paulgraham.com/addiction.html Life 2010-07-27T12:39:47-07:00 "You can't directly control where your thoughts drift. If you're controlling them, they're not drifting. But you can control them indirectly, by controlling what situations you let yourself get into. That has been the lesson for me: be careful what you let become critical to you. Try to get yourself into situations where the most urgent problems are ones you want think about." http://www.paulgraham.com/top.html http://www.paulgraham.com/top.html Life 2010-07-22T12:39:47-07:00 "The way most fortunes are lost is not through excessive expenditure, but through bad investments. In most people's minds, spending money on luxuries sets off alarms that making investments doesn't." http://www.paulgraham.com/selfindulgence.html http://www.paulgraham.com/selfindulgence.html Business 2010-07-06T12:39:47-07:00