Paul Graham essays (Y Combinator)

The Four Quadrants of Conformism - Paul Graham essay July 2020 One of the most revealing ways to classify people is by the degree and aggress... (2022)

October 2015 When I talk to a startup that's been operating for more than 8 or 9 months, the first thing I want to know is almost always the sam... (2022)

January 2005 (I wrote this talk for a high school. I never actually gave it, because the school authorities vetoed the plan to invite me.) Wh... (2019)

May 2021 "There's one kind of opinion I'd be very afraid to express publicly. If someone I knew to be both a domain expert and a reasonable pers... (2021)

April 2021 Every year since 1982, Forbes magazine has published a list of the richest Americans. If we compare the 100 richest people in 1982 to... (2021)

YCombinator. Paul Graham's essays. How to Present to Investors (2017)

An investor wants to give you money for a certain percentage of your startup. Should you take it? You're about to hire your first employee. How muc... (2017)

YCombinator, Paul Graham essay "Venture funding works like gears. A typical startup goes through several rounds of funding, and at each round yo... (2017)

YCombinator. Paul Graham essay: September 2013 Most startups that raise money do it more than once. A typical trajectory might be (1) to get s... (2017)

YCombinator. Paul Graham essay: August 2008 Raising money is the second hardest part of starting a startup. The hardest part is making somethi... (2017)

YCombinator. Paul Graham essay: October 2006 In the Q & A period after a recent talk, someone asked what made startups fail. After standing th... (2017)

YCombinator. Paul Graham's essays: July 2013 One of the most common types of advice we give at Y Combinator is to do things that don't scale. ... (2017)

YCombinator. Paul Graham's essays: April 2006. (This essay is derived from a talk at the 2006 Startup School.) The startups we've funded so far ... (2017)

YCombinator. Paul Graham Essay: October 2005 (This essay is derived from a talk at the 2005 Startup School.) How do you get good ideas for ... (2017)

Above all, understand your users. YCombinator. Paul Graham essay: February 2009 One of the things I always tell startups is a principle I lea... (2017)

Build something users love, and spend less than you make. YCombinator. Paul Graham essay. March 2005 (This essay is derived from a talk at the... (2017)

Paul Graham essay, May 2003, (This essay is derived from a guest lecture at Harvard, which incorporated an earlier talk at Northeastern.) "Hack... (2017)

August 2013 When people hurt themselves lifting heavy things, it's usually because they try to lift with their back. The right way to lift heavy... (2017)

YCombinator. Paul Graham essay. April 2007 (This essay is derived from a keynote talk at the 2007 ASES Summit at Stanford.) The world of inve... (2017)

“Great cities attract ambitious people. You can sense it when you walk around one. In a hundred subtle ways, the city sends you a message: you coul... (2018)

“If life is short, we should expect its shortness to take us by surprise. And that is just what tends to happen. You take things for granted, and t... (2018)

"Saying that taste is just personal preference is a good way to prevent disputes. The trouble is, it's not true. You feel this when you start to de... (2018)

Fundraising is hard in both senses: hard like lifting a heavy weight, and hard like solving a puzzle. It's hard like lifting a weight because it's ... (2018)

April 2007 “A few days ago I suddenly realized Microsoft was dead. I was talking to a young startup founder about how Google was different from ... (2018)

One reason programmers dislike meetings so much is that they're on a different type of schedule from other people. Meetings cost them more. The... (2018)

December 2014 If the world were static, we could have monotonically increasing confidence in our beliefs. The more (and more varied) experience ... (2019)

“... to some extent you can't trust me when I say having kids is great. To some extent I'm like a religious cultist telling you that you'll be happ... (2019)

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. The very... (2020)

October 2020 One of the biggest things holding people back from doing great work is the fear of making something lame. And this fear is not an i... (2020)

December 2019 There are two distinct ways to be politically moderate: on purpose and by accident. Intentional moderates are trimmers, deliberate... (2020)

November 2019 If you discover something new, there's a significant chance you'll be accused of some form of heresy. To discover new things, y... (2019)

“When I was young, I thought old people had everything figured out. Now that I'm old, I know this isn't true. I constantly feel like a noob. It ... (2020)

November 2019 Everyone knows that to do great work you need both natural ability and determination. But there's a third ingredient that's not as... (2019)

November 2020 There are some kinds of work that you can't do well without thinking differently from your peers. To be a successful scientist, fo... (2020)

Earnestness - Paul Graham essay December 2020 Jessica and I have certain words that have special significance when we're talking about startu... (2020)

December 2019 The most damaging thing you learned in school wasn't something you learned in any specific class. It was learning to get good grad... (2019)