Paul Graham
Paul Graham
Paul Grahamis an English computer scientist, venture capitalist, and essayist. He is known for his work on Lisp, for co-founding Viaweb, and for co-founding the Y Combinator seed capital firm. He is the author of some programming books, such as: On Lisp, ANSI Common Lisp, and Hackers & Painters...
ProfessionEntrepreneur
Date of Birth13 November 1964
business esoteric great requires starting
There are all these great programmers out there who think starting a startup requires esoteric business knowledge,
games last
These last games are the most important. We want to be at the top, not at the bottom.
call common days founders problem program situation sleep summer takes three work
The Summer Founders Program fixes the common problem with working at a startup, which is that it's very lonely. You do nothing but work and sleep and no one understands the situation you are in, and friends don't know why it takes three days for you to call them back.
people
Some people just get what they want in the world.
customers
Small-business customers are very conservative and very cheap. We don't have to explain ourselves for the most part.
bad seemed side social
When Facebook first started, and it was just a social directory for undergrads at Harvard, it would have seemed like such a bad startup idea, like some student side project.
suppose
I suppose I should learn Lisp, but it seems so foreign.
ceo found visionary
Empirically the way you get a product visionary as CEO is for him to found the company and not get fired.
accounts cases far immediate sold
We don't have to go that far to sell our beer because our immediate accounts sell so much. Places that sold 10 cases before, now they're selling 30.
experience hard imagine running sort unless
Like having a child, running a startup is the sort of experience that's hard to imagine unless you've done it yourself.
In the startup world, 'not working' is normal.
instead
If you really understand something, you can say it in the fewest words, instead of thrashing about.
clearly money
If you could replace high-school yearbooks, that could be a lot of money. It's so clearly waiting for someone to come along.
design designing knows premature presumably program worried
Everyone by now presumably knows about the danger of premature optimization. I think we should be just as worried about premature design - designing too early what a program should do.