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 model suing
You know your business model is broken when you're suing your customers.
people
There are plenty of smart people who get nowhere.
contact deals exactly hard technology
It's hard to say exactly what it is about face-to-face contact that makes deals happen, but whatever it is, it hasn't yet been duplicated by technology.
For the most ambitious young people, the corporate ladder is obsolete.
convince criticism exactly examples founders google great instead money telling worrying
I get a lot of criticism for telling founders to focus first on making something great, instead of worrying about how to make money. And yet that is exactly what Google did. And Apple, for that matter. You'd think examples like that would be enough to convince people.
record
One startup I dream of funding is the one that kills the record companies.
build business founders model people sweat task
What I tell founders is not to sweat the business model too much at first. The most important task at first is to build something people want. If you don't do that, it won't matter how clever your business model is.
business dressing good inept inevitably known substitute types
Dressing up is inevitably a substitute for good ideas. It is no coincidence that technically inept business types are known as 'suits'.
determination discard grad imagine intelligence perpetual quickly stop
If you imagine someone with 100 percent determination and 100 percent intelligence, you can discard a lot of intelligence before they stop succeeding. But if you start discarding determination, you very quickly get an ineffectual and perpetual grad student.
expressing programs
A programming language is for thinking about programs, not for expressing programs you've already thought of. It should be a pencil, not a pen.
good guest hits pros wear
To be fair, pros come out. They wear shorts. They have a good time. A lot of times if the guest hits a good drive, the pro will just say: 'Let's go.' It's just fun.
coach lost loves
I think he still loves the game. That's what coach does. He's a coach, 100 percent. He could conceivably come back. I don't think coach has lost any of his competitive fire.
hope running
We hope to be up and running by September.
hackers scientists start
So hackers start original, and get good, and scientists start good, and get original.