What Paul Graham thinks about startups
Co-founder of Y Combinator and Viaweb; essayist at paulgraham.com.
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24 dated positions, 2003 to 2026, in their own words. Our reading of what Paul Graham has said — not written or endorsed by them.
Our readingThe claim made most often here is that almost nothing about starting a company has changed with AI, and that what varies is founders rather than ideas or eras. The other recurring theme is temperament: ambition that is mostly inborn, fear of looking foolish as the daily motive, and a cofounder wanted for the stress.
Their wordsMost of starting a startup is the same. Most of starting a startup is always the same, right? In you know, microprocessors or AI or like internal combustion engine, it's always the same stuff.
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Their wordsyou make more money by being good. In startups you generally do
- 5 days earlier
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Their wordsMost of starting a startup is the same. Most of starting a startup is always the same, right? In you know, microprocessors or AI or like internal combustion engine, it's always the same stuff.
↗Paul Graham On Startups, Ambition, and Great Foundersyoutube.com 1st of 16 in this recording
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Their wordspeople are always saying that YC has jumped the shark. You know, and like I remember when people started saying this, which is in about like 2008, right? YC is always this thing that was great, but now it's not what it was, right? Cuz they can't say it was always terrible. They have to admit it was once great.
↗Paul Graham On Startups, Ambition, and Great Foundersyoutube.com 2nd of 16 in this recording
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Their wordswe knew that it was grueling. And you need you need something to drive you through all those obstacles and honestly being dutiful is not enough.
↗Paul Graham On Startups, Ambition, and Great Foundersyoutube.com 4th of 16 in this recording
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Their wordsYou know what actually motivates founders day-to-day? The fear of failure. Even though they're doing this thing that if they succeed they'll be super rich. Um that does motivate them but the thing that motivates them at the at any given moment is the fear of like disaster or looking like a fool, the server crashing, right?
↗Paul Graham On Startups, Ambition, and Great Foundersyoutube.com 5th of 16 in this recording
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Their wordsThose stories are rare because most of this quality is inborn.
↗Paul Graham On Startups, Ambition, and Great Foundersyoutube.com 6th of 16 in this recording
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Their wordsit's not that they lack ambition, it's more like they've been trained not to show it. Because when you're young you're often in situations where you're supposed to be obedient. You're not supposed to like go off and do what you want.
↗Paul Graham On Startups, Ambition, and Great Foundersyoutube.com 7th of 16 in this recording
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Their wordsIf you want to seem cool, like starting a startup is just about the least efficient way to do it.
↗Paul Graham On Startups, Ambition, and Great Foundersyoutube.com 8th of 16 in this recording
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Their wordsIt's hard it's harder to start a rocket startup on no money, but even a rocket startup you can start on not much money because what you do is you adjust for how much money you've got.
↗Paul Graham On Startups, Ambition, and Great Foundersyoutube.com 10th of 16 in this recording
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Their wordsinstead of starting with perfect and then working your way up to human, you start with human and then work your way towards perfect.
↗Paul Graham On Startups, Ambition, and Great Foundersyoutube.com 11th of 16 in this recording
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Their wordsthere's still a lot of startups in this batch that are not shipping fast enough. And so obviously there's variation in shipping speed. It's not just the rate at which you can produce things. You have to think of these ideas first, right?
↗Paul Graham On Startups, Ambition, and Great Foundersyoutube.com 13th of 16 in this recording
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Their wordsEveryone always asks me like with all this AI is anything still the same? And the answer is so far almost everything is exactly the same. The only weird The only weird new thing is that companies have these giant AI bills.
↗Paul Graham On Startups, Ambition, and Great Foundersyoutube.com 14th of 16 in this recording
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Their wordsif you if you divide the YC up into little bits where each startup is part of a pod of 70 startups, then it's just like they were back in 2012 when there were 70 startups.
↗Paul Graham On Startups, Ambition, and Great Foundersyoutube.com 15th of 16 in this recording
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Their wordsThe answer to your question where the next giant company comes from is it comes from the right founders. Right? It's not some particular idea.
↗Paul Graham On Startups, Ambition, and Great Foundersyoutube.com 16th of 16 in this recording
- 1 day earlier
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Their wordsOne of the distinctive things about YC as compared to later stage investors is that you have to be prepared to give advice about practically everything.
- 7 days earlier
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Their wordsStartup founders have a reputation for overconfidence, but this is just sample bias; the arrogant ones are also the loudest. Even now most good startups underrate themselves, so it really helps to encourage them.
- 10 days earlier
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Their wordsThere's a pervasive myth that "tax policy changes" are the reason economic inequality is growing. Actually it's because technology makes it increasingly easy to start companies, and makes them grow faster once you do.
- 2 days earlier
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Their wordsI still don't think it's a good idea though. The reason to have a cofounder is not just to get more done. It's to have someone to help bear the stress.
- 2 days earlier
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Their wordsA lot of founders I talk to are worried about what will happen with AI. So am I frankly. But they're actually better off than anyone else. If the world is going to get turned upside down, the safest place to be is in a small, fast-moving company that can easily change direction.
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Their wordsOne common question I get now is how much of the standard startup advice is still true in the AI era. So far almost all of it. There's more difference between the advice I give different startups in one batch than between what I've given pre-AI and post-AI startups.
- 23 months earlier
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Their wordsThere are things founders can do that managers can't, and not doing them feels wrong to founders, because it is.
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Their wordsIn effect there are two different ways to run a company: founder mode and manager mode. Till now most people even in Silicon Valley have implicitly assumed that scaling a startup meant switching to manager mode.
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Their wordsI also have another less optimistic prediction: as soon as the concept of founder mode becomes established, people will start misusing it. Founders who are unable to delegate even things they should will use founder mode as the excuse. Or managers who aren't founders will decide they should try to act like founders.
- 21 years earlier
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Their wordsThe place to fight design wars is in new markets, where no one has yet managed to establish any fortifications. That's where you can win big by taking the bold approach to design, and having the same people both design and implement the product.