Who is Paul Graham?
Issue #8: Paul Graham & Philosophy
👋 Hey Friends,
At WaitWho.Is, we help you find the most innovative thinkers, leaders, and entrepreneurs from across the globe to inspire you to think deeply and explore curiously.
Each week, we introduce you to one of our favorite thinkers and highlight some of their best content. We’ll also let you know about the new folks that we’ve indexed so you can see all of their best content in one place.
Who is Paul Graham?
This week, we’re going back to the basics by introducing (hopefully re-introducing) you to one of the most influential thinkers of the past decade — at least in our lives — Paul Graham.
Back in 2005, there wasn’t much of a startup scene; the Valley was on the road to recovery from the dot-com bubble and there was little (good) advice, a limited network, and no easy access to capital for people who wanted to start startups. That all started to change when Paul Graham pulled in his co-conspirators Jessica Livingston, Robert Morris, and Trever Blackwell to form what would become Y Combinator (YC) — the now famous startup “accelerator” that provides battle-tested advice, community, and funding to founders starting startups.
In the 15 years since, YC has funded over 2000 startups including some of the most prominent tech companies in the world including Stripe, Dropbox, Airbnb, Reddit, and Coinbase. They now fund non-profits, run experiments like YC Research and YC Bio, and operate YC Startup School which provides free education & resources on starting a startup to millions of people around the globe.
Obviously, YC has done an incredible job growing and expanding. It’s also abundantly clear that without Paul Graham and Jessica Livingston, we wouldn’t have anything close the startup ecosystem that we have today — including all of the resources, frameworks, and tools that have made starting a startup more accessible. We’ll defer to Sam Altman (former President of YC & now CEO at Open AI), who wrote in his recent piece PG & Jessica:
I am pretty sure no one has had a bigger total impact on the careers of people in the startup industry over that time period than the two of them.
Now because of this massive impact, a lot of people have come across Paul’s essays that have made their way into startup lore (namely: Do Things That Don’t Scale and Ramen Profitable). However, Paul has written extensively on lots of topics, yet most don’t venture out beyond the startup pieces.
That’s why today we want to introduce you to 4 non-startup essays that have had a profound impact on the way we view the world (and that we’re constantly revisiting).
We hope you’ll enjoy reading (and re-reading) as much as we do:
The Top Idea in Your Mind — What you think about in the shower may be the best way to see what you’re focusing on (and if that’s the right thing).
What You Can’t Say — The things you’re not allowed to say and how these things change over time.
Keep Your Identity Small — Be careful what identities you attach yourself to because you’ll end up defending them.
Cities and Ambition — You are a product of your environment; be mindful of the message the city you live in is sending.
If you want more Paul Graham or want to stay updated whenever he publishes something new, you can subscribe to his profile at WaitWho.Is/Paul-Graham and follow him on Twitter @PaulG.
Who else?
This week we also want to introduce you to the amazing:
Jessica Livingston — Cofounder of Y Combinator
Adora Cheung — Partner at YC
Caterina Fake — Partner at Yes VC
Josh Wolfe — Partner at Lux Capital
Who do you want to see?
Is there a certain person you would love to see featured?
We’d love to hear from you and get suggestions about who to feature next or who to add to the directory. Just hit reply :)
Have a great week!
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