Intro
Paul Graham is the co-founder of Y Combinator, the most influential startup accelerator in the world, and the creator of the first web-based application (Viaweb, later Yahoo Store). His essays at paulgraham.com are required reading for founders and have shaped modern startup culture.
Graham's writing combines programming insights, startup wisdom, and philosophical observations about work, creativity, and independent thinking. He co-created Hacker News and has funded companies including Dropbox, Stripe, Airbnb, and Reddit.
Talks & Lectures
- 🎧 Before the Startup (Stanford 2014)
- Lecture 3 from "How to Start a Startup" course. Counterintuitive advice for aspiring founders.
- 🎧 Startup School 2008
- Classic Y Combinator talk on building startups.
Essential Essays
Paul Graham's essays are all available at paulgraham.com. Here are the must-reads:
On Startups
- Do Things That Don't Scale (2013)
- Perhaps his most influential startup essay. Early-stage founders should focus on manual, unscalable efforts to truly understand users.
- How to Start a Startup (2005)
- The foundational essay: great people, make something customers want, spend as little money as possible.
- Startup = Growth (2012)
- The definition of a startup is a company designed to grow fast. Everything else follows from this.
- Default Alive or Default Dead (2015)
- The critical question every founder should be able to answer.
On Work and Creation
- Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule (2009)
- Why programmers (and writers) need long blocks of uninterrupted time, and why meetings are so destructive.
- How to Do Great Work (2023)
- A comprehensive essay on the elements that lead to breakthrough creative work.
- The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius (2019)
- What separates geniuses from ordinary people isn't just ability—it's obsessive interest.
On Thinking
- Keep Your Identity Small (2009)
- The more topics you make part of your identity, the stupider you become.
- What You Can't Say (2004)
- On intellectual fashions and moral courage.