PG
Paul Graham
Y Combinator · Viaweb · b. 1964
Born November 13, 1964
Programmer, essayist, and investor. Paul Graham (born 1964 in Weymouth, England; raised outside Pittsburgh) co-founded Viaweb in 1995 with Robert Morris and Trevor Blackwell — one of the first web-based applications, a store builder written largely in Lisp, sold to Yahoo in 1998 for roughly $49 million and relaunched as Yahoo Store. In 2001 he began publishing essays at paulgraham.com, and in 2005 co-founded Y Combinator with Jessica Livingston, Robert Morris, and Trevor Blackwell, inventing the batch-funding accelerator model that later backed Airbnb, Dropbox, and Stripe. His essays, more than either company, are what most founders encounter him through.
Which books are linked to Paul Graham?
These are examples from the documented shelf. Each label describes the connection; a book on the shelf is not always a recommendation.
- Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days by Jessica Livingston — Foreword and recommendation. Source
- Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs by Harold Abelson and Gerald Jay Sussman with Julie Sussman — Essay discussion. Source
- Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed by Ben R. Rich and Leo Janos — Book citation. Source
Contents
Career highlights
- 1964Born 13 November in Weymouth, Dorset, England, to a Welsh father who designed nuclear reactors for Westinghouse.
- 1968Moved with his family to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he was raised and attended Gateway High School.
- 1986Graduated from Cornell, having started in philosophy before turning toward artificial intelligence.
- 1990Earned a PhD in computer science from Harvard, after concluding that AI as practiced at the time was largely a dead end.
- 1993Published On Lisp, and studied painting at RISD and the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence.
- 1995Co-founded Viaweb with Robert Morris — Trevor Blackwell joined soon after — building software in Lisp that let merchants create their own online stores.
- 1996Opened Viaweb for business in January with six live stores.
- 1998Sold Viaweb to Yahoo for about 455,000 shares, worth roughly $49 million; the product was relaunched as Yahoo Store.
- 2001Began publishing essays on paulgraham.com, after something he posted there was linked on Slashdot and drew 30,000 page views in a day.
- 2004Published Hackers & Painters with O’Reilly, collecting the early essays that established his voice.
- 2005Co-founded Y Combinator on 11 March with Jessica Livingston, Robert Morris, and Trevor Blackwell; the Summer Founders Program funded 8 startups out of roughly 225 applications.
- 2007Launched Hacker News on 19 February — originally ‘Startup News’ — as a side project written in Arc.
- 2008Released the Arc programming language and married Jessica Livingston.
- 2014Stepped back from running Y Combinator, handing the presidency to Sam Altman.
- 2016Relocated with his family to England.
- 2019Published Bel, a new Lisp dialect written in itself, after four years of work.
- 2023Published ‘How to Do Great Work,’ an attempt to compress a career of advice into a single piece.
Lessons for founders
- Make something people want. In ‘How to Start a Startup’ (2005) Graham names making something customers actually want as the one indispensable ingredient, arguing that good people can fix bad ideas but good ideas can’t save bad people. The phrase became Y Combinator’s motto.
- Do things that don’t scale. In ‘Do Things that Don’t Scale’ (2013) he describes personally onboarding Viaweb’s early merchants — work that felt lame at the time but taught them exactly how customers experienced the product — and points to Airbnb’s founders going door-to-door in New York as the same instinct.
- A startup is defined by growth, not by funding or technology. ‘Startup = Growth’ (2012) argues that a startup is simply a company designed to grow fast, and that a weekly growth rate is a more honest compass than any other metric. A business capped by geography or market size isn’t a startup regardless of how it’s financed.
- Protect the maker’s schedule from the manager’s schedule. ‘Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule’ (2009) observes that people who build things need unbroken half-day blocks, so a single meeting can blow a whole afternoon. Founders sit at the collision of both calendars and have to defend the maker half deliberately.
- Exploit a technology your competitors underrate. ‘Beating the Averages’ (2001) credits Viaweb’s speed to writing in Lisp, and argues there is nothing more valuable in business than a technical advantage your competitors don’t understand — the ‘Blub paradox’ of programmers who can’t see past the language they already know.
- Choose co-founders as carefully as a spouse, and keep the team small and technical. He recommends two to four founders — enough to share the load without factionalism — with technical people among them, noting that being friends with someone for a few days tells you more than any interview process. His own YC co-founders were longtime collaborators.
- Writing essays is how you find out what you think. Graham dates his turning point to 2001, when he realised anyone could now publish directly to an audience. In ‘What I Worked On’ he treats essay writing, not any single company, as the thread that most defines his career — and in ‘The Age of the Essay’ defines the form as an attempt, not an argument you already have.
- Fund founders in cohorts, not one at a time. Y Combinator’s founding innovation was batching eight startups together with weekly dinners rather than funding companies individually — a structure built so founders would learn from and push each other through the same three-month arc.
- Keep your identity small. In the 2009 essay of that name he observes that people reason worst about topics fused to their sense of self, and recommends holding as few labels as possible so that changing your mind stays cheap.
On the Founders podcast
4×Read about them
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In their own words
3
Graham identifies this book on his site and provides its table of contents. It was published by O’Reilly in 2004. source ↗
Graham wrote this advanced Lisp book, published by Prentice Hall in 1993. His own description emphasizes bottom-up programming, macros and embedded languages. source ↗
Graham wrote this introduction and reference to ANSI Common Lisp, published by Prentice Hall in 1995. source ↗
- 2023How to Do Great WorkOne of his longest: find work at the intersection of aptitude, deep interest, and room for excellence, then compound curiosity and effort over decades.
- 2005How to Start a StartupA startup needs three things — good people, something customers want, and to spend as little as possible. There is no fourth ingredient.
- 2013Do Things that Don’t ScaleRecruit users by hand and deliver service that can’t possibly scale. Startups take off because founders deliberately push them, not spontaneously.
- 2001Beating the AveragesHow Lisp gave Viaweb a decisive edge, and why the ‘Blub paradox’ keeps most programmers from seeing more powerful tools than the one they use.
- 2009Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s ScheduleTwo incompatible ways of using time: the manager’s hour-by-hour calendar, and the maker’s half-day blocks that a single meeting can destroy.
- 2012Startup = GrowthDefines a startup by its intent to grow fast rather than by industry, age, or funding, and proposes weekly growth rate as the founder’s compass.
- 2012How to Get Startup IdeasDon’t brainstorm ideas — notice problems you actually have. The best startup ideas are ones the founders themselves want solved.
- 2003Hackers and PaintersHackers are makers like painters, not scientists; great software comes from iterative hands-on making rather than rigid engineering process.
- 2003Why Nerds are UnpopularSmart teenagers are unpopular because school is an artificial world with no real work to do, so status games rush in to fill the vacuum.
- 2009Keep Your Identity SmallPeople reason worst about subjects fused to their identity. Hold fewer labels and you keep the ability to think clearly.
- 2010The Top Idea in Your MindWhatever your mind drifts to in the shower is what you’ll have good ideas about — so guard that slot from money worries and disputes.
- 2004The Age of the EssayReclaims the essay from the five-paragraph school exercise: an essai is an attempt, a way of thinking by writing toward a real discovery.
- 2008Cities and AmbitionEvery great city sends ambitious people a message — be richer, be smarter, be more powerful — and where you live shapes what you want.
- 2005What You’ll Wish You’d KnownWritten for high schoolers: you don’t need a plan. Stay curious, work on hard problems, and avoid choosing work for prestige.
- 2016Life is ShortWritten after his children were born. Life really is short, so cut bores and busywork ruthlessly and spend the remainder on what matters.
- 2015Write Like You TalkUse spoken language instead of stilted written vocabulary; prose that sounds like talking is both clearer and more persuasive.
Books on their shelf
8
Foreword and recommendation"It is probably the single most valuable book a startup founder could read." source ↗
Essay discussionIn Hackers and Painters, Graham singles out the book’s statement about writing programs for human readers to support his view that source code should explain itself. source ↗
Book citationGraham cites Ben Rich’s Skunk Works in an opening epigraph to Taste for Makers, his February 2002 essay about good design. source ↗
Book citation; edition not specifiedIn Revenge of the Nerds, Graham cites Brooks’s account of the limits of adding programmers and says his own experience supports it. He does not name the anniversary edition. source ↗
RecommendedGraham includes Franklin’s autobiography in his startup FAQ answer about good books on startups. He does not identify an edition. source ↗
RecommendedIn his startup FAQ, Graham says he particularly liked Sorensen’s history. He recommends learning from histories of particular startups and industries. source ↗
RecommendedGraham explicitly urges startup founders to read this book. He asks readers to find a copy printed before the 1960s and criticizes later revisions. A modern edition is not the edition he recommends. source ↗
Cited as a startup-history exampleGraham names this as a famous example of histories of startups and industries in his startup FAQ. He presents the genre as useful; this passage is not an explicit claim that he read or praised this particular book. source ↗
Similar taste
Founders who share the most book recommendations with Paul:
Library reading guides
These guides include books on this page. The library chooses their reading order.
Sources
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- Bio — paulgraham.com
- What I Worked On — paulgraham.com
- Books — paulgraham.com
- Essays (canonical index) — paulgraham.com
- Taste for Makers — paulgraham.com
- Some Heroes — paulgraham.com
- Learning from Founders — paulgraham.com
- Paul Graham (programmer) — Wikipedia
- Viaweb — Wikipedia
- Hacker News — Wikipedia
- The Launch Pad by Randall Stross — Penguin Random House
- Open Library — Internet Archive