HN Explorer

An Interview With Paul Graham...

42 points by blored ↗ HN
Hi Mr. Graham, I would like to ask some questions and possibly publish the results on my blog. I thought that YC news would be the best way to answer the questions, that way we can all read the answers right here.

1) Has YC ever considered investing in a not-for-profit start-up?

2) To your recollection, are there any ideas that were rejected by YC that have made it big? If so, can you name them.

3) You seem to be one of Silicon Valley's busiest/most influential/hard-working persons, why all the fuss? Haven't you earned a respite?

4) Have you ever thought about franchising the YC brand?

5) In your spare time, what does Paul Graham like to do?

6) Rumor has it that you studied the Arts in University, at what point did you realize that you were more capable with the keyboard, if ever?

Thank you for taking the time to answer these questions. They are as much a personal interest of mine as I'm sure they are for many others.

22 comments

[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 55.3 ms ] thread
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
migpwr
Dont forget #7...

7) Are my lips hurting your ass?

pg
1) No. We'd do charitable donations individually, not through YC.

2) I don't know of any, but that doesn't mean there aren't any.

3) I like the stuff I work on. You don't need a respite from work you like.

4) We wouldn't trust anyone else enough. We'd rather see if we can cook up some clever way of doing everything ourselves.

5) Write essays.

6) I haven't given up on painting. But the web has opened a window for writing essays that never existed before, so I decided I'd spend a couple years mostly writing.

abc3
This may well have been someone kissing up, some of the questions weren't well researched, and this site probably isn't a great place for a personal interview (as opposed to an Ask YCombinator-type open question). All that aside, I would have liked to have seen better answers for two questions.

For instance, it seems possible that a nonprofit startup might be better than a large, existing nonprofit at solving a problem YCombinator's founders care about. And funding a nonprofit startup is not necessarily the same as making a donation. It could be, but it doesn't have to be.

The spare time question might also deserve a more thoughtful answer. After all, the whole point of news.ycombinator.com is that people interested in startups also have other interests. Are there patterns? Are there things to do in one's spare time that seem to go along with creating successful startups, things one wouldn't necessarily expect?

pg
We like startups that have a benevolent angle. But it would be weird to have actual nonprofits mixed in with the regular YC startups. The priorities would be so different; it would throw us all off to have to be switching gears when we talked to them.

As for the spare time question, that was supposed to be a thoughtful answer. That's what I spend most of the time on that I don't spend on YC. From what I've seen of startup founders, there is no pattern to what they do in their spare time. Most have eclectic interests, if that counts as a pattern.

ivankirigin
Leave it to an essayist to assume the audience knows long != thoughtful.
trekker7
I remember in an essay you wrote a long time ago (I think the one about "doing things you love") you said that if you've found something you love doing, then the "concept of spare time will seem mistaken". So you love working with Y Combinator, but still have spare time? :-)

BTW I really liked that essay and if you had any new thoughts, a follow-up would be great.

blored
As promised, I have posted the answers to my blog.

http://blog.clutterme.com/2007/09/interview-with-paul-graham...

If anyone else would like to be interviewed feel free to e-mail me at mark [dot] molckovsky [at] gmail.com

eusman
"And as a very nice gesture, he replied."

lol

nice gesture = option doing otherwise/expectancy of doing so

(values: 0..0.5..1)

at least you inspired me to make this formula!

guest
For PG: Outside of the internet, what would you say is another disruptive technology platform that is worthy of investigation?
dawie
Robots - I think they have invested in a robot startup (http://www.anybots.com/) and share office space with them.
pg
We didn't invest in Anybots. Trevor, the founder of Anybots, is one of the YC partners and let us use part of his building.
euccastro
8) Would you consider applications where the "exit" strategy is just to make money from customers and pay out dividends to shareholders, all else looking good?

9) Did you get any of these? Few, many?

pchivers
> Would you consider applications where the "exit" strategy is just to make money from customers and pay out dividends to shareholders

Apparently Wufoo is already profitable by making money from customers...

http://www.foundersatwork.com/1/post/2007/07/yc-alums-visit-...

euccastro
[When I click on that link it takes me to the weebly homepage. (?)]

Congratulations to the Wufoo team! Profitability is a great position to be in.

Now back to my question: being profitable doesn't rule out the option of being acquired. What was their investor exit/ROI plan when they applied to YC? What is it now? Are they paying out any dividends? Planning to?

Googling for "dividends site:news.ycombinator.com" reveals the following comment from PG:

( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28399 )

Most startups don't pay dividends. Even Microsoft barely does. Owning 10% of a technology startup basically means you get 10% of the proceeds if the company gets bought, or hold 10% of the now tradeable shares if it goes public.

But this is a comment on the industry at large, not on YC's policies. Although we can make educated guesses based on this, it would be great to have an explicit reply on this matter.

[deleted]
(comment deleted)
edw519
I like this thread. Never met Paul or Jessica. Hopefully some day.

In spite of all of the hero worship here, I imagine they're regular people just like us. (Well, almost like us.)

Having a forum with a little 2 way communication grounds things really well. Thanks.

(Aside: This summer, I had the good fortune to personally meet Joel Spolsky, whose writings put him in a class with Paul Graham, IMO. I couldn't stop thinking what a regular guy he was. This is good news for mere mortals like us. If they can do it, so can we...)