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I agree, this is a good one. It's a bit rare to get retrospectives like this. Typically they tend to fall into one of three categories: the 'great-man' biograph
by Balgair 6y ago
I agree, this is a good one. It's a bit rare to get retrospectives like this. Typically they tend to fall into one of three categories: the 'great-man' biography, which are more history lessons than anything else. The very poor and/or very unlucky people, those born into genetic diseases, addicted families, or some bad misfortune. And the middling and very unread section of otherwise perfectly normal people without much to say.
PG here bridges the gap between the 'great-man' and the middling-man. With a fair bit of luck, he manages to become wealthy, but not wanna-be-space-cadet wealthy. It's an under read area and full of very good lessons in that bridge of worlds. I'm not in that bridge, so my take-aways weren't as much. But perhaps with some luck, I'll be able to revisit this in the future for more savoring.
- aerosmile 6y ago> With a fair bit of luck, he manages to become wealthy, but not wanna-be-space-cadet wealthy. You might be underestimating the value of the YC portfolio and PG's stake in it.
- Balgair 6y agoIt's 'only' ~$50M or so [0], per what I could find with a quick googling. Other resources would be appreciated though! [0] https://www.wealthypersons.com/paul-graham-net-worth-2020-2021/ https://www.wealthypersons.com/paul-graham-net-worth-2020-20...
- dpritchett 6y agoThis article suggests that he and JL were half of a self-funded YC that took 6% of each company they funded. The YC portfolio is estimated at $300 billion from a random article I just Googled. 3% of that would be nine billion, assuming all four YC founders had equal shares and disregarding dilution as the portfolio companies took on more investors. Likely off by an order of magnitude in one direction or the other but still fair bit higher than 50 million.
- Balgair 6y agoWelp, yeah, nevermind then, he's in wanna-be-space-cadet tax brackets.