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His investing happened as a consequence of having available capital (and, certainty, forward-looking ideas about how to seed startups). As to the writing, I th
by gammarator 1y ago
His investing happened as a consequence of having available capital (and, certainty, forward-looking ideas about how to seed startups).
As to the writing, I think its influence (in terms of ideas) makes people overrate its stylistic quality. An enjoyable critique: https://idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm https://idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm
- tptacek 1y agoPaul Graham had an audience before he was an investor, which is the point Tom was making. He didn't get famous because of Viaweb; he got famous as an eloquent smug lisp weenie.
- tomhow 1y agopg writes [1]: YC grew out of a talk I gave to the Harvard Computer Society (the undergrad computer club) about how to start a startup. Everyone else in the audience was probably local, but Steve and Alexis came up on the train from the University of Virginia, where they were seniors. Since they'd come so far I agreed to meet them for coffee. The talk he gave was How To Start A Startup [2]. The reason he was asked to give that talk was not because he had money, but because he was a Harvard CS alum who had built/sold a successful startup then spent the subsequent few years sharing his knowledge/ideas via books and essays. The reason Steve knew about pg was that he had read/liked his Lisp book and read/liked his essays on Slashdot. Money was a necessary but not sufficient condition for him to start YC. Nobody would have applied to YC if not for his books and essays. [1] https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/the-reddits https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/the-reddits [2] https://paulgraham.com/start.html https://paulgraham.com/start.html