4 ms·
What's with the almost cult-like relevance for this largely pseudo-intellectual entrepreneur? - Founded a successful web apps company back in the 1990s when th
by theorique 13y ago
What's with the almost cult-like relevance for this largely pseudo-intellectual entrepreneur?
- Founded a successful web apps company back in the 1990s when that wasn't common, and sold it to Yahoo
- Founded Y Combinator to advise and invest in startups
- Smart investor with substantial success and track record (Dropbox, AirBnB, etc)
In other words, he's earned a reputation for doing some very smart things, and documenting them in clear, easily understood language, over the past 20 years.
I'm not being a mirer or a nuthugger here. I participate in HN because it benefits me and I learn useful things amidst the noise. (And of course pg started this site too.)
- coldtea 13y agoAnd was quite prominent in the Lisp community, back in the day too.
- aerique 13y agoThat might still be an understatement. He wrote one of the top books for (Common) Lisp: http://www.paulgraham.com/onlisp.html http://www.paulgraham.com/onlisp.html Peter Norvig on the book: http://www.amazon.com/review/RRFAH7G81ASUL/ref=cm_cr_dp_title?ie=UTF8&ASIN=0130305529&nodeID=283155&store=books http://www.amazon.com/review/RRFAH7G81ASUL/ref=cm_cr_dp_titl...
- mwilcox 13y agoNot to mention his academic qualifications: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Graham_(computer_programmer)#Education http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Graham_(computer_programme...
- robg 13y agoIndeed, if pg is a pseudo-intellectual, then the word "intellectual" has so little meaning as to be useless. That's not ball washing. That's a comparison to the journalists, academics, writers, editors, analysts, etc etc who aspire to that public identity.
- ericd 13y agoAnd was one of the first people to use probabilistic methods to fight spam, which is what finally made spam an almost non-issue.
- baudehlo 13y agoFor what it's worth, I wrote the code that did this in SpamAssassin just slightly before Pg published "A plan for spam". Although he had some very useful improvements to the algorithm which I rolled in.
- ericd 13y agoHa neat! Thanks for your part in the war on spam, we all owe you a debt of gratitude :-)
- Grokit 13y ago"Founded a successful web apps company back in the 1990s when that wasn't common, and sold it to Yahoo" While that is awesome, it is a substantially different game we play nowadays than in the 90's.
- aerique 13y agoYou say this like he stopped learning and stopped getting more experienced since the 1990's.
- theorique 13y agoCorrect, and pg is not writing code for startups now, but investing in them, sharing his experience with them (mentoring), connecting them to follow-on investors, and supporting the process of growing those startups in which he has an active interest. Hence, YC, etc.