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Interview with Paul Graham at Imperial College London
- anaphoric 19y agoThe interview paints the ideal starting entrepreneur as someone aged 25, not 18. And the implication is that this is being generous... The message is that anyone over 30, not to mention 40, need not apply. Of course this does not really bother me, but it makes the whole high tech start up thing sound like "Americas next top model." LOL! "We want 'em young and fresh!" And yes 25 is young. Very young. That said, I think PG comes off as a thoughtful and honorable person - which I already knew. I noticed some quibbling with the interviewer about if "creating wealth" was the right phrase. It's not important, but it is interesting to see that quibbling never ends no matter how successful one is.
- pg 19y agoAs I've mentioned before, the average age of the founders of Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft was 24. So judging from the evidence, 25 is not young for this kind of work. From what I've seen, 21 is young, in the sense that there are a lot of people who aren't ready yet at that age. But by 25 the kind of people who make good founders are ready. I suspect the phenomenon is more social than biological. The problem with the 21 year olds is that college tends to preserve some childish illusions about how the world works. So the reason 24-25 is the sweet spot is that it's far enough away from college for those illusions to have worn off.
- paulsb 19y agoCorrect me if I am wrong, but both Google and Microsoft were founded by drop-out students. If they had actually finished, then there average age would have been higher. I am 28 now after finishing undergrad, grad school and working in the biotech industry for 2 years, and my start-up drive is higher than ever. I think age is irrelevent if you have the drive, commitment and maturity to succeed. However, I do have the problem of finding like minded individuals at my age that are willing to take the risk of joining a start-up becuase they are used to the comforts of having a "secure" job. They tend to see doing a start-up as a bit of hobby, but this doesn't bother - I wouldn't want them to work with me anyway because I expect the same commitment to the project as I have. Anyway, at 28, I am still going to apply for YC. Power to the old giffers!
- anaphoric 19y agoYes, I suspect that you are right. But it's depressing for a 40 year like myself who 'wasted his time' in academia. Somehow academia/research was nice earlier and I had some luck getting tolerable positions, etc. But it's been tough keeping the wolves at bay lately. The average academic department is a real viper's pit. And crossing chasm from research to a product that people are willing to buy is not easy. Perhaps not even possible in my case... It's OK. I never really aspired to be a big-time industrialist. I was always more interested in having an impact in a hard area. Lately I have come to the conclusion that the best thing for me to do would be to get back to publishing... If you try to role out a product as an academic, your publication rate fall off and the vipers come out and bite you (Usually in the form of giving you lots of bad teaching assignments and a variety of psychological warfare techniques). But it's hard to convince oneself that most of what academics write has any effect. I suppose I could focus more on databases, but natural language interfaces seem to be where there are still fundamental problems. But our publications in that area are usually so dense that only fellow academics bother to read them... It's not easy to change the world I suppose :-).
- iamelgringo 19y ago"All you have to lose is your cubicle" Very nice.
- icky 19y agoI'm impressed that he managed to misspell "lose" in a spoken interview! ;-) Edit: I sense an anomaly in the space-time continuum... :)
- iamelgringo 19y ago:D
- kirubakaran 19y agoI wish for: http://ocw.ycombinator.com http://ocw.ycombinator.com with speeches given by pg in YC-only dinners.
- pg 19y agoI don't speak much at the dinners. Most of the talking is done by the outside experts we invite. But what the speakers say couldn't be published; they say a lot of things that they're only willing to say because YC dinners are off the record.
- iamelgringo 19y agoReally? That's really interesting. I suppose that it makes for more open and honest presentations by the guest speakers. I'm really surprised that the presentations are off the record, however. I suppose that's why you hear zilch from the YC founders about the content of said discussions. Do you have a NDA or just a gentleman's agreement?
- ChrisJ 19y agoiamelgringo .... check out the FAQ here: http://www.ycombinator.com/faq.html http://www.ycombinator.com/faq.html ... specifically the section "Will you sign an NDA? How do I know you won't steal my idea? "
- iamelgringo 19y agoThanks, but I wasn't wondering if YC leadership would sign an NDA. I was wondering if all the founders had to sign an NDA for the dinner conversations, since they were "off the record". I'm sure I'm being too nosy. It really isn't any of my business. I was just curious.
- pg 19y agoNo, no one signs anything. The startup world is small enough that gentlemen's agreements work for most things.
- ChrisJ 19y agoVery informative interview. It definitely shows PGs enthusiam for YC and does a nice job of explaining the rationale behind the company. Question, for a YC funded company that gets picked up after demo day, what would the average salary of the co-founders be in comparision to someone with comparable experience working in industry (i.e. "in a cubicle)? adf471587879rzq
- pg 19y agoAs founders you want your salaries to be as low as possible. You've raised x amount of money by selling some of your stock. Every dollar of that that you pay yourself in salary is a dollar that doesn't go toward making the company succeed. And the big payoff for you as a founder is in the company succeeding. People don't start startups to make money from salary. Investors are usually fine with you making, say, 70% of what you'd make on the open market. But it's in your interest to take less if you can. At Viaweb I made less than half what the COO did.
- davidw 19y agoOddly, the thing I noticed most, having never heard pg speak much before, was that the accent does not correspond to what I thought it might be like. "Californian" comes to mind. "Like, you know, I mean". That's not a negative thing - I have a west coast accent myself and am certainly dot my own conversations with similar filler words - just a "first impression".
- Xichekolas 19y agoI'm right there with you on that feeling. Not sure why... I guess my only real exposure to Boston is Good Will Hunting... so I imagine PG with the voice of Robin William's character in that movie. Silly I know.
- kirubakaran 19y agoYou will like this: http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail188.html http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail188.html
- dood 19y agoGood talk, though I've heard/read most of the points already. Perhaps the vocal and receptive audience made it more entertaining and grounded in reality or something.
- dreish 19y agoHe sounds to me like a southern Ontarian who moved to southern California 15 years ago, and used his dot-com winnings to devote more time to surfing.
- quickpost 19y agoVideo isn't working for me... :(
- edw519 19y agoSuper! A video is worth a thousand words. Thank you.
- BrandonM 19y agoEven if more than a thousand words are spoken in the interview? ;-)
- henning 19y agoIt's amazing how easy Intruders.tv makes it to stop watching their videos. One erring click outside that god damned lightbox and the entire viewing experience grinds to a halt. Sheesh. See also http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/592-been-lightboxed-lately http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/592-been-lightboxed-latel... .
- dood 19y agoFair point, but its nice to see quality video displayed at high-res, and streaming quickly.
- pc 19y agohttp://uk.intruders.tv/video/paulgraham.flv http://uk.intruders.tv/video/paulgraham.flv -- plays fine in most open-source players
- hhm 19y agoThis is useful... the video wasn't working on my Linux box.
- simianstyle 19y agoDoes anybody have a transcript? I prefer to read things on my own time (i.e., at work).