Paul Graham

“The reason we got in wasn't because of our idea. It was because through the breakfast cereal, we had proven to him that we had hustle, we had grit, we had the, if we could figure out how to sell breakfast cereal for 40 dollars a box, we could figure out how to…”

“I didn't write the first line of code until June, and I had never built a website before, and we were kind of Paul's special projects a little bit, you know, because of how we got into YC,”

“So our first real users were actually Paul Graham fans, people who were reading his essays, and that kind of set the tone for the for the early days of Reddit.”

“PG is terrible at naming companies, but when he nailed it with that phrase, it was special.”

“We like you to, and if you change your idea, we'll invest.”

“He said, this will be the end of lines.”

“And this was a chance to basically get 12,000 dollars from an investor we really trusted to just try something for three months.”

“And I get a one-line email from Paul Grime. Saying, they like the idea, certainly liked your software, but you need a co-founder.”

“In the beginning, the investable asset is not the idea and it's not the execution and it's not the research or whatever. The investable asset is the founders. And you're much better off investing in a good team that has no idea what they're doing or there was …”