The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 47 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 1 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Graham: Non-Valley investors assume local startups are second-rate
“Investors outside Silicon Valley implicitly assume that any local startup is second rate.”
Paul Graham: Working 20 years at big companies indicates poor founder fit
“I think if you have worked for a large company for 20 years, you might not be a founder, unless you were forced to for visa reasons, because if you were the kind of person that would make a good founder, you wouldn't be able to stand working for a large compan…”
Graham: YC startups returning home are half as likely to become unicorns
“YC now has a lot of data about this, and the startups that go home after YC don't do as well as the ones that stay. Startups that go home back, startups that go back home after YC are only about half as likely to become unicorns”
Paul Graham: Startup Outcomes Are Fundamentally Indeterminate and Luck-Driven
“The outcomes of startups are hard to predict.
I think to some degree they're actually indeterminate.
There's a huge amount of luck involved, you know and so I think even if Y Combinator were as good at picking startups as you could possibly get.”
Paul Graham: Trustworthy people cannot reliably evaluate trustworthiness in others
“Intelligent people can judge other intelligent people, But trustworthy people cannot judge other trustworthy people. In fact, trustworthy people are often fooled by untrustworthy people.”
Paul Graham: Startups must do unscalable things early on to grow big
“And what do things that don't scale means is do those things early on anyway, because, you know, if you don't do them, you'll never be big. And so you got nothing to lose.”
Graham: Barely any of 1,900 YC startups were killed by competitors
“What makes companies fail most of the time is poor execution by the founders, right? We often talk to startups who are worried about competitors, and one good, one advantage of YC having funded so many companies is you have a really large data set, and like, h…”
Paul Graham: Determination is far more important for founders than intelligence
“And actually it turns out it's not that important to be smart. It's much, much more important to be determined.”
Graham: Steve Jobs would have forced Y Combinator to fund him
“Oh, I think actually you would fund him, because Steve Jobs would make you fund him.”
Graham: Better to have 10% of Robert Morris than average full-time founders
“Ok, so the way you deal with different commitment levels is you ask yourself would I rather have 30% of this person or a hundred percent of some other person? And in my case, I would rather have, like, 10% of Robert Morris's brain than a hundred percent of alm…”
Graham: Launch as soon as one person can do something new
“Launch as soon as you have a quantum of utility, which means as soon as you're, there's one person in the world who is glad that you launched, because now they can do something that they couldn't do.”
Graham: Capable high schoolers should not start companies prematurely
“There are plenty of high school students who could start successful startups but they shouldn't.”
Paul Graham: Long corporate tenure is a negative signal on founder applications
“If we've, if we were looking at someone, someone's application, and they worked for a long time for a large company, That's actually bad to us, because like, the best startup founders probably could not stand that.”
Graham: Ambitious founders must at least temporarily relocate to Silicon Valley
“Should I go there? And the answer is the same now as it always is. Yes, you should. You can go there for a bit and then come back, but you should at least go.”
Graham: Silicon Valley VCs get better returns than European VCs
“Silicon Valley investors get better returns than European investors despite having to decide so quickly.”
A Boston VC faxed Dropbox a term sheet with a blank valuation.
“They sent Drew, the founder, a term sheet. They faxed it to him. Anybody even remember what a fax machine is? They faxed him a term sheet with a blank valuation.”
Graham: Silicon Valley turns nobodies into billionaires faster than anywhere else
“Silicon Valley is the place where people go from being nobodies to billionaires faster than anywhere else in the world, and so someone who had a taste for being really nice to nobodies, you know, the kind of person who sees the nobody walking along on the stre…”
Graham: The title of Europe's Silicon Valley is still up for grabs
“You could make it the Silicon Valley of Europe. That job is still up for grabs.”
Paul Graham: Constant startup growth rate matters more than absolute user count
“You just keep going out there and doing things manually, and as long as your growth rate is good, it doesn't matter how small the number is because a growth, a constant growth rate means exponential growth, and that means The base number will soon take care of…”
Graham: Only one person on a founding team must be super determined
“There's, oh, by the way, only one person has to be super determined.”
Graham: Obsessing over users creates great products without visionary creativity
“If you care enough about users, you can just follow what will make users happy the way a scientist follows the truth, and eventually, Without much thinking on your part the need to grow will give you this product idea that's actually the product, that's the re…”
Graham: Moving to major tech centers expands talent in quality and quantity
“You get the best peers, and in fact, the talent pool expands in two dimensions. The people are better, and there's also a lot more of them.”
Graham: Moving to major hubs lets founders realize they can match top leaders
“When you move to a big pond, you can measure yourself up against known big fish, and you can see how big a fish you are. Surprisingly often, the news is good.”
Graham: Silicon Valley has a unique pay-it-forward culture
“There's a pay it forward culture in Silicon Valley. That's different from anywhere else I've been in the world, maybe anywhere else in the world at all.”
Graham: Ron Conway scales by helping people without tracking favors
“Ron Conway is probably the most imperfect example of this phenomenon. All he does all day long is help people. He doesn't even keep track of whether they're his own portfolio companies. He doesn't even remember most of the favors he does for people, and this a…”
Paul Graham: Viaweb was likely the first web application
“Ok, so, what we made was something that is now called a web app. I believe, at the time it was the first one, and, ah, that's why the company was called ViaWeb, because it worked via the web.”
Graham: Startup ideas begin as vague inklings, not lightbulb epiphanies
“I always hate it when people represent startup ideas as light bulbs, you know, because as well as being the most cliched metaphor imaginable, it's also false. You don't just like have this idea and then realize it, right? No, it's more like you have this sort …”
Graham: The best startup ideas seem implausible in the right way
“I love it when ideas seem implausible in the right way. Over the years, I mean, I already had, just from being a hacker, a sort of a good nose for this sort of thing, but it has become refined over all these years of dealing with startups, and when people have…”
Paul Graham: Hatred for Gratuitous Schleps Produces Elegant Solutions
“It makes you know, if you have a natural hatred for gratuitous schleps, like then what that, that produces elegant solutions, you know?”
Graham: Morris voted for lowball ViaWeb acquisition offers to quit
“Whenever we got an, whenever you get an acquisition offer, the board has to at least consider it, right? And so, you would get these crap lowball acquisition offers. We'll give you, like, two million dollars in our stock, right? And Robert was like, yes, no, n…”
Paul Graham: Startups are counterintuitive, which is why Y Combinator exists
“Startups in general are very, very counterintuitive. And so that's actually why C exists. If it was obvious what to do in starting a startup, We wouldn't, YC couldn't really add much by teaching people how to do it, right?”
Paul Graham: Founders ignore advice because counterintuitive lessons feel wrong
“We tell people the counterintuitive stuff, not the obvious stuff, and then what counterintuitive means is it sounds wrong, and so they go with their gut and do the wrong thing instead and then hopefully catch the mistake in time.”
Paul Graham: Morale is the hardest part of being a solo founder
“I think the hardest part is morale. There's no one, there's, like, if you have multiple people, they keep one another going when things are going badly, and there's no one to cheer you up.”
Graham: I would not attempt to start a company as solo founder
“I would not try and start a startup just with just myself as the founder. I don't think I could do it.”
Graham: Founders fail by avoiding user feedback and overbuilding visions
“What you will get wrong is that you will not pay enough attention to users. You will have, you will make up some idea in your own head that you will call your vision and then you will spend a lot of time thinking about your vision in a cafe by yourself and wri…”
Graham: Launching early carries less risk than launching late
“The risk of launching early is not as great as the risk of launching late.”
Graham: Grandfathering early users eliminates the risk of raising startup prices
“If you want to lower your prices, no one's going to complain. And if you want to grant, if you want to raise your prices, you just grandfather your existing users, which if you have exponential growth will always be a tiny subset of your total users, and then …”
Graham: The best way to find angel investors is through startup employees
“Find, find people who work at startups, and ask them to introduce you to their investors. That's the way to do it.”
Paul Graham: Formal notation is the single biggest obstacle for beginner programmers
“The concept of formal notation is the single biggest obstacle.”
Graham: CodeCombat is accepted into Y Combinator live during Startup School
“You didn't realize that, but that was your Y Combinator interview. You're in the next batch.”
Graham: Founders will not use GiveItOneHundred to document startup crises
“I don't think he would have used your system. No, seriously, not for, like, starting a startup.”
Paul Graham: Jessica Livingston acts as YC's social radar judging trustworthiness
“The person who does that for Y Combinator is Jessica, the social radar the secret power behind everything.”
Graham: Y Combinator launched in under a week using email ASCII forms
“We launched YC probably in less than a week of having the idea. Of course, launching it was merely saying, was merely posting a website and, ah, and we didn't have any software in the beginning. People, we just had this ASCII form that people would fill out an…”
Graham: A child's current memories constantly overwrite parents' recent memories
“One of the big problems about being a parent is, The memories of the current kid overwrite the memories of the more recent, of the sort of recent past.”
Graham: Early-stage startups should stay empirical rather than over-optimize too early
“Don't be, don't, like over optimize too early. Like, let it grow into whatever it's gonna grow into. Maybe it'll end up being kids are the big thing, or maybe not, who knows. But be empirical about it, and don't, like, wire in some outcome too early.”