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Paul Graham
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Visit paulgraham.com → RSS feedOn Hacker News Feb 2007 – Sep 2026
Tech Industry & Business 133Life, Learning & Writing 103Startups 77Society, Policy & Culture 66Career & Management 29Software Engineering 23
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Why to Not Not Start a Startup
March 2007 (This essay is derived from talks at the 2007 Startup School and the Berkeley CSUA.) We've now been doing Y Combinator long enough to have some data about success rates. Our first batch, in the summer of 2005, had eight startups in it. Of those eight, it now looks as if at least four succeeded. Three have…
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A student's guide to startups (2006)
October 2006 (This essay is derived from a talk at MIT.) Till recently graduating seniors had two choices: get a job or go to grad school. I think there will increasingly be a third option: to start your own startup. But how common will that be? I'm sure the default will always be to get a job, but starting a startup…
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How to Start a Startup (2005)
March 2005 (This essay is derived from a talk at the Harvard Computer Society.) You need three things to create a successful startup: to start with good people, to make something customers actually want, and to spend as little money as possible. Most startups that fail do it because they fail at one of these. A…
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Hiring Is Obsolete (2005)
May 2005 (This essay is derived from a talk at the Berkeley CSUA.) The three big powers on the Internet now are Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft. Average age of their founders: 24. So it is pretty well established now that grad students can start successful companies. And if grad students can do it, why not undergrads?…
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How to Fund a Startup
November 2005 Venture funding works like gears. A typical startup goes through several rounds of funding, and at each round you want to take just enough money to reach the speed where you can shift into the next gear. Few startups get it quite right. Many are underfunded. A few are overfunded, which is like trying to…
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