Paul Graham
Paul Graham is a programmer, essayist and co-founder of Y Combinator, the startup accelerator he started in 2005 with Jessica Livingston (his wife), Robert Morris and Trevor Blackwell. Before YC he co-founded Viaweb, an early web-application company sold to Yahoo. He is widely read for his essays on startups and ideas, several of which have entered the wiki’s working vocabulary — ‘relentlessly resourceful’, tarpit ideas, and founder mode among them.
In the wiki
- The Social Radar. Graham coined Livingston’s nickname — first ‘Detective Livingston’, for her compulsive noticing of small incongruities, then the ‘Social Radar’ — and in the early interviews would turn to her for the read on a founder. He is the foil in her account: absorbed in the technology and prone to fund an idea he had fallen in love with, while she watched the people. He also tried to talk the Airbnb founders out of their idea before YC funded them on the strength of the founders. See Jessica Livingston on Social Radar, Reading Founders, and the YC Origin Story and Social Radar.
- Relentlessly resourceful. His essay phrase for the core founder quality — making something happen regardless of obstacles — is the lens Livingston applies to Airbnb’s cereal boxes.
- Tarpit ideas. His and YC’s term for superficially appealing ideas that trap earnest founders. See Tarpit Ideas.
- Founder mode. His 2024 essay, drawn from a Brian Chesky talk, is referenced in Drew Houston on Dropbox, Founder Mode, and the Three Eras of Building.