Paul Graham Quotes

Cancel culture had one upside: There are several people I followed after they got cancelled, to show support for them, and these have turned out to be some of the most interesting people I follow. Not surprisingly, since thinking for themselves was what got them cancelled.

If you want to be a good writer, you have to read a lot. Reading trains your ear. There is no shortcut.

Even though nerds are socially awkward, its actually easier to hang out with them than with smooth people, because standards are lower. You don't worry that you might be making social errors; all of you always are; so it stops mattering.

Prediction: LLMs in their current form may not be able to do everything, but AI now has enough momentum that this won't matter. Beam engines couldn't do everything either, but they were enough to set off the Industrial Revolution.

Seek situations where you're judged solely by performance.

Don't take money from an investor you have moral qualms about because of valuable connections they claim to have. Being upstanding matters more in the long term than connections.

If you want to start a startup and don't know what to build, one way to get ideas is to ask if there's something you could create that would help your peers to make money. Any startup that helps people make money tends to (a) be popular and (b) make money itself.

It's easier to innovate when you're the original of something. People copying you can only copy a snapshot of your current state. They don't know which aspects of the snapshot are essential and which are random things you'd been about to change anyway.

Why are the far left politicians who attacked founders for their "greed" when rising stock prices increased their net worth, as if they'd taken that money from everyone else, not commending them for their generosity now that falling stock prices have decreased their net worth?

The biggest opportunity for would-be startup founders is AI. But the most underpriced opportunity is probably non-AI ideas. So if you have a good non-AI idea, go for it, because everyone else is going to overlook it.

Good essays are condensed books. Good tweets are condensed essays.

It's an unimpressive-sounding word, but one of the most powerful motivations is the motivation of the hobbyist. That's what keeps successful founders working on their companies long past the point when they've made enough to quit. It's their beloved project.

I don't think I'll ever be able to take anyone seriously who describes "algorithms" as a threat. I know what they mean, but that usage is like describing integers as a threat.

It's so much more interesting focusing on things that are unfashionable, undervalued, overlooked. And there are so many of them! People are great at overlooking.

Focus, as Steve Jobs said, is about saying no.

The only dangerous competitors are focused ones.

Ergo there are things that even the most dangerous competitors say no to, and it would be worth thinking explicitly about what those are.