What Would Paul Graham Do? — A Search Engine That Teaches You The Ways Of Y Combinator’s Boss

“When should I raise money?” You might not be able to ask startup sage PG in person, but new search engine “What Would Paul Graham Do?” will point you towards the YC co-founder’s most relevant essays and Hacker News comments.

In this case, you’d be directed to “A Fundraising Survival Guide”, and “The 18 Mistakes That Kill Startups”. The site turns Graham into a one-man Quora.

Adnan Akil, one of the guys behind WWPGD said on Hacker News “It’s really just a tool we built for ourselves to get information from a specific trusted source. It helps that he has a huge catalog of work to draw from.” You can explore Graham’s library of essays here.

That’s not to say WWPGD is going to give the real Paul a run for his money. HN user riffraff notes that questions like “How to grow a userbase” or “How do I find find a mentor” don’t produce any results.

It’s got more than just entrepreneurship advice, too. It can accurately teach you how to live like Paul, or even run into him. Graham himself commented on Hacker News saying “It appears to work. I asked it where to go for lunch, and the first reference to lunch it found was Oren’s Hummus.” That’s one of his favorite restaurants in downtown Palo Alto.

Maybe that was one of the motives for Akhil and WWPGD co-creator Kevin Wu. We’ve seen lots of spunky young technologists building “Here’s why you should hire me” apps and pulling other stunts to land dream jobs. Maybe their search engine will fast-track them to a spot in PG’s Winter 2013 Y Combinator class.

Here’s some recent gems from Graham’s collection of essays:

Black Swan Farming — on why the best angel investments are great ideas everyone thinks are crazy.

Startup = Growth — defining the word “startup”

Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas — a list of seven big areas ready for disruption

[Image Credit: GigaOm]