As a founding partner at Y Combinator, Paul Graham has seen more startup pitches than the average Joe. In a new essay, called “Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas”, Graham makes the case that the ideas with the most disruptive potential also happen to be frightening due to the sheer ambition they would require from entrepreneurs to turn them into reality.
Yes, there is an amazing amount of talent in Silicon Valley; there has been for years, and there will be for years to come. While the tech industry continues to produce world-changing hardware, software, and consumer web companies, there is a sense that the current landscape is lacking the kind of deep innovation that once defined the industry. Last September, at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco, Max Levchin and Peter Thiel went so far as to say that innovation today is actually “between dire straits and dead.” → Read More
In episode II of Erick Schonfeld’s Founder Stories interview with Dropbox co-founder, Drew Houston, Houston describes how releasing a demo video to Hacker News during Dropbox’s early days catapulted his company into elite company.
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Y Combinator has just unveiled the dates and times of its 7th Annual Startup School; 2011′s event will take place on October 29th at Stanford University, where hundreds will gather to listen to talks about entrepreneurship and innovation by some of the Valley’s most influential founders and investors. → Read More
During Paul Graham’s office hours at Disrupt NYC, one of the startups chosen to pitch to the Y Combinator co-founder was Emotely, a company that converts your smartphone into a wireless controller of web apps and games. Emotely Founder and CEO Francois Laberge was nowhere to be found, at which point TechCrunch’s Mike Arrington said that he remembered liking Emotely and that it was too bad, because he was “looking forward to hearing [Graham] give him advice”.
It was indeed a missed opportunity, but it turns out that Laberge had a good reason for not attending. We’ve since learned that Laberge and Emotely were busy being acquired by Brass Monkey, a company that makes software development kits (SDKs) for Android, iOS, and others, among them a more fleshed-out kit for turning smart devices into controllers. → Read More
Paul Graham and Y Combinator just got the Wired treatment. Steven Levy writes a long and loving article which evokes what it’s like to go through the program (or at least what it’s like to be a fly on the wall watching startups who go through the program). A big part of the Y Combinator experience is learning from Paul Graham, who is like a Jedi master for startups. Graham is famous for his “office hours” when founders can come and consult with him. (Graham will be holding office hours onstage next week at Disrupt NYC and will also be interviewed by Charlie Rose).
Levy explains how office hours work in his article: → Read More
The dreaded “B” word is on the tip of many tongues these days. Are we or aren’t we in a bubble? Everybody has an opinion.
Yes, Facebook’s valuation lingers around $50 billion, Zynga’s is close to $10 billion, and Twitter is valued at $4.5 billion with comparatively tiny revenues. But do these soaring valuations a bubble make? A couple of weeks ago, Eric Schmidt weighed in on the great overblown bubble debate to say that the high rate of valuations do, in fact, mark a clear sign of a growing bubble.
While, in contrast, Paul Graham said last week that, compared to late ’90s when every company even remotely associated with this hot, newfangled “Web” was valued higher simply by being associated with it, today’s high valuations are more localized and the companies more deserving. Yet, perhaps the question is not whether this is a bubble exactly like that of the dotcom era, but whether or not it is, simply, a bubble. → Read More
With more than 200 deals since 2005, Y Combinator’s Paul Graham knows how to size up a young team of entrepreneurs. However, he didn’t get it right from day one.
On Friday, we got a chance to talk to Graham after his morning panel with SV Angel’s Ron Conway. He discussed how his strategy has evolved over the past five years and why the balance of power is shifting in Silicon Valley. See videos ahead. → Read More
Today at our Social Currency CrunchUp in Palo Alto, CA, Michael Arrington sat down with investors Ron Conway and Paul Graham. Obviously, these are two of the biggest names in early-stage investing (with SV Angel and Y Combinator, respectively).
Both Conway and Graham had some interesting data to share. Conway, in particular, was able to give some great numbers because he’s recently done an audit on the over 500 companies he’s invested in over the past 12 years. → Read More
Every so often, venture capitalist Larry Cheng puts out a list of the top VC blogs. Previously, he ranked the blogs by how many subscribers they have on Google Reader. But now he’s changed his methodology and is ranking them by average monthly unique visitors, based on Compete data. He just came out with his new global ranking for the fourth quarter of 2009. Below are the top ten blogs from that list.
If you compare this list to the last one, Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures is now the top VC blogger, followed by Guy Kawasaki of Garage Technology Ventures (who previously was No. 1). Now, the always-provocative Paul Graham of Y Combinator is No. 3, whereas he wasn’t even in the top ten on the old list. Other new entrants to the top 10 include Mark Suster of GRP Partners, Dave McClure of Founder’s Fund and soon to launch his own seed fund, and Bijan Sabet of Spark. Some VCs who dropped out of the top ten include Marc Andreessen and David Hornik of August Capital. → Read More
Last week, something turned. We found out that not only are we in a recession, but it started a year ago. Tech layoffs went into overdrive (12,000 at AT&T, 600 at Adobe, 130 at Real Networks), bringing the total unemployed tech workforce to at least 90,000, by our count. Even Facebook decided to indefinitely postpone an earlier plan to allow employees to sell some stock privately.
Capital is drying up, and things may still get worse before they get better. So far in this downturn, we’ve seen startups batten down the hatches (as they should) and hope to survive long enough to make it out the other end.
But what about venture capital firms? When will we start to see the VC layoffs and fund closures? → Read More
Bureaucracy kills innovation. We all know that. But why? Partly, it’s because bureaucracy grows out of prudence, a desire not to repeat the mistakes of the past. With the current economic crisis, for example, you can be sure that a lot more checks will be put into place—both in Washington and in corporate boardrooms—to prevent the excesses that got us into this situation from happening again. Governments and corporations alike react to crises by implementing more rules and regulations.
Putting checks in place, after all, is the prudent thing to do. But bureaucracies, and the checks they impose on companies, have their unintended consequences. Paul Graham takes a stab at exploring these costs in a new essay. He writes:
Every check has a cost.
A financial nuclear winter may be upon us, but many startups will still survive and even thrive in this environment. Y Combinator’s Paul Graham argues that, in fact, now may be the best time to launch a startup. In an essay titled “Why to Start a Startup in a Bad Economy,” he notes that “what matters is who you are, not when you do it.”
The economy might be going down the tubes and investors are now gun-shy, but there will also be less competition. Investors and markets are fickle. Smart entrepreneurs need to adapt to the changing environment. And one of the best ways to do that is be able to survive on as little as possible. You need to become a cockroach. Graham’s advice: → Read More
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