

Interview with Paul Graham at Imperial College London  - sharpshoot
http://uk.intruders.tv/Imperial-Entrepreneurs-Paul-Graham-on-YCombinator_a253.html

======
henning
It's amazing how easy Intruders.tv makes it to stop watching their videos. One
erring click outside that god damned lightbox and the entire viewing
experience grinds to a halt. Sheesh.

See also [http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/592-been-lightboxed-
latel...](http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/592-been-lightboxed-lately) .

~~~
dood
Fair point, but its nice to see quality video displayed at high-res, and
streaming quickly.

------
davidw
Oddly, the thing I noticed most, having never heard pg speak much before, was
that the accent does not correspond to what I thought it might be like.
"Californian" comes to mind. "Like, you know, I mean". That's not a negative
thing - I have a west coast accent myself and am certainly dot my own
conversations with similar filler words - just a "first impression".

~~~
kirubakaran
You will like this: <http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail188.html>

~~~
dood
Good talk, though I've heard/read most of the points already. Perhaps the
vocal and receptive audience made it more entertaining and grounded in reality
or something.

------
pc
<http://uk.intruders.tv/video/paulgraham.flv> \-- plays fine in most open-
source players

~~~
hhm
This is useful... the video wasn't working on my Linux box.

------
anaphoric
The interview paints the ideal starting entrepreneur as someone aged 25, not
18. And the implication is that this is being generous...

The message is that anyone over 30, not to mention 40, need not apply. Of
course this does not really bother me, but it makes the whole high tech start
up thing sound like "Americas next top model." LOL!

"We want 'em young and fresh!" And yes 25 is young. Very young.

That said, I think PG comes off as a thoughtful and honorable person - which I
already knew. I noticed some quibbling with the interviewer about if "creating
wealth" was the right phrase. It's not important, but it is interesting to see
that quibbling never ends no matter how successful one is.

~~~
pg
As I've mentioned before, the average age of the founders of Yahoo, Google,
and Microsoft was 24. So judging from the evidence, 25 is not young for this
kind of work.

From what I've seen, 21 is young, in the sense that there are a lot of people
who aren't ready yet at that age. But by 25 the kind of people who make good
founders are ready.

I suspect the phenomenon is more social than biological. The problem with the
21 year olds is that college tends to preserve some childish illusions about
how the world works. So the reason 24-25 is the sweet spot is that it's far
enough away from college for those illusions to have worn off.

~~~
anaphoric
Yes, I suspect that you are right. But it's depressing for a 40 year like
myself who 'wasted his time' in academia.

Somehow academia/research was nice earlier and I had some luck getting
tolerable positions, etc. But it's been tough keeping the wolves at bay
lately. The average academic department is a real viper's pit. And crossing
chasm from research to a product that people are willing to buy is not easy.
Perhaps not even possible in my case...

It's OK. I never really aspired to be a big-time industrialist. I was always
more interested in having an impact in a hard area. Lately I have come to the
conclusion that the best thing for me to do would be to get back to
publishing... If you try to role out a product as an academic, your
publication rate fall off and the vipers come out and bite you (Usually in the
form of giving you lots of bad teaching assignments and a variety of
psychological warfare techniques).

But it's hard to convince oneself that most of what academics write has any
effect. I suppose I could focus more on databases, but natural language
interfaces seem to be where there are still fundamental problems. But our
publications in that area are usually so dense that only fellow academics
bother to read them...

It's not easy to change the world I suppose :-).

------
kirubakaran
I wish for: <http://ocw.ycombinator.com> with speeches given by pg in YC-only
dinners.

~~~
pg
I don't speak much at the dinners. Most of the talking is done by the outside
experts we invite. But what the speakers say couldn't be published; they say a
lot of things that they're only willing to say because YC dinners are off the
record.

~~~
iamelgringo
Really? That's really interesting. I suppose that it makes for more open and
honest presentations by the guest speakers. I'm really surprised that the
presentations are off the record, however. I suppose that's why you hear zilch
from the YC founders about the content of said discussions.

Do you have a NDA or just a gentleman's agreement?

~~~
ChrisJ
iamelgringo .... check out the FAQ here: <http://www.ycombinator.com/faq.html>
... specifically the section "Will you sign an NDA? How do I know you won't
steal my idea? "

~~~
iamelgringo
Thanks, but I wasn't wondering if YC leadership would sign an NDA. I was
wondering if all the founders had to sign an NDA for the dinner conversations,
since they were "off the record".

I'm sure I'm being too nosy. It really isn't any of my business. I was just
curious.

~~~
pg
No, no one signs anything. The startup world is small enough that gentlemen's
agreements work for most things.

------
iamelgringo
"All you have to lose is your cubicle" Very nice.

~~~
icky
I'm impressed that he managed to misspell "lose" in a spoken interview! ;-)

Edit: I sense an anomaly in the space-time continuum... :)

~~~
iamelgringo
:D

------
ChrisJ
Very informative interview. It definitely shows PGs enthusiam for YC and does
a nice job of explaining the rationale behind the company.

Question, for a YC funded company that gets picked up after demo day, what
would the average salary of the co-founders be in comparision to someone with
comparable experience working in industry (i.e. "in a cubicle)?
adf471587879rzq

~~~
pg
As founders you want your salaries to be as low as possible. You've raised x
amount of money by selling some of your stock. Every dollar of that that you
pay yourself in salary is a dollar that doesn't go toward making the company
succeed. And the big payoff for you as a founder is in the company succeeding.
People don't start startups to make money from salary.

Investors are usually fine with you making, say, 70% of what you'd make on the
open market. But it's in your interest to take less if you can. At Viaweb I
made less than half what the COO did.

~~~
aswanson
What was the most cash intensive portion of Viaweb? It seems like you guys
could have run in YC mode (cash wise) after buying the PCs.

~~~
pg
People. It is for nearly all tech companies.

------
simianstyle
Does anybody have a transcript? I prefer to read things on my own time (i.e.,
at work).

------
quickpost
Video isn't working for me... :(

------
edw519
Super! A video is worth a thousand words. Thank you.

~~~
BrandonM
Even if more than a thousand words are spoken in the interview? ;-)

