

Text of Y Combinator article in Inc Magazine - garbowza
http://zgarbow.posterous.com/paul-graham-and-y-combinator-article-in-inc-m

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yan
"5. If you could go back in time and do one thing differently, what would it
be?

I wish I had taken advantage of all the free time I had in high school and
actually learned stuff, instead of spending so much time hanging out with
friends."

Really? That seems to me to be a minority opinion. Most people wish they did
more "high school"-type things than spend time studying. They're not
exclusive, but surely spending all free time studying and not socializing is
bound to rob you of valuable experiences.

~~~
pg
That wasn't a verbatim quote. All the things in that list were boiled down
from a long conversation.

What I really said was that I wished I hadn't wasted so much time in high
school-- that I'd realized earlier that it was my responsibility to teach
myself, instead of thinking that all I had to do was learn the stuff we were
taught in classes. Then he asked me what I did spend my time on in HS, and I
said basically the same thing as any other teenage kid: just hanging out with
friends, doing nothing in particular.

~~~
yan
Hm, the use of the "I" pronoun implied it was verbatim to me. I'd hoped the
reporter did a better job at distilling the intent behind interview answers
rather than providing third-grade summaries. Do you feel the article did yc
justice?

~~~
pg
The article was above average for accuracy. But average is not very high:
newspaper and magazine articles tend to contain a lot of mistakes.

The most misleading thing in the article was the whole guru theme. Maybe it
made the story seem more interesting, but there is very little dispensing of
abstract wisdom at YC. 99% of the conversation I have with people is about the
specific problems of individual startups. Car mechanic would be a more
accurate metaphor than guru.

~~~
gcheong
To me, one of the more interesting pieces of the article was when it talked
about the years you spent from '91 - '95 in a kind of consulting/painting
period where you would consult for a while then stop and paint until you ran
out of money then repeat until eventually you decided it was time to make some
"real money", which was apparently when you decided to start a company. My
question is, were you considering other options at that time (such as just
getting a regular job) or were you always dead set on starting your own
company?

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jgrahamc
I flagged this. Surely this is a copyright violation. If Inc hasn't put the
text up on their web site then it's because they don't want the text in that
form, no doubt they want you to buy the magazine.

~~~
mixmax
Agree - even though I'd like to read the article I think we should accept the
choices and income models of fellow entrepreneurs and businesses.

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falsestprophet
Rather than a link to a blog post with a link to scribd with a link to a pdf,
here is a pdf:

[http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/zgarbow/czK...](http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/zgarbow/czKBpnLyL8og7wIyznr5xHW4rjpF6FVZBArcROjStc2IE3AHEnCeQxXlpxAq/INC_Startup_Paul_Graham_articl.pdf)

~~~
jsonscripter
Kind of ironic that scribd isn't working right for this PDF in particular, I
must say.

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adamsmith
The picture is just like of Leonardo Da Vinci's "The Last Supper"!

~~~
pg
Yeah, that made me a bit nervous. I realized what they were up to as soon as I
saw how they had the table set up. But I figured few readers would get it, and
it would at least be a good composition.

~~~
quizzical
The picture gives me a sense of the youthful inspiration and commotion much
like the articles does. A great picture and a great article. Anybody in their
40s founding startups these days or have we just accepted our waterboarding?

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kirubakaran
My favorite quote:

"Running a start-up is like being punched in the face repeatedly. But working
for a large company is like being waterboarded."

~~~
staunch
Not a terribly good analogy. Working for a big company is painful in a very
different kind of, much more depressing and sluggish, way.

~~~
ph0rque
I was going to say the same thing... it's more analogous to being drugged.

~~~
Xichekolas
I was thinking it's more like spending time in solitary confinement. No
explicit torture, just the slow creep of insanity due to social isolation and
routine.

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mattmaroon
They had to play the cult card didn't they.

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rokhayakebe
Hate it or Love it, you want to be part of the gang.

