I'm very much looking forward to pg's new essays. His pre-YC essays cover a pretty wide spectrum of topics and they were quite influential on me when I read them while still in school.<p>His essays from the last few years are almost exclusively about startups and I think they're a must-read resource. IMO, they contain pretty much all the ideas that make up YC and going through the program will mostly reinforce these ideas in a very effective way, rather than teach some new secret.<p>There's much to be said about technology and its impact on society, so I hope we'll see some great new material.
> <i>Graham said that, after thousands of founder presentations and pitches, he and the YC partners are now able to tell “within minutes” whether a startup will pass muster or not.</i><p>This I find slightly worrying. It's amazing if it still works (and I've been wondering how YC was still able to scale), but is the minimum amount of information that needs to be exchanged between startup and YC in order to get a good assessment really that small? Or is the quality of selection (due to scaling issues / less time per applicant) nowdays compensated by the effect of YC's reputation?
The entire video of the interview is here: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rVpAKziQJA" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rVpAKziQJA</a>
Err, Sam Altman is the only beta tester of a YC-company trying to develop a better email client?<p>Anyone got any more details on this? Is this just an inside joke that I don't get? (Yes I remember the build-better-email-client thing, but actually trying, and using one beta-tester?)<p>To be honest I no longer think an email client is the problem. Its the lack of contact book, integration with all my devices and just generally tying up my orgnaisation for me - frankly a better email client from now is an AI.
>You can be surprisingly stupid if you’re sufficiently determined<p>I think one reason we're wrestling with this smart/stupid/success/fail subject is that these words paint with broad brushes. It's not just being smart or stupid, it's what you're smart or stupid about.<p>For example, I knew an uneducated couple who opened a small clothing store. At first, they naively sold merchandise for less than they paid for it. They calculated the markup on belts by adding $4, then adding $3. When I suggested just adding $7, they got angry and said no, you HAD to add $4 first, or it wouldn't work. I would have been fired for pressing the issue.<p>Pretty stupid, eh? Maybe. But they were smart, too, about other things. What other things? Some people get MBAs at Harvard and still can't figure it out.<p>I watched that couple expand into a small chain of clothing stores with an 8-figure annual cash flow, and retire as millionaires.<p>One can only wonder how long they would have lasted in a YC pitch session. My grandmother used to say, "we're all stupid, we're just stupid about different things." The same could be said of "smart," and I believe success reflects a correctness in this rather delicate dichotomy.
> Principally, he said, just because someone is intelligent, doesn’t mean they can actually run a business and go out and execute.<p>> “You can be surprisingly stupid if you’re sufficiently determined,” he concluded.<p>Oh that's nice.<p>Reminds me of the Simpsons episode when some kid accepts homecoming king with "Thank you for not choosing the popular jock and electing me, your intellectual superior, as homecoming king".
The article mentions that he was a lightning rod and whatnot as the face of YC. I can't help but wonder whether he took a step back to really evaluate what he was doing with his time after all those blogs ran with the "Paul Graham is a sexist piece of shit blah blah blah" backlash stories a couple months ago.