The A.I. Daily
Paul Graham@paulg
Funding rounds aren't milestones. It shouldn't be your goal to raise a series A. It should be your goal not to need to.
Paul Graham
41 storiesPaul Graham is a co-founder of Y Combinator and a writer of essays on startups and technology. His recent posts cover a range of topics: an analysis suggesting California's proposed wealth tax could have a negative net present value once departures are counted, the rarity of a startup growing 10x a year for three years, AI agents in cyberattacks, paywalled content becoming invisible to AI, and why AI-generated replies favor phrases like "doing work."
Paul Graham@paulg
The reason UK universities demand more equity than US universities in "spin outs" is not that they're tougher negotiators. It's that they're too inexperienced to realize they're charging over market rate.
Paul Graham@paulg
We're about to enter a period where not reading or writing becomes as ubiquitous as smoking once was. We can hope people will eventually realize this is bad for them, as they did with smoking. But this is far from certain; the cost may not be as obvious.
Paul Graham@paulg
According to this NBER analysis, the proposed California wealth tax would actually lose the state money. [Quoting @nberpubs]: California's Billionaire Tax Act would collect roughly $30 billion. Accounting for lost income taxes from departures, the mean Net Pr…
Paul Graham@paulg
Someone asked what was the best way to get hired by a startup. I told him it was to start one and then hire himself.
Paul Graham@paulg
14 yo asked how to write good essays. I asked if he meant the kind kids write in school, or actual good essays as written by adults. How strange that I have to ask that. If he asked how to solve a math problem, I wouldn't have to ask if he meant the school wa…
Paul Graham@paulg
To publish something on a paywalled site is to make it invisible. If AIs can't find it, then for all practical purposes it doesn't exist. These two sentences aren't 100% true yet, but they will only get truer.
Paul Graham@paulg
This is how things will be for the foreseeable future. [Quoting @thdxr]: they've been non stop trying to attack our systems for the past 48 hours a side effect is everything is getting hardened but damn we basically need agents going 24/7 because that's what…
Paul Graham@paulg
Why is speaking of words "doing work" and "doing heavy lifting" so common in AI-generated replies? I assume this phase will pass, but how did it happen at all? Is there one model with this idiosyncrasy that they all use?
Paul Graham@paulg
Before it became possible to get rich by creating wealth, the way to do it was to be on the winning side in a military or political dispute. [Quoting @lefineder]: After William conquered England in 1066, he incorporated 21% of the land in England as his royal…
Paul Graham@paulg
Founders are often puzzled when investors reject them for what seem like stupid reasons. There are two possible explanations: (a) the investors actually are stupid, or (b) they just dislike you, and are making up the reason. And that or is not a xor.
Paul Graham@paulg
10x a year for 3 years? I've seen a lot of growth, and that is truly exceptional. It's not unusual for startups to grow 10x in a year, but to keep it up for 3 years is close to unheard of. That's 1000x. [Quoting @WilliamBryk]: Exa just passed $100m in annuali…
Paul Graham@paulg
Last year's April Fool's joke is this year's reality (except for the name of the problem obviously). [Quoting @wtgowers]: It's finally happened: after several unsuccessful attempts, I found a prompt that got Grok to solve a maths problem (the well-known Dubno…
Paul Graham@paulg
The Tesla Model 3 with FSD is mind-blowing. Jessica and I drove to the gym without touching the controls once. It backed out of our driveway, drove there, and backed into a parking space. It's amazing that you can buy so much future for $40k.
Paul Graham@paulg
If customers won't buy your stuff, try asking what they would buy. This sounds obvious, but surprisingly few founders do it, and it often yields valuable insights.
Paul Graham@paulg
Did office hours yesterday with a very smart but nerdy founder. When I suggested he might want a more outgoing cofounder to do sales, he said he didn't, because most of his sales would be to agents. I had to admit he could be right.
Paul Graham@paulg
Talked to someone recently who knows a lot about defense tech, and he made an interesting point: the test of most military hardware right now is whether the Ukrainians want it. They have a hot war going against a determined opponent, and they know what works.
Paul Graham@paulg
When you talk to successful founders, they always wish they'd hired fewer top managers from outside. I don't think I've ever met a founder who wished he or she had promoted fewer people from within.
Paul Graham@paulg
Talking to Amjad yesterday, I realized Replit is more important than I'd previously thought. It's the way AI pervades organizations. Organizations can become somewhat aligned with AI by using AI-powered apps, but the deepest change takes the form of code.
Paul Graham@paulg
It's great to have competitors who are motivated by money. If they're any good, they eventually get it, and then they stop working. And if they aren't good, they aren't good.
Paul Graham@paulg
One very important thing that even the smartest people seem to have to learn from experience is taste in problems. There are juicy problems that tend to lead to interesting discoveries, and nasty problems that tend not to.
Paul Graham@paulg
A company name that appeals to corporate buyers may not appeal so much to their customers.
Paul Graham@paulg
Don't own the .com? The good news is, there's no such thing. "The .com" is just the only .com you've been able to think of so far.
Paul Graham@paulg
In England, students choose just a few subjects (usually 3) to study in the last 2 years of high school, so gender differences in their interests become more visible than in the US.
Paul Graham@paulg
"Do not bet against the airplane. The skeptics who say AI can't conjecture, can't theorize, and can't explain are describing last spring's models. Within months, they will be describing nobody. The evidence is already on the table, and those with eyes can see…
Paul Graham@paulg
There were a lot of things that only worked because there's a limit to the rate at which humans can operate. We're about to find out what all of them are, as they break.
Paul Graham@paulg
This explains why till now I'd never explicitly considered the question of what was the first man-made thing to make it into space. We don't talk about that milestone. [Quoting @MilHistNow]: On this day in 1942, Nazi Germany test fires the first V-2 rocket fr…
Paul Graham@paulg
AI startups grow really fast. That's why valuations have gotten so high. Not just because AI is the cool new thing, but because so many AI startups have genuinely amazing numbers.
Paul Graham@paulg
The sentinel hypothesis proposes that teenagers staying up late has evolutionary advantages, because there's always someone awake to notice if your tribe of hunter-gatherers is attacked. You can probably guess who told me about this.
Paul Graham@paulg
AIs can now ship containers. [Quoting @typesfast]: We just gave your favorite AI tools the ability to ship containers between any two places in the world by any mode of transport, including clearing customs compliantly, with Flexport MCP.