The Start-up Guru: Y Combinator’s Paul Graham

Long Inc. article on Graham, whose, as Jason Kottke says, “essays you either love to hate or hate to love.”

Graham is 44 years old and possesses the combination, often encountered in entrepreneurs, of extreme intelligence and a hint of arrogance. He holds a Ph.D. in computer science and has several years of formal training as a visual artist. Before starting Y Combinator, he founded Viaweb, a dot-com software company that helped retailers sell online; it was acquired by Yahoo in 1998 for $49 million. After leaving Yahoo, Graham won renown as an essayist, the creator of a new programming language, and the guy who invented spam filtering as we know it. Today, he funds more start-ups in a single year than a typical venture capitalist backs in a decade.

Looking for a reason to hide

“I’ve seen it before and I’m sure I’ll see it again.

Whenever a business cycle starts to falter, the media start wringing their hands. Then big businesses do, freelancers, entrepreneurs and soon everyone is keening.

People and organizations that have no real financial stress start to pull back, ‘because it’s prudent.’ Now is not the time, they say. They cut budgets and put off investments. It’s almost as if everyone is just waiting for an excuse to do less.

In fact, they are.”

Savings & (mis)Trust: A Credit Crisis XPLANATiON

The subprime mortgage crisis XPLANEd: The United States economy is suffering one of the worst financial crises in history, due to seriously flawed subprime mortgage lending practices over the past eight years. The repercussions have already been severe and continue to unravel. American people are fearful and unsure of what the future holds. How did we get to this point? Clearly understand the roles that borrowers, mortgage lenders, banks, financial institutions and asset backed securities played in creating this financial meltdown of historic proportion.

This four minute animated movie takes viewers through the process starting in 2000 and ending in current day. It details the role that home buyers, mortgage lenders, banks, financial institutions and ultimately asset backed securities played in this financial mess.

Startup Ideas We’d Like to Fund

“When we read Y Combinator applications there are always ideas we’re hoping to see. In the past we’ve never said publicly what they are. If we say we’re looking for x, we’ll get applications proposing x, certainly. But then it actually becomes harder to judge them: is this group proposing x because they were already thinking about it, or because they know that’s what we want to hear?

We don’t like to sit on these ideas, though, because we really want people to work on them. So we’re trying something new: we’re going to list some of the ideas we’ve been waiting to see, but only describe them in general terms. It may be that recipes for ideas are the most useful form anyway, because imaginative people will take them in directions we didn’t anticipate. “

No Small Change: How Obama Reinvented Campaign Finance

Check out this new XPLANATiON that XPLANE put together:

“Barack Obama is the first major candidate to decline participation in the public financing system for presidential campaigns. He’s found a more effective way to raise money — by leveraging the power of the American people through online Social Networks.”

This work is released under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

The economy – is it *really* that bad?

“Something I’ve been having to wonder about is the economy. The news is filled with talks of impending recessions, and discussions that it’s too late to do much about it.

However, my business, Adaptive Path, and all similar businesses of which I’m aware, are overwhelmed by work opportunities. We’re all turning down leads left and right (and, believe me, we’re grateful for the situation we’re finding ourselves in).”

The 20 Worst Venture Capital Investments of All Time

“Some things were just never meant to be, but that doesn’t mean that investors won’t pile millions of dollars upon a bad idea — or even a good idea gone bad. Whether they crashed and burned or sucked investors dry, these ventures just didn’t work out. Check out our graveyard of dreams and money to get a look at VC (venture-capital) investments that just weren’t wise.”

Sound Investing and Peaceful Sleep

Ben Stein: “About a week ago, I was swimming in my pool when I had serious difficulty breathing. ‘Uh-oh,’ I said to myself, ‘now I am about to die.’ My wife was upstairs reading, way out of earshot and, anyway, if I were about to have a lethal heart attack, I wouldn’t be able to scream. It turned out to be a nasty but short-lived bronchitis, and as I was lying in bed recovering, I thought, ‘I will die someday, and before I do, I would like to share with you the best possible thoughts I can, in gratitude for the many insightful letters I have received over the years from my readers.’”

How to Write a Business Plan: Ten Questions with Tim Berry

“I work in the surreal world of Silicon Valley where venture capitalists fund companies based on PowerPoint pitches and executive summaries. My friend Tim Berry rightfully pointed that business plans still serve an important role in ‘the rest of the world.’”

The Way To Wealth: The best business book is also the shortest

“I try to read my favorite business book of all time at least once a month. Luckily it’s only 30 pages. Benjamin Franklin’s The Way to Wealth was first published in 1758 as a preface to Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanac. It’s a summary of his previously published thoughts on how to succeed in business (and, I’d say, life). It’s chock full of astute observations…