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Making Startups Powerful

paulgraham.com

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Re: Making Startups Powerful

#131

Post by leoc »

ViktorRay wrote: post #44
raincole wrote: post #41

I wonder what the tipping point was where the general attitude towards PG and his essays changed. It's tempting to say AI, but I feel it was more like AirBnB era? When people saw how one of YC's golden goose affected the local communities, the rosy color on our glasses inevitably faded.

Are you sure the attitude changed generally or did it change more specifically here on Hacker News? Perhaps the kinds of people who use Hacker News changed. https://youtu.be/ZIaOBAjvc38 Go to the 2:00 mark of this interview. Sam Altman says “Paul Graham is the most important force in startups of the past few decades” and the whole auditorium starts cheering. So Paul Graham is akin to a god in some places.

> Perhaps the kinds of people who use Hacker News changed.

I don't think that a change in the composition of HN users is sufficient to explain it. To start with, a lot of the original user base which came over from main Reddit and /r/programming still seems to be active here. And if I had to hazard a guess I'd say that our attitude to pg has indeed shifted.

Re: Making Startups Powerful

#132

Post by brabel »

epolanski wrote: post #120
rustystump wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is only true in America. American culture has become one where your worth as a person is based on money. If someone has alot of money, they must be better, smarter, etc, than everyone else who has less. I dont think this holds as strongly in other countries. Other countries do not have the religious like worship of money that is the usa. Having a Phd is seen as higher status than making millions on legal scammin…

I'm European, I see no difference here. Maybe asian cultures are different.

You really think China and India are full of people who want to do good for society instead of wishing to get rich at any cost? I think their human rights record and treatment of the less privileged point at a very different direction.

Re: Making Startups Powerful

#133

Post by carlsborg »

This is one of those essays you print out and read every week because its that good. Just one of the operating insights like "being generous makes you more powerful" took me years to understand. I phrase it as "helping people win" instead.

Re: Making Startups Powerful

#134

Post by brazukadev »

armchairhacker wrote: post #116
brazukadev wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't Anthropic and OpenAI still startups? Even though they have big revenue, their business model isn't proved yet and there is a big chance they gonna fail and so most of the AI startups.

OpenAI launched 10 years ago Anthropic launched only 5, but was built from connections to OpenAI

Launch date is not what defines a startup.

Re: Making Startups Powerful

#135

Post by tim333 »

jchonphoenix wrote: post #17

PG hasn't been in the bay for a long time so he doesn't understand what the ecosystem is like anymore. For example "startups make the best stuff" is just wrong these days. I almost always assume the startup's product today is going to screw you or is hacky, because they prove over and over again they cut corners for growth. Very few startups still take the mentality PG has in his era and now ship half broken hacked s…

Here's PG giving a talk in Mountain View a couple of weeks ago https://youtu.be/5bxp78i96S8 He may live in England but he pops back quite often.

Re: Making Startups Powerful

#136

Post by tim333 »

armchairhacker wrote: post #24

What are some recent powerful startups? The only ones I've seen are AI grifters (not even useful AI) and Polymarket/Kalshi, which makes me cynical; although I've seen some decent startups that are small (i.e. non-powerful) but nonetheless profitable.

>Legora: Operates as an agentic operating system built for modern legal work

seems to be doing well (https://x.com/paulg/status/2095997934584160647)?

Re: Making Startups Powerful

#137

Post by tim333 »

mirmor23 wrote: post #14

I read the article and kept wondering what the author is trying to convey. It reads like a checklist compiled into an essay with no wisdom nor rationale baked into it. mostly vague and generic -- like a human transform applied to an llm output.

I guess a summary of what works?

Re: Making Startups Powerful

#138

Post by tim333 »

raincole wrote: post #41

I wonder what the tipping point was where the general attitude towards PG and his essays changed. It's tempting to say AI, but I feel it was more like AirBnB era? When people saw how one of YC's golden goose affected the local communities, the rosy color on our glasses inevitably faded.

I'm not quite sure which change you are thinking off? This one seems quite well recieved.

Re: Making Startups Powerful

#139

Post by tim333 »

AIorNot wrote: post #11

I’m glad there’s a lot of people commenting negatively below to PGs modus operandi (rationalizing maximum greed in seemingly thoughtful measured essays that make him seem like a kindly philosopher instead or digital robber barron) Like Ayn Rand, and PT Barnum before them VCs and Tech Bros will be looked at with great hostility in next years as having destroyed society with their brand of hyper-capitalism all in the n…

I think he specifically speaks against maximum greed here? "create more value than you capture", "have the best product", "Being generous makes you more powerful" etc.

Re: Making Startups Powerful

#140

Post by tim333 »

CPLX wrote: post #5
ahgqw wrote: post #3

Suggesting every dark pattern for startups and then using record labels as the boogeyman like it's 2000 again is ... odd. Why don't you let artists decide if they want record labels? They were far better off with EMI and Columbia records than with Spotify. It is better to give $500,000 of $1,000,000 to a record label than $3 of $10 to Spotify. And record labels were pretty damn good at selecting artists, even in pop…

I'm shocked to read that Paul Graham is only 61. His writings lately sound more like late 70s in terms of age and worldview. References to record labels? How much do record labels have to do with people discovering and catching on to music artists in 2026? What does a multi-billion-dollar 17 year old tech conglomerate like Stripe have to do with startups at this point? I maintain that one of the hardest things for pe…

The top three record companies still take 71% of the revenue from digital and physical music sales. You may think they are not relevant but they still grab most of the money leading PG to calling them mafia. They are notorious for destroying music startups with legal action.
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