Paul Graham

Overview

Paul Graham is a computer scientist (Lisp, On Lisp, ANSI Common Lisp), a startup investor (co-founder of Y Combinator, 2005), and — most relevant here — the author of several hundred essays that, more than any other body of work, articulate what it is to be a builder in the 21st century.^[1]

His essays are short, plain, and unusually free of hedging. They read like someone who has done the work explaining what he noticed. That is, not coincidentally, the house style of this wiki.

Key Essays (a starting set)

• "Hackers and Painters" (2003) — argues programmers are makers, not scientists, and the discipline should behave accordingly.
• "Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule" (2009) — the most-cited essay in the genre of explaining to managers why their calendar is other people's problem.
• "Do Things That Don't Scale" (2013) — early-stage builders should deliberately refuse leverage until they've earned it by doing the work by hand.
• "Life Is Short" (2016) — on what not to spend it on.
• "How to Do Great Work" (2023) — a synthesis essay. Long, but worth the read.

Key Ideas

• Makers and managers live on different schedules. A manager's day is a grid of half-hour meetings; a maker's day is a single long block. When they collide, the maker loses.
• Taste is a skill. It can be developed. It must be developed, if you want to make anything that isn't already obvious.
• Compound effort is the only real shortcut. Relentless small effort beats occasional heroic effort.
• You can tell a real maker by what they optimize for. Not credentials, not the deck, but the thing itself.
• Simple is the hardest thing. Most of writing is removing.

Connection to the Builder Thesis

Graham provides the modern essayistic foundation for what the wiki takes as given. "Makers make" is a Graham line as much as it is anyone's. The distinction between doing the work and talking about the work is, in the 21st century, often implicitly framed in Graham's terms. Pair with Naval for the other canonical modern voice.

Notable Quote

"The best way to get startup ideas is not to try to think of startup ideas. It's to look for problems, preferably problems you have yourself." — Paul Graham, "How to Get Startup Ideas"

References