Paul Graham

scribd

Startup guru Paul Graham's "greatest success" may be floundering

I've always thought Scribd, the online document-posting startup, was set up mostly so its investors had an excuse to throw parties. They may not have that excuse much longer, if FuckedStartup's report that Scribd is running out of money is accurate. At a time when any number of startups are running out of money, why fret about Scribd's bank-account balance? Because Scribd was manufactured in angel investor Paul Graham's Y Combinator startup factory. More »

9:20 AM on Mon Oct 27 2008
By Owen Thomas
1,270 views, 2 comments

Latest by Shadowlayer: @Figaro: Word, whoever buys it will get an extra serving of lawsuit from the print industry. Anyway, I feel bad for more »

nerdfight

Y Combinator cofounder Paul Graham vs. "one cranky attendee"

Why might this this summer's batch of incubator Y Combinator's startups bore you, as they did "one cranky attendee" who told Silicon Alley Insider so? Because you're not as talented at spotting early stage startups as Y Combinator cofounder Paul Graham, says Paul Graham in a comment on the SAI post: More »

2:40 PM on Mon Aug 18 2008
By Nicholas Carlson
997 views, 4 comments

Latest by Whocares: @Shadowlayer: Yeah, no.. MeetCast has never been done before... evar.. The picture frame idea was legit, but I believe its allready more »

venture capital

30 startup ideas Y Combinator wants to fund

Y Combinator partners Jessica Livingston and Paul Graham only married in June, but they're ready to start popping them out. More $6,000 checks to fund startups, that is. Together with not-married-to-each-other partners Trevor Blackwell and Robert Morris, the pair put out a 3,000-word list of 30 "Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund." Sure, a lot of them are obvious, most already done — but the Y Combinator version, with Graham's seal of approval, has a better chance than your run-of-the-mill startup of getting quickly flipped to a gullibly starstruck buyer. A version you'll be able to finish before this fall's application deadline, below. More »

3:20 PM on Mon Jul 21 2008
By Nicholas Carlson
1,765 views, 5 comments

Latest by Patricia2: I didn't agree with a lot of that list. Fixing advertising is in the analytics, which are a wash right more »

sex trade

Weebly, the worst Web 2.0 app to make an escort site with ever

If there's a legitimate use for Weebly, it has been seared from my brain by the one-two assault of Pierce89's escort site, which is also one of the webpage-building service's most-trafficked subdomains. It's not that running a girl-for-hire agency off of a free website generator backed by Paul Graham's Y Combinator is illegitimate. It's just that Pierce89 is doing it wrong, with an autoplaying loop of Mariah Carey and the Slide-powered rotation of escort photos with dancing flower blossoms layered over them. User-generated Ajax-and-widgets nonsense has lowered the barrier for every aspiring player with a Boost mobile phone and an Internet connection, but this is a new sex-trade low. For god's sakes, if you can't be bothered with a real URL, why not just really let yourself go and cobble together Xanga and Photobucket? More »

1:20 PM on Tue Jun 10 2008
By Melissa Gira Grant
1,737 views, 3 comments

Latest by raincoaster: @thinkofme: Right, because girls can't learn tech. Shouldn't you be over at Deadspin? more »

geek love

Reddit cofounder blabs about Y Combinator founders' secret wedding

We'd heard in April that Paul Graham and Jessica Livingston, the pair behind startup factory Y Combinator, were partners in love as well as life. The two tied the knot over the weekend, Twittered Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian, a graduate of Y Combinator: "Sorry ladies, PG said 'I do' - 'twas a great wedding." We're sure it was — anyone have pictures — or insights into why the two have been so secretive about their romance?

1:40 PM on Mon Jun 2 2008
By Owen Thomas
885 views, 1 comment

Latest by MalcoveMagnesia: He kind of has that "Bubba" (Bill Clinton) look. Does this startup get lunch catered from McDonalds? more »

geek love

Yahoo millionaire Paul Graham secretly engaged to Jessica Livingston

Commenters on Hacker News, a Web discussion board, got their panties in a bunch over the weekend over whether to ban stories from Valleywag from the site. The move netted the otherwise obscure site, mostly frequented by graduates of Paul Graham's Y Combinator startup incubator, some coverage from Michael Arrington on TechCrunch. It also netted us a tipster who let us know Hacker News founder Graham, best known for flipping an e-commerce startup to Yahoo more than a decade ago, was engaged to longtime lover Jessica Livingston, author of Founders at Work. More »

1:20 PM on Mon Apr 14 2008
By Jackson West
2,278 views, 5 comments

Latest by abmw: I believe that Ms. Livingston has been the organizational and marketing brains behind the desk at Ycomb Cambridge. The pic of more »

rumormonger

Yahoo to sell at $36?

A little more grist for the Yahoo/Microsoft rumor mill from Y Combinator:

Husband of a friend works in management over at Yahoo. She says the word is around the water cooler, that Yahoo's looking for around $36 a share, and then will sell.

Y Combinator, a startup incubator, is unaffiliated with Yahoo, but was founded by Paul Graham, who sold a company to Yahoo a decade ago. More »

1:42 PM on Mon Feb 11 2008
By Jordan Golson
2,116 views, 5 comments

Latest by BartKela: Lemme guess, they need the extra dough to buy OC-80? more »

toogle many googlers

Chris Sacca leaves Google, continues do-nothing plan

In a long-overdue move, Chris Sacca, Google's "~~director~~ head of special initiatives," has left the company. Cleverly, though, he's moving into a new career where he can continue to talk a lot and let others do the work: He's becoming an angel investor, working with Evan Williams's Obvious, the company which spun off Twitter, and Paul Graham, whose Y Combinator specializes in funding companies with utterly adorkable names. We figured Sacca's career at Google might be foreshortened when Google listed an opening for a "director of other," since that pretty much sounded like Sacca's job. Doing anything other than work. Congratulations, Chris: In a Valley that unfairly discounts laziness, you're now the ultimate value stock.

9:33 AM on Thu Dec 13 2007
By Owen Thomas
2,092 views, 4 comments

Latest by salingerjt: Sounds to me like some obscure director is jealous that his or her projects are unknown and meaningless and that more »

nerdspotting

Yahoos and hacks clutter The Lobby

Really, we're confounded. David Hornik's Lobby conference is ostensibly an invite-only affair. But some of the attendees had us scratching our head. Spotted, Yahoo's Bradley Horowitz, Brad Garlinghouse and Kiersten Hollars enjoying some sun instead of participating in Jerry Yang's 100-day turnaround of the company. Then there's Jessica Livingston and Paul Graham from Y Combinator. There's nary a 22-year-old wantrepreneur in sight, so what's the draw of this conference for them? Other inexplicables: Kara Swisher from AllThingsD, and TechCrunch heavyweight Michael Arrington, two notoriously gossipy hacks. Wasn't this event supposed to be off the record? And does Arrington even know what that means? (Photo by bradley23)

4:24 PM on Thu Oct 25 2007
By Megan McCarthy
951 views, Comment

xobni

Email startup takes on filmmaking

A note to venture capitalist Rob Hayes of First Round Capital. Remember the cash you plunked down on Xobni, the party-throwing email startup? This is where your money's going. More »

3:38 PM on Mon Oct 1 2007
By Megan McCarthy
1,288 views, 8 comments

Valleywag