Where does Paul Graham work?

Paul Graham is Founder, Retired at Y Combinator and Advisor, Co-Founder of Y Combinator at Liquid Ventures and Y Combinator co-founder at Pi Campus and Advisor at A.Capital Ventures.

What check size does Paul Graham write?

Paul Graham typically writes checks of $150K.

What awards has Paul Graham received?

BusinessWeek included Paul Graham in the 2008 edition of its annual feature, The 25 Most Influential People on the Web.

What has Paul Graham written?

Paul Graham has 14 tracked posts on paulgraham.com, including "Billionaires build", "How to convince investors", "Do things that don't scale", and 11 more.

What podcasts and interviews feature Paul Graham?

Tracked appearances include "Paul Graham on Why Sam Altman Took over as President of Y Combinator in 2014", "Y Combinator's Paul Graham sits down with Jason at LAUNCH Festival 2014", "Launch Festival 2014: Keynote - Paul Graham, Y Combinator + Session 4 - Day 1", and 9 more.

Paul Graham

Investor

Founder, Retired at Y Combinator · Advisor, Co-Founder of Y Combinator at Liquid Ventures · Y Combinator co-founder at Pi Campus · Advisor at A.Capital Ventures

England, UK

Writes $150K checks

Find your path to Paul

Paths you didn't know you had: your email and LinkedIn already hold routes to Paul. We find them for you
2nd- and 3rd-degree connections: the friend-of-a-friend routes that take hours to manually find through your inbox or LinkedIn
Answers now, not in days: momentum is everything in a raise. Skip asking around whether someone knows someone

Days of research, done the moment you sign in, with every route ranked by how warm it is.

About

Paul Graham co-founded Viaweb, one of the first web application companies, and sold it to Yahoo before starting Y Combinator in 2005 with Jessica Livingston, Robert Morris, and Trevor Blackwell. YC's batch model reshaped how early-stage startups are funded, producing companies like Airbnb, Stripe, and Dropbox. His essays on startups, programming, and ambition are among the most-read writing in the technology industry.

Invests in

AI & Machine LearningDeep TechDeveloper ToolsFintechHardwareSaaS

Beyond investing

Founded: Graham co-founded Viaweb in 1996 with Robert Morris, an early application service provider that let users build their own internet stores. In 2005 Graham co-founded the startup accelerator and seed firm Y Combinator with Trevor Blackwell, Jessica Livingston, and Robert Morris.
Education: Studied at Cornell University (BA, Philosophy, 1986) Studied at Harvard University (MS, Computer Science, 1988) Studied at Rhode Island School of Design (Fine Arts and Painting) Studied at Accademia di Belle Arti, Florence (Fine Arts and Painting) Studied at Gateway High School
Awards: BusinessWeek included Paul Graham in the 2008 edition of its annual feature, The 25 Most Influential People on the Web.
Hobbies: Graham studied fine arts and painting at the Rhode Island School of Design and the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence.
Family: Graham married Jessica Livingston in 2008; they have two children and have lived in England since 2016.
More: Graham created the Lisp dialect Arc, released in 2008, and later specified another Lisp dialect named Bel in 2019. Graham created the Hacker News web forum and news aggregator, written in Arc.

From Paul's own website — common ground for a warm intro.

Investments

Investor

Activeloop Adialante Aemon AeroFS Aerogen Systems Agency Tool Company Agentcard Agentic Labs AgentMail Airware AIVideo.com Anthrogen Apollo Atomics, Inc.AppHarbor Applied Electrodynamics, Inc.AptDeco Arga Labs Astro Mechanica Auricle Automorphic Autosana Autumn Autumn AI Avea Robotics Balto Belvedir Bindwell Biocartesian Bloom Institute of Technology Boom Supersonic BootLoop Breadfast Browser Use Byteport Candor Capi Money Carrot Labs Cartage Casco Channel3 Clever College Pulse Compose Comprehend Confluence Labs Context.dev Crunched CTGTDaelyDagger Dayjob DeepGrove Denta Design Arena Dialect Dipole Labs Discovered Materials Disqus Eden Robotics Edexia EdotEnv Excepgen Exec Exosat Expo FinalDose Fixture Flow Club Frontier Computing Fuse Gaiascope Gamebytes Gauge General Astronautics Greptile Hexclave hillclimb Homejoy Hop Aero Hoplite Human Behavior Icarus Induction Labs Inokyo Instant Intelligence Factory Janet AI Jopwell JunoJusoor LabsJuxta Kara KERNEL Kidato Kobo360 Kopra Bio LATO Leaping AI Ligo Biosciences Locke Locus Loombotic Lucid Bots Luel Lumi Luminal Maingen Manara Maritime Fusion Mastra MedisasMentraMeteoric Metorial Microverse Midrender Milliray Milo Minicor Minro Modern Treasury Molagri Monarcha Novig Nozomio Nuntius o11 Odeko Oklo Omanta Ooak Data Opennote OpenRelay Orange Slice Osmosis Oxus Pachama ParadeDB Parahelp Parameter Parasma Parker Partcl Party Path Pax Historia Peer Perfect Audience Perseus Defense Phind PhoneSys Pingo Pippin / Rent the Backyard PlateJoy Playground Plena Health Pollen Proliferate Prometheus ProvenMetal Prox Purple Plate QFEXQFXRadley Ramen VR Realm ReasonBlocks Recall.ai Replicas Replit Rescale Retool Revise Robotics Reworkd Roforco RonanRx Inc.SalesPatriot SatchelSauna by WordwareSeed SendHub SF Tensor Shone Silmaril Sim Skip Skysheet Slashy Solva Sorce SoterisSpeakStandard Signal Starcloud Stellon Labs Stockline Stoke Space Superset Tandem TENDERD Tesseral Theta ThinAir Tinfoil Titan TorusTrigger.ioTriplebyte True3D Tsenta User Hero Veria Labs Verse Medical Vesence Wren YouLearn Zavo Zenflow ZeropathZigfu

Per curated public sources.

Leave your own feedback

Books by Paul Graham

Hackers & Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age

Podcasts & interviews

featuring Paul Graham

Paul Graham on Why Sam Altman Took over as President of Y Combinator in 2014

This Week in Startups Clips

Y Combinator's Paul Graham sits down with Jason at LAUNCH Festival 2014

This Week in Startups

Launch Festival 2014: Keynote - Paul Graham, Y Combinator + Session 4 - Day 1

This Week in Startups

Paul Graham, Founder of Y Combinator, Live from Stockholm

Y Combinator

Paul Graham, Founder, Y Combinator

The Social Radars Podcast

Paul Graham explains how he created the Y Combinator logo

The Social Radars Podcast

6 more appearances

Writing

Billionaires build2020-12-09

Paul Graham argues that YC seeks founders who deeply understand and serve users, refuting the claim that billionaires succeed by exploiting people.

How to convince investors2020-11-30

An essay advising founders to convince investors by understanding and clearly explaining why their startup could become a big success.

Do things that don't scale2020-11-30

An essay arguing that startups succeed when founders do unscalable early work like manually recruiting users to push their company into motion.

Default alive or default dead2020-11-30

An essay urging startup founders to determine whether their current revenue and expenses put them on a path to profitability or failure.

Be relentlessly resourceful2020-11-30

Essay argues that the essential quality of a great startup founder is being relentlessly resourceful—flexibly determined rather than passively hapless.

A student's guide to startups2020-11-30

Essay arguing that starting a startup is becoming a viable third option for students beyond getting a job or attending grad school.

8 more posts

Why smart people have bad ideas2020-11-30
How to Get Startup Ideas2020-11-30
Before the startup2020-11-30
Why to not not start a startup2020-11-30
The hardest lessons for startups to learn2020-11-30
The equity equation2020-11-30
The 18 mistakes that kill startups2020-11-30
Startup = growth2020-11-30

Colleagues at Y Combinator

Aaron Epstein

General Partner at Y Combinator

Adele Gower

Workplace Operations Manager (HR and Workplace) at Y Combinator

Alex Petersen

Associate General Counsel (Legal) at Y Combinator

Alexis Katsilometes

Executive Assistant (Batch) at Y Combinator

Allison Bryan

Director of Accounting (Finance) at Y Combinator

Amir Sharif

Product Engineer (Software) at Y Combinator

Andrew Hsiao

Product Engineer (Post Batch) at Y Combinator

Andrew Miklas

General Partner at Y Combinator

Network10

Eoghan McCabeScout

Co-founder & CEO of Fin (formerly Intercom)

Abhishek SharmaScout

Managing Director at Nexus Venture Partners

Akriti DokaniaScout

Venture Partner at Ridge Ventures

Alexander GerkoScout

Angel investor

Andreas HadjitofiScout

Associate at Quadri Ventures

Chris HowardScout

Founder at Ritual Capital

Corey RitterScout

Partner at ARCH Venture Partners

David LiebScout

General Partner at Y Combinator

Dharmesh ShahScout

Angel investor

Felix ShpilmanScout

Venture Partner at Moses Capital

Investors connected to Paul in public investor directories — a warm-intro map.

Frequently asked questions

Who is Paul Graham?: Paul Graham co-founded Viaweb, one of the first web application companies, and sold it to Yahoo before starting Y Combinator in 2005 with Jessica Livingston, Robert Morris, and Trevor Blackwell. YC's batch model reshaped how early-stage startups are funded, producing companies like Airbnb, Stripe, and Dropbox. His essays on startups, programming, and ambition are among the most-read writing in the technology industry.
Where does Paul Graham work?: Paul Graham is Founder, Retired at Y Combinator and Advisor, Co-Founder of Y Combinator at Liquid Ventures and Y Combinator co-founder at Pi Campus and Advisor at A.Capital Ventures.
What does Paul Graham invest in?: Paul Graham invests in AI & Machine Learning, Deep Tech, Developer Tools, Fintech, Hardware, SaaS.
What check size does Paul Graham write?: Paul Graham typically writes checks of $150K.
What companies has Paul Graham invested in?: Investments tracked here include Activeloop, Adialante, Aemon, AeroFS, Aerogen Systems, Agency Tool Company, Agentcard, Agentic Labs, AgentMail, Airware, AIVideo.com, Anthrogen, and 209 more.
What awards has Paul Graham received?: BusinessWeek included Paul Graham in the 2008 edition of its annual feature, The 25 Most Influential People on the Web.
What has Paul Graham written?: Paul Graham has 14 tracked posts on paulgraham.com, including "Billionaires build", "How to convince investors", "Do things that don't scale", and 11 more.
What podcasts and interviews feature Paul Graham?: Tracked appearances include "Paul Graham on Why Sam Altman Took over as President of Y Combinator in 2014", "Y Combinator's Paul Graham sits down with Jason at LAUNCH Festival 2014", "Launch Festival 2014: Keynote - Paul Graham, Y Combinator + Session 4 - Day 1", and 9 more.

About this profile. Compiled from public sources — Y Combinator's own website, press coverage and public professional profiles — and summarised by Fundraising Fox; every fact is kept with where it came from. Spotted an error, or would rather not be listed? Email privacy@fundraisingfox.com · How we build profiles · Your rights