Skip to content
Hallway
0:00 / 0:00

#paulgraham#ycombinator#robertscoble

Mr. Startup: Paul Graham, founder of YCombinator, and his "no asshole" rule

Robert Scoble

23K subscribers • 2 videos on Hallway

YouTube
  • Recommended by 1 person: 1 on Hacker News.
  • Presented by Paul Graham, co-founder of Y Combinator
  • An opinion. It argues one side of a question engineers disagree on.

Beginner. No background in the topic needed.

102K views16 years ago1 recommendation

Careers and interviewsTools and practiceStartupsCode review and teamworkInside tech companies

Robert Scoble interviews Paul Graham about the early days of Y Combinator and his philosophy on avoiding toxic founders.

YCombinator, over the past couple of days, has had nearly every major technology investor and press person visit its Mountain View headquarters to witness the birth of 36 new startups. He explains what YCombinator is, then have a short conversation with me about the companies that revealed themselves for the first time yesterday. One of my favorite parts of this conversation is when we talked about his "no assholes" rule.

Why it's here

1 person recommends this

What people say. Linked in discussions about startup culture, founder dynamics, and Paul Graham's early views on Y Combinator.

ashleyreddyon Hacker News • Recommends

On “My site looks like $hit any designers want to make a couple of hundred bucks”

Your comment is mean spirited. It's meaningless and adds no value. Perhaps you should watch this video. link to this video It's about Paul Graham's no asshole rule.
View on Hacker News

Hitchhikeron Hacker News • Mentions

On “Why female entrepreneurs should apply to YC”

This low rate may also have to do with biases extant in engineering / sciences etc. Couple that with YC's preference for hard-core tech founders ( a perfectly reasonable delimiter ), these results are not surprising. You can see similar composition in YC leadership where Jessica is the only female partner ( link ) and from my limited understanding, she brings in a much needed balance to their approach. A system that produces great results should perhaps focus on ".. but by the content of their character " - Martin Luther King, Jr. This I think, pg emphasizes via link to this video
View on Hacker News

harryfon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Assholes: A Probing Examination”

> Sorting people into bins: assholes and victims, is problematic. This is true of anything subjective. There are people (intentional assholes in this article) who absolutely _are_ assholes because it gives them pleasure - their ego or otherwise gains something from hurting others. Everyone in a company knows who they without needing to go through a labelling process. Ultimately it's a problem for leaders in a company, those that should be caring about the culture, to remove such people. Paul Graham described this long ago here - link to this video (starts at 4m20s) - a leader in YCombinator he makes the judgement calls.
View on Hacker News

O__________Oon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Ask HN: What Happened to YC?”

Related links: PG 12 years ago saying average was $17,500 per startup link to this video Last batch count was 240: link FAQ saying current standard offer is $500,000 link
View on Hacker News