Accepts first board seat
Graham joins the board of Watsi after spotting the crowdfunding non-profit on Hacker News and funding it through Y Combinator. Watsi:
We’re thrilled to have PG as our first board member.
For the first time I agreed to be on a board of directors: @watsi's.
— Paul Graham (@paulg) April 19, 2013
Hires moderator
Graham brings a second person on board to the site, after he spends three to four hours a day just on moderating duties.
It was becoming my life
Funds Justin.tv
Graham funds Kan and Shear’s second venture, Justin.tv, supplying $50,000 through Y Combinator. The website featues a single channel tracking Kan, who wears a camera on his head and a backpack full of cellphone modems, as he goes about life in San Francisco. It attracts tens of thousands of viewers. Graham:
I thought it was insanely weird.
Amazon buys TextPayMe
The deal is worth a rumored $3 million as Amazon branches out its payments strategy, allowing users to text money to each other by SMS.
Y Combinator starts
Graham, Livingston, Morris, and Viaweb employee Trevor Blackwell offer $6,000 seed capital for a company with one founder, $12,000 if the company has two founders, and $18,000 if the company has three. In exchange, Y Combinator gets around 6% in common stock. Graham publicizes the program on the web:
We give you enough money to live on for a summer, as with a regular summer job. But instead of working for an existing company, you’ll be working for your own; instead of showing up at some office building at 9 a.m., you can work when and where you like; and instead of salary, the money you get will be seed funding.
Yahoo buys Viaweb
Yahoo issues 455,000 common shares in exchange for Viaweb, valuing the deal around $49 million. Viaweb now has 21 full-time employees at its Cambridge, Mass., headquarters. Graham says it was an early prototype for today’s startups:
The reason we know that it’s possible to start a start-up with about $10,000 and someone to help with the paperwork is because that’s exactly what we had.