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Paul Graham

Paul Graham88 posts

Paul Graham is a computer programmer, essayist, and venture capitalist, born in 1964. He is a co-founder of Viaweb, which later became Yahoo Store. His writing includes essays on the programming language Lisp, being a nerd in high school, and the hypothetical programming language Blub. He has published three books, including a collection of essays titled Hackers And Painters. He is one of the creators of the startup incubator Y Combinator and the social news site Hacker News. He has a PhD in Computer Science from Harvard, and studied painting in Italy. He is married to Jessica Livingston.

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2005

Y Combinator starts

Founding0 Comments

ycombinator-logoGraham, 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.