Y Combinator's Graham Says Startups Must Improve Lives 

Paul Graham is my favorite person in the startup world. He just gets things.

lol the suit trying to pick holes in the whole startup / VC model

Paul Graham is my hero.

At 10:40, he says "So you're trying to think of something that's more useful but less profitable? Where's the business part of this?". I really hate this mindset because the profitability of any business should come from providing value to people, not from figuring out ways to milk every dollar you can out of your customer. I'm a firm believer that it's better in the long run to provide customers with maximum value and retain them, rather than milk them as hard as you can in the short run. It's that exact mindset that makes it so companies like Hipmunk could create a competitive, superior platform. If Orbitz didn't return lousy results and make you click through multiple pages to increase ad revenue, they could corner both markets for ticket sales, and flight suggestion optimization, and probably make more money in the long run. Even if it turns out to be less profitable to weasel people into more clicks, is there no ethical standard left either? I think these people are just greedy honestly. I have an MBA myself and I'd rather help real people and risk being poor, than just manipulate business models to put the most money in my pocket at the expense of others / my service provided.

Love this interview. All straight to the point. Thanks PG

"Is $1B crazy for Airbnb's valuation?" *Worth almost $100B today*

Regarding Groupon, they take a percentage of each deal they are offering so that they are earning only for publishing them, which is smart. On the other hand, the companies offering deals are acquiring customers with whom they can make future business, or upsell something else, making the total transaction profitable from the start for those companies. Such companies may also benefit from "economy of scale", say, earning less from each product or service sold but making a sustainable profit in total because of the increase of the number of sales due to the lower price. The businesses could also be using surplus resources, for example, if you know that some of your staff, let's say, a beautician, have idle time, then when you offer a deal in Groupon to attract more customers, you will not incur additional costs, since anyways you were already paying her wage. Lastly, the customer gets value from the offer. So, all the participants are benefiting from the model.

Just amazing but very simple and so profound!

it feels almost insulting to hear the Host using "bootcamp" and "company" like words for YC. and whatever PG is saying, is hardly making much sense to either of Hosts

Smart, meek, nice guy, Paul Graham, discussing the new (peer-to-peer) social economy with old world, battle-hardened Wall Street arse-lickers armed with their "Gotcha-comments". Honestly, this should be a comedy show.

The little banner at the bottom repeating what we just heard PG say 20 seconds ago does not make me miss Old Media

This is why PG doesn’t do CNBC or Bloomberg anymore.

4:39 this timestamp for Justin

Some sound advice from Mr. Graham here.

The comments about Andrew Mason and Groupon are a little unfortunate in hindsight, but overall I like PG's philosophy.

Nice

2:44 which company was it? Why did it happen?

12:44 airbnb (2011)

@reginaldlewis11 Yep - Dropbox doesn't make any money at all. :)

"Graham: Don't look closely at groupon's numbers" LOL

Funny that Hipmunk recently announced shutting down the business

"UMMM..."

Before she went crazy woke

And then he funded coinbase.

PG is also a Harvard grad-YC is the only ‘accelerator’ 2 trust 🔥🜍 ☿ 🜔🔥