PG on Y Combinator | Hacker News Reader

PG on Y Combinator

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aul is a great guy and has built a huge following in the startup community. I have a lot of respect for him and what he has done. Y Combinator is a great story. Paul agreed to share some details with me. Here it is live and uncut.

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Other one you can't talk about == Parakey?

No, Parakey is public knowledge. And the reference to "one we can't talk about" first appeared in "Why to Not Not Start a Startup" (http://www.paulgraham.com/notnot.html), which was written before Parakey was acquired.

The impression I got when pg gave the talk at Startup School was that it was some kind of "big company buys little company because they were scared of what they were making" situation. But as far as I know that's all they can say.

I didn't count Parakey because they were not a regular YC investment. We didn't seed fund them. We were just one of many investors in their series A round.

We usually wouldn't invest that late, but Blake and Joe were so good that it was hard to resist.

Wasn't there some article somewhere that mentioned a rumor about textpayme getting bought by amazon?

I haven't heard that, but it would make sense, considering Amazon's release of the Flexible Payment Service.

PG: Will there be a point when you can talk about the other one that got acquired or is it going to be permanently off limits, at least for the foreseeable future?

They keep telling us we'll be able to talk about it soon, but they've been saying that for a while. It was actually the first acquisition, many months before reddit.

hmmm? PG's a serial entrepreneur? really? no disrespect meant but really?

EDIT:saw speling mistakes

Depends whether you count YC as a startup. It is in some ways, isn't in others.

Why does it matter? I don't think entrepreneur implies startup. Someone who starts a restaurant and then a dry cleaner and then a hair salon is still a serial entrepreneur.

Entrepreneur implies starting a business. All startups are businesses. But not all businesses are startups.

A start-up differs from a business because it is intended to scale really quickly. That's what the 5 million in VC cash is for.

Yes, I thought an understanding of all of the above was implicit in my post. Did you mean to dispute something I said, or just clarify my point?

I'm sorry, I misread your post ... so you can take my post as a clarification. :)

I actually find reading your stuff more interesting because you're not what I think of/have a stereotype of as an "entrepreneur" - or at least you don't come across that way in your writing. I get more of a "hacker done good" impression, which is something I can relate to a lot more than "business guy".

"We have no idea if it will work." Those are always the most exciting ventures.

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