paul graham

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--Twice a year, Sand Hill Road, the most important hub for venture capitalists in the world, empties out for a day. But it's not vacation that pulls away all the VCs -- it's Y Combinator Demo Day.

At the Computer History Museum here today, the heart of the tech investing universe came together once again to see, up close and personal, what the 74 companies in the summer class of Y Combinator have been working on all summer.

As is the case with any demo day, there were plenty of misses. But given Y Combinator'… Read more

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -- The future for startup funding is "getting more unpredictable."

That's what Y Combinator founder Paul Graham said today, theorizing that because there are so many more young companies getting off the ground these days, venture capitalists may well have a much harder time predicting winners than in the past.

It makes sense. Startups can get going today for as little as a few hundred thousand dollars, so there are many more of them. "But the funnel at the top is the same," Graham said during the Y Combinator Demo Day. "… Read more

Having lots of money isn't a reason to spend it, especially if you're a startup that has yet to prove itself as a viable, sustainable business.

There have been a lot of early-stage startups raising monster rounds in recent months. Ark ($4.2 million seed), Viddy ($30 million), and Gumroad ($7 million) are just a few prominent examples.

The funding party may be over though, at least according to Paul Graham, a prominent investor and founder of Y Combinator.

"Jessica and I had dinner recently with a prominent investor," Graham said in a letter to Y … Read more

One of the most prominent people in Silicon Valley's startup world is warning that Facebook's disastrous IPO performance will lead to hard times for startups.

Paul Graham, the co-founder of the first and most influential startup incubator anywhere, sent an e-mail to his portfolio companies warning them that Facebook has made it a lot harder to raise money. Graham wrote that "the startups that really get hosed are going to be the ones that have easy money built into the structure of their company: the ones that raise a lot on easy terms, and are then led … Read more

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -- The pace of startups popping up seems matched only by the emergence of new "incubators," or "accelerators," whichever word you chose to describe these startup boot camps that have cropped up across the country.

And Paul Graham, the man behind the grandaddy of them all, Y Combinator, barely pays attention to them. What he is convinced of, though, is that many will die, and that they're formed for the wrong reason.

"People are doing it because it's the cool thing to do," Graham told me during a break … Read more