Source: Conversations with Tyler, Aug 2023
GRAHAM: I can tell if people know what they’re talking about when they come and talk about some idea, especially some technical idea. I can tell if they know, if they actually understand [laughs] the idea, or if they just have a reading-the-newspaper level of understanding of the thing.
the way you tell determination is not so much from talking to them as from asking them stories about things that have happened to them. That’s where you can see determination.
it’s what they did in the story, right? … Something went wrong, and instead of giving up, they persevered.
GRAHAM: Well, people should do some work. When I talk to people who are in their teens or early 20s about starting a start-up, I tell them, “Instead of sitting around thinking of start-up ideas, you should be working with other people on projects. Then, you’ll get a start-up idea out of it that you probably never would have thought of, and you’ll get a co-founder too.” I wish people would do more of that. You can get co-founders — just work with people on projects. You just can’t get co-founders instantly. You’ve got to have some patience.
On increasing ambition
COWEN: Why is there not more ambition in the developed world? Say we wanted to boost ambition by 2X. What’s the actual constraint? What stands in the way?
GRAHAM: Boy, what a fabulous question. I wish you’d asked me that an hour ago, so I could have had some time to think about it between now and then.
COWEN: [laughs] You’re clearly good at boosting ambition, so you’re pulling on some lever, right? What is it you do?
GRAHAM: Oh, okay. How do I do it? People are, for various reasons — for multiple reasons — they’re afraid to think really big. There are multiple reasons. One, it seems overreaching. Two, it seems like it would be an awful lot of work. [laughs]
COWEN: How much of what you do is reshuffling their networks? There are people with potential. They’re in semi-average networks —
GRAHAM: Wait. That was such an interesting question. We should talk about that some more because that really is an interesting question. Imagine how amazing it would be if all the ambitious people can be more ambitious. That really is an interesting question. There’s got to be more to it than just the fact that I don’t have to do the work.
COWEN: I think a lot of it is reshuffling networks. You need someone who can identify who should be in a better network. You boost the total size of all networking that goes on, and you make sure those people with potential —
GRAHAM: By reshuffling networks, you mean introducing people to one another?
COWEN: Of course.
GRAHAM: Yes.
COWEN: You pull them away from their old peers, who are not good enough for them, and you bring them into new circles, which will raise their sights.
GRAHAM: You know what we do in YC interviews? We basically start YC, the first 10 minutes of YC is the interview. You see what it’s like to work with people by working with them for 10 minutes, and that’s enough, it turns out.
COWEN: So, you think the 11th minute of an interview has very low value.
GRAHAM: I’ve thought a lot about where the cutoff is. Like, where’s the point? If you made a graph, what’s your probability of changing your mind after minute number N? After minute number one or two, the probability of changing your mind is pretty high. I would say YC interviews could actually be seven minutes instead of ten minutes, but ten minutes is already almost insultingly short, so we kept it at ten. We could have made it seven.
COWEN: I think there’s often a threshold of two, and then another threshold at about seven, and after that, it’s very tough for it to flip.
GRAHAM: Yes. Although that doesn’t mean you’re always right.
COWEN: It could just be, after three hours, you would still be wrong.
GRAHAM: It’s just not going to flip. I didn’t say seven minutes is enough to tell, notice. [laughs] I said seven minutes is the point where you’re probably not going to change your mind.
COWEN: Clearly, from zero to one or two, they get over nerves, or they adjust the sound volume. There are plenty of those stories.
GRAHAM: It’s probably that we misunderstood what they’re working on initially.
COWEN: So, great idea, bad at presenting it?
GRAHAM: No, more like they’re near some idea that we’re familiar with, and we just assume they must be doing that idea. And they say, “Oh, no, no, no, we’re not doing that. We’re doing this.” I’m like, “Oh, okay. Thank goodness.” Then, they get extra points because not only they’re not doing the stupid thing, but they understand that the stupid thing is stupid. They get extra credit for what we were subtracting for it in the past.
COWEN: Very last question. In my view, a life properly lived is learn, learn, learn all the time.
GRAHAM: That’s what Charlie Munger said, right?
COWEN: Paul Graham, thank you very much.
GRAHAM: [laughs] Thank you. Boy, that was so many hard questions.
Related Resource: YCombinator, Feb 2016
Delightful & Distinctive COLRS 