Paul Graham

Accelerator

Co-founder, Y Combinator

Y Combinator co-founder and startup essayist

Gloucestershire, England$500K (standard YC batch investment) checks8 notable investments

Pre-SeedSeed

Website 𝕏@paulg Y Combinator Crunchbase

Enterprise SaaSDeveloper ToolsConsumerAIFintech

Background

Paul Graham is an English-born computer scientist, writer, and investor who earned a PhD in computer science from Harvard. In 1995 he co-founded Viaweb, one of the first web-based application companies, which was acquired by Yahoo in 1998 for approximately $49.6 million. In 2005, he co-founded Y Combinator alongside Jessica Livingston, Trevor Blackwell, and Robert Morris, pioneering the modern startup accelerator model. He stepped back from day-to-day operations in 2014 but remains involved with YC as a co-founder doing office hours. He is widely read for his essays on startups, technology, and creativity published at paulgraham.com, and authored the book Hackers & Painters.