Paul Graham (; born 1964) is an English-born American

computer scientist A computer scientist is a person who is trained in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation, as opposed to the hardware side on which computer engineers mainly focus (al ...

, essayist, entrepreneur,

venture capital Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which ha ...

ist, and author. He is best known for his work on the programming language

Lisp A lisp is a speech impairment in which a person misarticulates sibilants (, , , , , , , ). These misarticulations often result in unclear speech. Types * A frontal lisp occurs when the tongue is placed anterior to the target. Interdental lisping ...

, his former startup

Viaweb Viaweb was a web-based application that allowed users to build and host their own online stores with little technical expertise using a web browser. The company was started in July 1995 by Paul Graham, Robert Morris (using the pseudonym "John ...

(later renamed ''Yahoo! Store''), cofounding the influential startup accelerator and seed capital firm

Y Combinator Y Combinator (YC) is an American technology startup accelerator launched in March 2005. It has been used to launch more than 3,000 companies, including Airbnb, Coinbase, Cruise, DoorDash, Dropbox, Instacart, Quora, PagerDuty, Reddit, St ...

, his essays, and

Hacker News Hacker News (sometimes abbreviated as HN) is a social news website focusing on computer science and entrepreneurship. It is run by the investment fund and startup incubator Y Combinator. In general, content that can be submitted is defined as "any ...

. He is the author of several computer programming books, including: ''

On Lisp ''On Lisp: Advanced Techniques for Common Lisp'' is a book by Paul Graham on macro programming in Common Lisp. Published in 1993, it is currently out of print, but can be freely downloaded as a PDF file. See also * Anaphoric macro An anaphoric ...

'', ''ANSI Common Lisp'', and '' Hackers & Painters''. Technology journalist

Steven Levy Steven Levy (born 1951) is an American journalist and Editor at Large for ''Wired'' who has written extensively for publications on computers, technology, cryptography, the internet, cybersecurity, and privacy. He is the author of the 1984 book ...

has described Graham as a "hacker philosopher".

Education and early life

Graham and his family moved to

Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Wester ...

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...

in 1968, where he later attended Gateway High School. Graham gained interest in science and mathematics from his father who was a nuclear physicist. Graham received a

Bachelor of Arts Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four years ...

in philosophy from

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...

(1986). He then attended

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

, earning

Master of Science A Master of Science ( la, Magisterii Scientiae; abbreviated MS, M.S., MSc, M.Sc., SM, S.M., ScM or Sc.M.) is a master's degree in the field of science awarded by universities in many countries or a person holding such a degree. In contrast to ...

(1988) and

Doctor of Philosophy A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common Academic degree, degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields ...

(1990) degrees in

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...

. He has also studied painting at the

Rhode Island School of Design The Rhode Island School of Design (RISD , pronounced "Riz-D") is a private art and design school in Providence, Rhode Island. The school was founded as a coeducational institution in 1877 by Helen Adelia Rowe Metcalf, who sought to increase the ...

and at the

Accademia di Belle Arti This is a list of the tertiary-level schools or academies of fine art in Italy that are recognised by the Ministero dell'Istruzione, dell'Università e della Ricerca, the Italian ministry of higher education. Accademie di Belle Arti The offic ...

Florence Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilancio demografico an ...

Career

In 1996, Graham and Robert Morris founded

and recruited

Trevor Blackwell Trevor Blackwell (born 4 November 1969, in Canada) is a computer programmer, engineer and entrepreneur based in Silicon Valley. Blackwell is a developer of humanoid robots. Dr. Blackwell is the founder and former CEO of Anybots and a partner at ...

shortly after.

was the first

application service provider An application service provider (ASP) is a business providing application software generally through the Web. The ASP model The application software resides on the vendor's system and is accessed by users through a communication protocol. Alter ...

(ASP) according to Graham. Viaweb's software, written mostly in

Common Lisp Common Lisp (CL) is a dialect of the Lisp programming language, published in ANSI standard document ''ANSI INCITS 226-1994 (S20018)'' (formerly ''X3.226-1994 (R1999)''). The Common Lisp HyperSpec, a hyperlinked HTML version, has been derived fro ...

, allowed users to make their own

Internet store Online shopping is a form of electronic commerce which allows consumers to directly buy goods or services from a seller over the Internet using a web browser or a mobile app. Consumers find a product of interest by visiting the website of the ...

s. In the summer of 1998, after Jerry Yang received a strong recommendation from

Ali Partovi Ali Partovi ( fa, علی پرتووی; born 1972) is an Iranian-American entrepreneur and angel investor. He is best known as a co-founder of Code.org (which he founded with his twin brother Hadi), iLike, LinkExchange, an early advisor at Dropbo ...

, Viaweb was sold to

Yahoo! Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and operated by the namesake company Yahoo Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds managed by Apollo Global Man ...

for 455,000 shares of Yahoo! stock, valued at $49.6 million. After the acquisition, the product became

Yahoo! Store Viaweb was a web-based application that allowed users to build and host their own online stores with little technical expertise using a web browser. The company was started in July 1995 by Paul Graham, Robert Morris (using the pseudonym "John ...

. Graham later gained notice for his essays, which he posts on his personal website. Essay subjects range from ''Beating the Averages'', which compares Lisp to other

programming language A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Most programming languages are text-based formal languages, but they may also be graphical. They are a kind of computer language. The description of a programming ...

s and introduced the hypothetical programming language ''Blub'', to ''Why Nerds are Unpopular'', a discussion of

nerd A nerd is a person seen as overly intellectual, obsessive, introverted or lacking social skills. Such a person may spend inordinate amounts of time on unpopular, little known, or non-mainstream activities, which are generally either highly tec ...

life in high school. A collection of his essays has been published as '' Hackers & Painters'' by

O'Reilly Media O'Reilly Media (formerly O'Reilly & Associates) is an American learning company established by Tim O'Reilly that publishes books, produces tech conferences, and provides an online learning platform. Its distinctive brand features a woodcut of an ...

, which includes a discussion of the growth of Viaweb and what Graham perceives to be the advantages of Lisp to program it. In 2001, Graham announced that he was working on a new

dialect The term dialect (from Latin , , from the Ancient Greek word , 'discourse', from , 'through' and , 'I speak') can refer to either of two distinctly different types of Linguistics, linguistic phenomena: One usage refers to a variety (linguisti ...

of Lisp named Arc. It was released on 29 January 2008. Over the years since, he has written several essays describing features or goals of the language, and some internal projects at Y Combinator have been written in Arc, most notably the Hacker News web forum and news aggregator program. In 2005, after giving a talk at the Harvard Computer Society later published as ''How to Start a Startup'', Graham along with

Jessica Livingston Jessica Livingston, born 1971, is an American author and a founding partner of the seed stage venture firm Y Combinator. She also organized Startup School. Previously, she was the VP of marketing at Adams Harkness Financial Group. She has a B. ...

, and Robert Morris started

to provide

seed funding Seed money, sometimes known as seed funding or seed capital, is a form of securities offering in which an investor invests capital in a startup company in exchange for an equity stake or convertible note stake in the company. The term ''seed'' su ...

to a large number of

startups A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship refers to all new businesses, including self-employment and businesses that never intend t ...

, particularly those started by younger, more technically oriented founders. Y Combinator has now invested in more than 1300 startups, including

Reddit Reddit (; stylized in all lowercase as reddit) is an American social news aggregation, content rating, and discussion website. Registered users (commonly referred to as "Redditors") submit content to the site such as links, text posts, images ...

, Justin.tv,

Xobni Xobni ('' inbox'' spelled backwards; pronounced ) was a San Francisco-based company that made software applications and services including products for Microsoft Outlook and mobile devices. It was founded in March 2006 by Adam Smith and Matt Br ...

Dropbox Dropbox is a file hosting service operated by the American company Dropbox, Inc., headquartered in San Francisco, California, U.S. that offers cloud storage, file synchronization, personal cloud, and Client (computing), client software. Dropb ...

Airbnb Airbnb, Inc. ( ), based in San Francisco, California, operates an online marketplace focused on short-term homestays and experiences. The company acts as a broker and charges a commission from each booking. The company was founded in 2008 b ...

and Stripe. ''

BusinessWeek ''Bloomberg Businessweek'', previously known as ''BusinessWeek'', is an American weekly business magazine published fifty times a year. Since 2009, the magazine is owned by New York City-based Bloomberg L.P. The magazine debuted in New York City ...

'' included Paul Graham in 2008 edition of its annual feature, ''The 25 Most Influential People on the Web''. In response to the proposed

Stop Online Piracy Act The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) was a controversial proposed United States congressional bill to expand the ability of U.S. law enforcement to combat online copyright infringement and online trafficking in counterfeit goods. Introduced on O ...

(SOPA), Graham announced in late 2011 that no representatives of any company supporting it would be invited to Y Combinator's Demo Day events. In February 2014, Graham stepped down from his day-to-day role at Y Combinator. In October 2019, Graham announced a

specification A specification often refers to a set of documented requirements to be satisfied by a material, design, product, or service. A specification is often a type of technical standard. There are different types of technical or engineering specificati ...

for another new dialect of Lisp, written in itself, named Bel. Graham writes and self-publishes essays on his website, some examples include: # Heresy # Putting ideas into words

Graham's hierarchy of disagreement

Graham proposed a disagreement hierarchy in a 2008 essay ''How to Disagree'', putting types of

argument An argument is a statement or group of statements called premises intended to determine the degree of truth or acceptability of another statement called conclusion. Arguments can be studied from three main perspectives: the logical, the dialectic ...

into a seven-point hierarchy and observing that "If moving up the disagreement hierarchy makes people less mean, that will make most of them happier." Graham also suggested that the hierarchy can be thought of as a pyramid, as the highest forms of disagreement are rarer. Following this hierarchy, Graham notes that articulate forms of name-calling (e.g., "The author is a self-important dilettante") are no different from crude insults.

The Blub paradox

Graham considers the hierarchy of

s with the example of ''Blub'', a hypothetically average language "right in the middle of the abstractness continuum. It is not the most powerful language, but it is more powerful than

Cobol COBOL (; an acronym for "common business-oriented language") is a compiled English-like computer programming language designed for business use. It is an imperative, procedural and, since 2002, object-oriented language. COBOL is primarily us ...

machine language In computer programming, machine code is any low-level programming language, consisting of machine language instructions, which are used to control a computer's central processing unit (CPU). Each instruction causes the CPU to perform a very ...

." It was used by Graham to illustrate a comparison, beyond

Turing completeness In computability theory, a system of data-manipulation rules (such as a computer's instruction set, a programming language, or a cellular automaton) is said to be Turing-complete or computationally universal if it can be used to simulate any Tu ...

, of programming language power, and more specifically to illustrate the difficulty of comparing a programming language one knows to one that one does not. Graham considers a hypothetical Blub programmer. When the programmer looks down the "power continuum", they consider the lower languages to be less powerful because they miss some feature that a Blub programmer is used to. But when they look up, they fail to realise that they are looking up: they merely see "weird languages" with unnecessary features and assumes they are equivalent in power, but with "other hairy stuff thrown in as well". When Graham considers the point of view of a programmer using a language higher than Blub, he describes that programmer as looking down on Blub and noting its "missing" features from the point of view of the higher language. Graham describes this as ''the Blub paradox'' and concludes that "By induction, the only programmers in a position to see all the differences in power between the various languages are those who understand the most powerful one." The concept has been cited by programmers such as

Joel Spolsky Avram Joel Spolsky (born 1965) is a software engineer and writer. He is the author of ''Joel on Software'', a blog on software development, and the creator of the project management software Trello. He was a Program Manager on the Microsoft Exce ...

Writing, briefly

On writing:

Personal life

In 2008, Graham married

. They have two children, and live in England. On December 18, 2022, Graham was suspended from

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

shortly after posting that he was giving up on Twitter, and stating that people could find him on social media network

Mastodon A mastodon ( 'breast' + 'tooth') is any proboscidean belonging to the extinct genus ''Mammut'' (family Mammutidae). Mastodons inhabited North and Central America during the late Miocene or late Pliocene up to their extinction at the end of th ...

, apparently because it violated new Twitter Terms of Service rules banning even indirectly linking to certain other social media networks. Graham’s exile lasted two days.

References

External links

''Inc.'' magazine profile

Video: "Be Good": Paul Graham at Startup School 08

Techcrunch interview
*

an essay
Paul Graham's essays in all languages
{{DEFAULTSORT:Graham, Paul 1964 births Living people Lisp (programming language) people English computer programmers American computer programmers American software engineers Cornell University alumni Businesspeople in information technology Businesspeople in software Harvard University alumni American technology writers O'Reilly writers Programming language designers American technology company founders American computer businesspeople Yahoo! employees British company founders Y Combinator people People from Weymouth, Dorset People from Pittsburgh