Quote of the day from Paul Graham: ‘You'll become like whoever you work with. Do you want to be like these people?’

Paul Graham is a well-known English-American computer scientist, writer, essayist, entrepreneur and investor who co-founded startup accelerator and seed capital firm Y Combinator. According to the company profile page, he is now retired.

A resident of England since 2016, when he moved back after moving as a child to the United States, Paul Graham began writing computer code in high school.

He holds a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy from Cornell University (1986). He also holds a Master of Science (1988) and a Doctor of Philosophy (1990) in computer science from Harvard University.

Besides this, Paul Graham also studied fine arts and painting at the Rhode Island School of Design and the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence.

Major contributions to IT, technology and startups

In 1995, Paul Graham and Robert Morris founded the first software-as-a-service (SaaS) company, Viaweb, which in 1998 became Yahoo Store. In 2002, he also discovered a simple spam-filtering algorithm that inspired the current generation of filters.

The Y Combinator profile noted his contribution to the development of the technology and web space through publication of various books on the programming language — On Lisp in 1993, ANSI Common Lisp in 1995, and Hackers & Painters in 2004.

In 2005, Paul Graham published ‘How to Start a Startup’ and went on to co-found Y Combinator, along with Jessica Livingston (his wife), Trevor Blackwell, and Robert Morris. The aim was to provide seed funding to young and technically oriented entrepreneurs. Since then, the company has invested in over 1,300 startups, including some that have hit big — Airbnb, Dropbox, Reddit, Stripe and Twitch (formerly Justin.tv).

In 2008, BusinessWeek named Paul Graham among the ‘25 Most Influential People on the Web’. He retired from Y Combinator in February 2014.

Quote of the day by Paul Graham

“One useful trick for judging different kinds of work is to look at who your colleagues will be. You'll become like whoever you work with. Do you want to become like these people?”

What does Paul Graham's quote mean?

Paul Graham wrote the above quote as part of a longer essay posted to his website in September 2024, titled ‘When to do what you love’. His advice speaks to those uncertain of their career path and notes that amid uncertainty, the “figuring out” could take years.

So, he says that instead of waiting or trying out different options, use people in the field as a point of reference for what to expect in that particular space. He succintly added: “The difference in character between different kinds of work is magnified by the fact that everyone else is facing the same decisions as you. If you choose a kind of work mainly for how well it pays, you'll be surrounded by other people who chose it for the same reason, and that will make it even more soul-sucking than it seems from the outside. Whereas if you choose work you're genuinely interested in, you'll be surrounded mostly by other people who are genuinely interested in it, and that will make it extra inspiring.”