Colin Christians - Paul Graham and Y-Combinator

Paul Graham's Background

• Graham was born in 1964 in Weymouth, United Kindom
• In 1968 he and his family moved to Pittsburgh where he attended Gateway High School
• From a young age he was very interested in Science and Math, he had also stopped watching t.v. at the age of 13
• Graham gained a Bacholers degree in Philosphy from Cornell University
• He later recevied a Masters degree from in computer science from Harvard

Paul Graham

Social Impact

Early Business Ventures

Co-founder of Y-Combinator

• In 1996 Paul Graham founded ViaWeb, which at the time was believed to be the first ever application service provider
• ViaWeb allowed user to create their own online internet stores
• ViaWeb was later sold to Yahoo for 460,000 shares of the company (valued around 49 million dollars) before being renamed Yahoo Store
• Between ViaWeb and YC Graham wrote many, many essays about starting a business
• Through Graham's early stages of being a entrupreneur he learned how to best run a business which later lead to the success of Y-Combinator

• Graham has had a huge impact on the business world
• To start off Graham created the first online website to create a business on in ViaWeb
• Also he has wrotten many essays that have help entrepreneurs grow their businesses
• Also if Graham never created Y-Combinator many jugernot business like Twitch and AirBnB many have never got off the ground

What Is Y-Combinator

Finacial Success

Vision and Mission Statements

• Paul Graham's net worth is estimated around 2.5 billion dollars
• He made a majority of his money through early investments in companies that came thourgh YC, such as Twitch, Dropbox, Reddit, and AirBnB
• He also made 49 million dollars when he sold ViaWeb to Yahoo

Vision = "We will address your goals and challenges and work to create sollutions to your needs"

Mission = "Our goal is to get you through the first phase." To get you to the point where you have something built to money on a large scale.

• These principals help YC help promising start-ups reach their full potential and not cut them short on the knowledge they can gain

• Y-Combinator(YC) was founded in 2005 by Paul Graham, Jessica Livington(Graham's wife), Robert Tappin Morris, and Trevor Blackwell
• The four together put $200,000 towards starting the business
• YC is a start up acclerater that helps many businesses that they feel can be succesful
• YC runs a 6 month progam for many start-ups where they provide knowledge and funding for these young companies.
• Twitch, Doordash, Reddit, AirBnB, and dropbox are some notable companies from YC

Notable Achivements

Creativity and Innovation

• He the co-founder of two very successful businesses in ViaWeb and Y-Combinator.
• He has also written many essays that have helped many start-ups grow their size
• Invested early in many businesses that grow to be huge
• Business Week Magizine had him as a top 25 most influencial people on the web in 2008

• Graham had a idea in ViaWeb that revolutionized the way that people create businesses
• ViaWeb was the first ever online business creator and now there are many of these websites that you can create a online business off of

Graham's Business Model

• Graham's business model has stayed close to the same for the majority of his business career
• At ViaWeb he allowed people to visit his website and they could completely make their online business off of ViaWeb
• Then through his essays and Y-Combinator he helps young entrepueners and offers them inside and information about the business world

Marketing and Branding

• The main strategies that Graham shows in his businesses are that he will show you how to do something instead of doing it for you, he will show you how to run a successful business and lets you make the decisions instead of him calling the shots