Pundit
Paul Graham
3 receipts • Tracked since Apr 2026
Paul Graham is a programmer, writer, essayist, entrepreneur, and investor who co-founded Y Combinator, a leading startup accelerator that has funded over 3000 companies including Airbnb and Stripe. He previously co-founded Viaweb, the first SaaS company, acquired by Yahoo in 1998. His essays on paulgraham.com attract 25 million page views annually.
Affiliations
No firm affiliations on record.
— Filed —
3 receipts
2007
3 predictions- Oct 1, 2007Called it.“My first prediction about the future of web startups is pretty straightforward: there will be a lot of them. When starting a startup was expensive, you had to get the permission of investors to do it. Now the only threshold is courage.”
Global startup formation exploded 2010s-2020s; YC alone went from ~40 cos/batch in 2007 to 200+/batch by 2021.
- Oct 1, 2007Called it.“I think angel rounds will start to be done mostly with standardized agreements.”
YC's SAFE (2013) and standardized convertible notes became the default for angel/seed rounds globally.
- Oct 1, 2007Called it.“As the volume of startups increases, big companies will start to develop standardized procedures that make acquisitions little more work than hiring someone.”
Acqui-hires became a recognized category through the 2010s; FAANG ran near-continuous tuck-in M&A pipelines.