Paul Graham:

It sucks to run a start-up. Running a start-up is like being punched in the face repeatedly.

We're mass-producing the start-up.

Everything around us is turning into computers. Everything is becoming software.

Justin Kan:

You could be working on the most boring piece of software, and you talk to Paul and you think, Man, I'm excited to go back to work.

Fred Wilson:

I don't mean this in a negative way, but Y Combinator is more like a cult than a venture capital fund. And Paul is the cult leader.

Max Chafkin:

Graham tends to have an air of impatience, as if even a momentary distraction is too much to bear.

Winifred Gallagher:

You can’t be happy all the time, but you can pretty much focus all the time. That’s about as good as it gets.

From the archive:

Marge: I'd really like to give it a try!
Homer: I don't know, Marge, trying is the first step towards failure.

Jeff Bezos:

People over-focus on errors of commission. Companies over-emphasize how expensive failure's going to be. Failure's not that expensive ...

The big costs that most companies incur are much harder to notice, and those are errors of Omission.

Johan de Kleer:

One passionate person is worth a thousand people who are just plodding along ...

Atul Gawande:

Let us look for the positive deviants.

The Start-up Guru