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Paul Graham
Photo: Crédit photo: Sarah Harlin, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons18

Paul Graham

English programmer, venture capitalist, and writer (born 1964)

Paul Graham (born November 13, 1964) is an English-American computer scientist, writer, essayist, entrepreneur, and investor. His work includes the programming language Arc, the startup Viaweb (later renamed Yahoo!2

From Wikipedia’s article on Paul Graham (this version), CC BY-SA 4.0.

Born Nov 13, 1964.1

About

Store), co-founding the startup accelerator and seed capital firm Y Combinator, a number of essays and books, and the media webpage Hacker News.

He is the author of the computer programming books On Lisp, ANSI Common Lisp, and Hackers & Painters. Technology journalist Steven Levy has described Graham as a "hacker philosopher".

Graham was born in England, where he and his family have maintained a permanent residence since 2016. He is also a citizen of the United States, where he attended all of his schooling and lived for 48 years prior to returning to England.

From Wikipedia’s article on Paul Graham, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.2

Companies

Early life and education

  • Date not recordedGateway High School3
  • Date not recordedHarvard University Master of Science, Doctor of Philosophy3
  • Date not recordedHarvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences3
  • Date not recordedCornell University Bachelor of Arts3
  • Date not recordedRhode Island School of Design3
  • Date not recordedAcademy of Fine Arts, Florence3

Graham was born in Weymouth, Dorset, England. His father was from Pwllheli, Wales, and worked for Westinghouse (now CBS Corporation) designing nuclear reactors. Graham and his family moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1968, where he later attended the Gateway High School. He began writing computer code in high school.

Graham received a Bachelor of Arts with a major in philosophy from Cornell University in 1986. He then received a Master of Science in 1988, and a Doctor of Philosophy in 1990, both in computer science from Harvard University.

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

From Wikipedia’s article on Paul Graham (this version), CC BY-SA 4.0.

Career

Occupation: computer scientist, writer, journalist, programmer, essayist, venture capitalist.8

Known for: Hackers & Painters, Y Combinator, Arc, On Lisp, Hacker News.9

In 1996, Graham and Robert Morris founded Viaweb and recruited Trevor Blackwell shortly after. They believed that Viaweb was the first application service provider. Graham received a patent for webapps based on his work at Viaweb. Viaweb's software, written mostly in Common Lisp, allowed users to make their own Internet stores. In the summer of 1998, after Jerry Yang received a strong recommendation from Ali Partovi, Viaweb was sold to Yahoo! for 455,000 shares of Yahoo! stock, valued at $49.6 million. After the acquisition, the product became Yahoo! Store.

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 languages and introduced the hypothetical programming language Blub, to "Why Nerds are Unpopular", a discussion of nerd life in high school. A collection of his essays has been published as Hackers & Painters by O'Reilly Media, which includes a discussion of the growth of Viaweb and the advantages of Lisp to program it.

In 2001, Graham announced that he was working on a new dialect 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, including 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 Trevor Blackwell, Jessica Livingston, and Robert Morris started Y Combinator to provide seed funding to startups, particularly those started by younger, more technically oriented founders. Y Combinator has invested in more than 1300 startups, including Reddit, Twitch (formerly Justin.tv), Xobni, Dropbox, Airbnb, and Stripe.

BusinessWeek included Paul Graham in the 2008 edition of its annual feature, The 25 Most Influential People on the Web.

In response to the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act (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 for another new dialect of Lisp, written in itself, named Bel.

From Wikipedia’s article on Paul Graham (this version), CC BY-SA 4.0.

Personal life

  • BornNov 13, 1964, Weymouth10 11
  • CitizenshipUnited Kingdom12
  • SpouseJessica Livingston married 200813

In 2008, Graham married Jessica Livingston. They have two children, and have been living in England since 2016.

From Wikipedia’s article on Paul Graham (this version), CC BY-SA 4.0.

Sources

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