Paul Graham's talent evaluation | dstill.ai shared chat

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How does Paul Graham evaluate talent?

Paul Graham evaluates talent by considering various factors. One of the key elements he looks for is determination and perseverance . He believes that determination can be observed by listening to stories about how individuals faced and overcame challenges .

Additionally, Paul Graham pays attention to whether founders truly understand their own ideas and have a deep understanding of the technical aspects . He believes that being able to judge the level of expertise in a specific area is one of his strengths .

In evaluating startups, Paul Graham also focuses on finding founders who have done side projects or have a track record of past achievements . This helps to increase the likelihood that the startup idea is not simply a result of inexperience .

Paul Graham also acknowledges that his wife, Jessica Livingstone, is a better judge of character and social protocol, highlighting the importance of these skills in talent evaluation .

Overall, Paul Graham considers determination, expertise, track record, and understanding of ideas to be important factors in evaluating talent.

1

Paul Graham on Ambition, Art, and Evaluating Talent

Conversations with Tyler

Tyler Cowen: There's plenty of those stories.

(someone): It's probably we misunderstood what they're working on initially. So great idea bad at presenting it no more like they're near some idea that we're familiar with and we just assume they must be doing that idea and they say oh no we're not doing that we're doing this i'm like oh okay thank goodness and then they get extra points because not only they're not doing the stupid thing but they understand that the stupid thing is stupid So now they get extra credit for what we were subtracting from the past.

Tyler Cowen: Who falls through the cracks in the YC process as you've experienced it? YC.

(someone): One of the reasons I'm so contemptuous of university admissions is that I am also in the admissions business. And I am obsessed. I not only measure, we not only measure when we fail, but we're obsessed with the failure cases. YC has a list of all the companies that we've missed, that have applied to YC and we've turned down and they've gone on to be successful. And we spend a lot of time like someone thinking about past injuries.

Tyler Cowen: What's the common element, though, now that you think about it?

(someone): When there are common elements, my God, do we act quickly to fix that. And so I remember early on, there was this company doing email, they would, if you wanted to send mass emails, I forget what their name was. And this was back when we were reading the applications. If the first reader gave it a sufficiently low grade, it would never be seen by anybody else.

2

Paul Graham on Ambition, Art, and Evaluating Talent

Conversations with Tyler

(someone): And this was back when we were reading the applications. If the first reader gave it a sufficiently low grade, it would never be seen by anybody else. So the first reader who was Robert Morris, who's extremely, he was like designated wet blanket of YC, gave this application a C, and with the comment, spam company. That was it, nobody ever saw it again. And they like ended up going public. And so after that, I changed that thing in the software, made it so that no one would ever see something. No second reader would see it. After that, every application had to be seen by at least two people.

Tyler Cowen: How did you get over your fear of flying?

(someone): Oh, really? Did you, did you already, did I already talk about this?

Tyler Cowen: Do you know the answer to this? There are either two or three places in your writing where you mentioned that you had a fear of flying, but you used the past tense, which implies you got over it, but you never told anyone how.

(someone): Oh, it's a bizarre strategy. I learned how to hang glide. Which sounds crazy. That will do it though, right? If you're afraid of flying, how could you learn how to hang glide? But the answer is you learn how to hang glide gradually. You start by just running along the flat. And if there's a headwind, maybe you feel a little lift, right? And then you go 10 feet up the hill and run as fast as you can. And you reach a total altitude above ground level of a foot.

3

Paul Graham on Ambition, Art, and Evaluating Talent

Conversations with Tyler

(someone): HMRC is the British IRS. Okay. The reason I'm optimistic about Britain I was just thinking about this morning is because people here are not slack. They're not lazy and they're not stupid. And that's the most important thing. So, eventually, non-lazy, non-stupid people will prevail. And I've funded a couple startups here. You can see, like, when you introduce these people to the idea of trying to make something grow really fast and have these really big ambitions, It's like teaching them a foreign language, but they do learn it. They do learn it. It's not like English people are somehow genetically inferior to Americans. So I think they have all that potential still to go. I'm astonished when I see statistics, like I think GDP per capita in the UK is only two thirds of what it is in America.

Tyler Cowen: It's about the same as Mississippi.

(someone): It's preposterous. I know. So imagine the potential there. Imagine the potential.

Tyler Cowen: But you don't feel that way about Mississippi, necessarily.

(someone): No. I think Mississippi is probably already up close to its full potential. I don't know. I've never actually been there. I shouldn't say things like that.

Tyler Cowen: But why and how did so many things here end up undercapitalized? So the water utilities, the NHS, it seems to be a consistent pattern.

4

Paul Graham on Ambition, Art, and Evaluating Talent

Conversations with Tyler

Tyler Cowen: Conversations with Tyler is produced by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, bridging the gap between academic ideas and real-world problems. Learn more at mercatus.org. For a full transcript of every conversation, enhanced with helpful links, visit conversationswithtyler.com. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Conversations with Tyler. Today, I'm here with Paul Graham. Paul, welcome. Thank you. You've written several times that your wife, Jessica Livingstone, is a better judge of character than you are. What other areas of talent judgment is she better or much better than you?

(someone): Practically everything to do with people. She's a real expert on people and like social protocol, what to wear. what to say to someone, anything like that.

Tyler Cowen: But you have all this data, so why can't you learn from the data and from her to do as well as she can? What's the binding constraint here in limiting someone as a judge of human affairs?

(someone): Partly I just don't have as much natural ability and partly I just don't care as much about these things. The conversations we have are not, Paul, you can't wear that. They're like, Paul, you can't wear that. And I'm like, really? Why not? What's wrong with this? I just don't care as much.

Tyler Cowen: But say when you're judging talent, Sam Altman, Patrick Holliston, you're judging people.

5

Paul Graham on Ambition, Art, and Evaluating Talent

Conversations with Tyler

Tyler Cowen: Something like that. Seems like more of a synthetic set of abilities we need.

(someone): It could be because I'm not even sure this is true. It could be that it's not actually true and that there's something else going on. Like for example, people manage. If you look at like athletes, for example, athletes learned how to stay good for longer. And so you have like people who are really international quality soccer players at age 34, right? And that didn't used to happen back in the days of Johan Cruyff, smoking cigarettes between halves, they didn't last till 34. And so it might've seemed like all the good football players are 34 and it's just an artifact of them lasting longer.

Tyler Cowen: But the 20-year-old star seemed to have vanished. There's not a next Patrick Collison.

(someone): Patrick Collison probably didn't seem to most people to be the big star. And you can prove this because if he had, they would have invested in early stripe rounds and they didn't. So anybody who claims they knew early on that Patrick Collison was going to be a big star, show me the equity.

Tyler Cowen: OK, but there was Peter Thiel, there was Sequoia, there was yourself. A bunch of people knew, in fact, or strongly suspected. Sure.

(someone): Yeah, yeah. Some people did, but certainly not everyone. So I don't know if this is true. I don't know if this is true. I'll investigate this summer.

6

Paul Graham on Ambition, Art, and Evaluating Talent

Conversations with Tyler

(someone): The way you would judge determination, because people act determined. People think they're supposed to act determined. No one walks into their Y Combinator interview thinking, I need to seem diffident. Nobody thinks that. They all think they're supposed to seem tough, which is actually really painful and stressful. It would be better if they just were themselves. Because someone trying to act tough is just, ah, it's so painful to watch. But the way you tell determination is not so much from talking to them as from asking them stories about things that have happened to them. That's where you can see determination.

Tyler Cowen: And it's how they tell the story or it's what happened? No, no, no. It's what they did in the story.

(someone): What they did in the story. That something went wrong and instead of giving up, they persevered.

Tyler Cowen: Why are there so few great founders in their twenties today? Is that true?

(someone): Is that true though? I've heard about that.

Tyler Cowen: 10, 15 years ago, you have a large crop of people who obviously have become massive successes. Today, it's less clear. Companies seem to be smaller. The important people seem to be older. Sam Altman was important early on, but now he's very important. He's about 37, 38. Something like that. Seems like more of a synthetic set of abilities we need.

7

Paul Graham on Ambition, Art, and Evaluating Talent

Conversations with Tyler

Tyler Cowen: If you like this podcast, please consider giving us a rating and leaving a review. This helps other listeners find the show. On Twitter, I'm at Tyler Cowen, and the show is at Cowen Convos. Until next time, please keep listening and learning.

8

Paul Graham on Ambition, Art, and Evaluating Talent

Conversations with Tyler

(someone): How do I do it? People are For various reasons, for multiple reasons, they're afraid to think really big. There are multiple reasons. One, it seems overreaching. Two, it seems like it would be an awful lot of work. And so as an outside person, I'm like an instructor in some fitness class. And so I can tell someone who's already working as hard as they can, all right, push harder. It doesn't cost me any effort. And surprisingly often as in the fitness class, they are capable of pushing harder. And so a lot of my secret is just being the person who doesn't have to actually do the work that I'm suggesting they do.

Tyler Cowen: How much of what you do is reshuffling their networks? So there's people with potential. They're in semi-average networks.

(someone): Wait, that was such an interesting question. We should talk about that some more, though. Because that really is an interesting question. Yes. Imagine how amazing it would be. If all the ambitious people can be more ambitious, that really is an interesting question. And there's got to be more to it than just the fact that I don't have to do the work.

Tyler Cowen: I think a lot of it's reshuffling networks. So you need someone who can identify who should be in a better network. You boost the total size of all networking that goes on. And you make sure those people with potential get in.

9

Paul Graham on Ambition, Art, and Evaluating Talent

Conversations with Tyler

(someone): The way you would judge determination, because people act determined. People think they're supposed to act determined. No one walks into their Y Combinator interview thinking, I need to seem diffident. Nobody thinks that. They all think they're supposed to seem tough, which is actually really painful and stressful. It would be better if they just were themselves. Because someone trying to act tough is just, ah, it's so painful to watch. But the way you tell determination is not so much from talking to them as from asking them stories about things that have happened to them. That's where you can see determination.

Tyler Cowen: And it's how they tell the story or it's what happened? No, no, no. It's what they did in the story.

(someone): What they did in the story. That something went wrong and instead of giving up, they persevered.

Tyler Cowen: Why are there so few great founders in their twenties today? Is that true?

(someone): Is that true though? I've heard about that.

Tyler Cowen: 10, 15 years ago, you have a large crop of people who obviously have become massive successes. Today, it's less clear. Companies seem to be smaller. The important people seem to be older. Sam Altman was important early on, but now he's very important. He's about 37, 38. Something like that. Seems like more of a synthetic set of abilities we need.

10

Paul Graham on Ambition, Art, and Evaluating Talent

Conversations with Tyler

(someone): There is a sort of skill to blowing up ideas, blowing up, not in the sense of destroying, like making them bigger, right? There is a skill to it. There is a skill to it, to take an idea and say, okay, so here's an idea. So how could this be bigger? There is somewhat of a skill to it.

Tyler Cowen: So it's helping people see their ideas are bigger than they thought. Yes. Oh, yes. We often do this in YC interviews. And people say, you're especially good at that. This is what the other people say.

(someone): That's why I'm mulling over what actually goes on, because there is this skill there. The weird thing about YC interviews is, in a sense, they're a negotiation, right? And in a negotiation, you're always saying, oh, I'm not going to pay a lot for that. It's terrible. It's worthless, right? And yet, in YC interviews, the founders often walk out thinking, wow, our idea is a lot better than we thought, just because what we do. You know what we do in YC interviews? We basically start YC. The first 10 minutes of YC is the interview. So you see what it's like to work with people by working with them for 10 minutes. And that's enough, it turns out.

Tyler Cowen: So you think the 11th minute of an interview has very low value?

11

Paul Graham on Ambition, Art, and Evaluating Talent

Conversations with Tyler

(someone): I just don't care as much.

Tyler Cowen: But say when you're judging talent, Sam Altman, Patrick Holliston, you're judging people. Of course, it's the business plan, but much of it is the talent.

(someone): Oh, it's all the people. The earlier you're judging startups, the more you're just judging the founders. So it's location for real estate, right? The founders are like that. So yeah, sure, which is why the earlier stage you invest, the more you want to have these people who are good judges of people.

Tyler Cowen: So if she's better than you at human affairs, comparing you to other people, what exactly, in the smallest number of dimensions, are you better at than the other people? What am I better at? Yes, what are you better at? You can't be so terrible at this, right? You mean to do with startups? To do with people, how well they will do with their startups. What's the exact nature of your comparative advantage?

(someone): I can tell if people know what they're talking about when they come and talk about some idea, especially some technical idea. I can tell if they know what, you know, if they actually understand the idea or if they just have a sort of reading the newspapers level of understanding of the thing.

Tyler Cowen: And how well can you judge determination?

(someone): Determination, it's hard to judge by looking at the person. The way you would judge determination, because people act determined. People think they're supposed to act determined.

12

Paul Graham on Ambition, Art, and Evaluating Talent

Conversations with Tyler

(someone): How do I do it? People are For various reasons, for multiple reasons, they're afraid to think really big. There are multiple reasons. One, it seems overreaching. Two, it seems like it would be an awful lot of work. And so as an outside person, I'm like an instructor in some fitness class. And so I can tell someone who's already working as hard as they can, all right, push harder. It doesn't cost me any effort. And surprisingly often as in the fitness class, they are capable of pushing harder. And so a lot of my secret is just being the person who doesn't have to actually do the work that I'm suggesting they do.

Tyler Cowen: How much of what you do is reshuffling their networks? So there's people with potential. They're in semi-average networks.

(someone): Wait, that was such an interesting question. We should talk about that some more, though. Because that really is an interesting question. Yes. Imagine how amazing it would be. If all the ambitious people can be more ambitious, that really is an interesting question. And there's got to be more to it than just the fact that I don't have to do the work.

Tyler Cowen: I think a lot of it's reshuffling networks. So you need someone who can identify who should be in a better network. You boost the total size of all networking that goes on. And you make sure those people with potential get in.

13

Paul Graham on Ambition, Art, and Evaluating Talent

Conversations with Tyler

(someone): I don't know if this is true. I'll investigate this summer. We're going to go back to YC and talk to some founders, and I'll talk to the partners, and I'll see what's going on. Because I had a mental note to check and see if this was actually true.

Tyler Cowen: There's a Paul Graham worldview in your earlier essays where you want to look for the great hackers and a lot of the most important companies come from intriguing side projects. Oh yeah. But if we want older people who are somewhat synthetic in their abilities, are those other principles still true?

(someone): No, no, not necessarily. Not as true. Part of the reason you want to find young founders who've done stuff from side projects is that it guarantees the idea is not bullshit. Because if young founders sit down and try to think of a startup idea, it's more likely to be bullshit because they don't have any experience of the world. Older founders can do things like start supersonic aircraft companies or build something for geriatric care and actually get it right. Younger founders are likely to get things wrong if they try and do stuff like that. So it's just a heuristic. It's a heuristic for finding matches between young founders and ideas.

Tyler Cowen: Why is venture capital such a small part of capital markets? So it's big in tech, it's somewhat big in biotech, but most other areas of the economy. You finance with debt or retained earnings or some other method.

14

Paul Graham on Ambition, Art, and Evaluating Talent

Conversations with Tyler

Tyler Cowen: Something like that. Seems like more of a synthetic set of abilities we need.

(someone): It could be because I'm not even sure this is true. It could be that it's not actually true and that there's something else going on. Like for example, people manage. If you look at like athletes, for example, athletes learned how to stay good for longer. And so you have like people who are really international quality soccer players at age 34, right? And that didn't used to happen back in the days of Johan Cruyff, smoking cigarettes between halves, they didn't last till 34. And so it might've seemed like all the good football players are 34 and it's just an artifact of them lasting longer.

Tyler Cowen: But the 20-year-old star seemed to have vanished. There's not a next Patrick Collison.

(someone): Patrick Collison probably didn't seem to most people to be the big star. And you can prove this because if he had, they would have invested in early stripe rounds and they didn't. So anybody who claims they knew early on that Patrick Collison was going to be a big star, show me the equity.

Tyler Cowen: OK, but there was Peter Thiel, there was Sequoia, there was yourself. A bunch of people knew, in fact, or strongly suspected. Sure.

(someone): Yeah, yeah. Some people did, but certainly not everyone. So I don't know if this is true. I don't know if this is true. I'll investigate this summer.

15

Paul Graham on Ambition, Art, and Evaluating Talent

Conversations with Tyler

Tyler Cowen: There's plenty of those stories.

(someone): It's probably we misunderstood what they're working on initially. So great idea bad at presenting it no more like they're near some idea that we're familiar with and we just assume they must be doing that idea and they say oh no we're not doing that we're doing this i'm like oh okay thank goodness and then they get extra points because not only they're not doing the stupid thing but they understand that the stupid thing is stupid So now they get extra credit for what we were subtracting from the past.

Tyler Cowen: Who falls through the cracks in the YC process as you've experienced it? YC.

(someone): One of the reasons I'm so contemptuous of university admissions is that I am also in the admissions business. And I am obsessed. I not only measure, we not only measure when we fail, but we're obsessed with the failure cases. YC has a list of all the companies that we've missed, that have applied to YC and we've turned down and they've gone on to be successful. And we spend a lot of time like someone thinking about past injuries.

Tyler Cowen: What's the common element, though, now that you think about it?

(someone): When there are common elements, my God, do we act quickly to fix that. And so I remember early on, there was this company doing email, they would, if you wanted to send mass emails, I forget what their name was. And this was back when we were reading the applications. If the first reader gave it a sufficiently low grade, it would never be seen by anybody else.

16

Paul Graham on Ambition, Art, and Evaluating Talent

Conversations with Tyler

(someone): I've learned a few things about soundproofing. Can I only say one thing?

Tyler Cowen: One thing is fine.

(someone): You said what's the most.

Tyler Cowen: Oh no, you can say more than one.

(someone): Okay. One is that sound comes through holes. And so it doesn't come through your walls. It comes through your windows probably in most places. And so if you fix the holes, you fix the noise problem. The other thing I've learned is that the solution to sound... basically the solution if it's not... it's either multiple layers in the case of Windows or simply mass. You make some big thick door and make it have hinges that make it sink down. That's what recording studios have. So when the door opens it rises up a little bit and when it closes it goes right down onto the floor. So great big heavy doors multiple paned windows, and weirdly enough, I've noticed, I've managed to soundproof some places so effectively that I've noticed this phenomenon you only notice with soundproofing, all kinds of things make annoying noises that you never noticed before.

Tyler Cowen: That's right, it's a war of attrition of sorts.

(someone): Yeah, exactly, exactly. Soundproofing is worth it though, quiet is really good, at least for me.

Tyler Cowen: There's an optimal level of fame, do you feel you have too much or too little?

(someone): What is the optimal level of fame? I suppose it's when you can get resources you need or something like that.

17

Paul Graham on Ambition, Art, and Evaluating Talent

Conversations with Tyler

(someone): I don't know if this is true. I'll investigate this summer. We're going to go back to YC and talk to some founders, and I'll talk to the partners, and I'll see what's going on. Because I had a mental note to check and see if this was actually true.

Tyler Cowen: There's a Paul Graham worldview in your earlier essays where you want to look for the great hackers and a lot of the most important companies come from intriguing side projects. Oh yeah. But if we want older people who are somewhat synthetic in their abilities, are those other principles still true?

(someone): No, no, not necessarily. Not as true. Part of the reason you want to find young founders who've done stuff from side projects is that it guarantees the idea is not bullshit. Because if young founders sit down and try to think of a startup idea, it's more likely to be bullshit because they don't have any experience of the world. Older founders can do things like start supersonic aircraft companies or build something for geriatric care and actually get it right. Younger founders are likely to get things wrong if they try and do stuff like that. So it's just a heuristic. It's a heuristic for finding matches between young founders and ideas.

Tyler Cowen: Why is venture capital such a small part of capital markets? So it's big in tech, it's somewhat big in biotech, but most other areas of the economy. You finance with debt or retained earnings or some other method.

18

Paul Graham on Ambition, Art, and Evaluating Talent

Conversations with Tyler

(someone): I just don't care as much.

Tyler Cowen: But say when you're judging talent, Sam Altman, Patrick Holliston, you're judging people. Of course, it's the business plan, but much of it is the talent.

(someone): Oh, it's all the people. The earlier you're judging startups, the more you're just judging the founders. So it's location for real estate, right? The founders are like that. So yeah, sure, which is why the earlier stage you invest, the more you want to have these people who are good judges of people.

Tyler Cowen: So if she's better than you at human affairs, comparing you to other people, what exactly, in the smallest number of dimensions, are you better at than the other people? What am I better at? Yes, what are you better at? You can't be so terrible at this, right? You mean to do with startups? To do with people, how well they will do with their startups. What's the exact nature of your comparative advantage?

(someone): I can tell if people know what they're talking about when they come and talk about some idea, especially some technical idea. I can tell if they know what, you know, if they actually understand the idea or if they just have a sort of reading the newspapers level of understanding of the thing.

Tyler Cowen: And how well can you judge determination?

(someone): Determination, it's hard to judge by looking at the person. The way you would judge determination, because people act determined. People think they're supposed to act determined.

19

Paul Graham on Ambition, Art, and Evaluating Talent

Conversations with Tyler

Tyler Cowen: If you like this podcast, please consider giving us a rating and leaving a review. This helps other listeners find the show. On Twitter, I'm at Tyler Cowen, and the show is at Cowen Convos. Until next time, please keep listening and learning.

20

Paul Graham on Ambition, Art, and Evaluating Talent

Conversations with Tyler

(someone): And this was back when we were reading the applications. If the first reader gave it a sufficiently low grade, it would never be seen by anybody else. So the first reader who was Robert Morris, who's extremely, he was like designated wet blanket of YC, gave this application a C, and with the comment, spam company. That was it, nobody ever saw it again. And they like ended up going public. And so after that, I changed that thing in the software, made it so that no one would ever see something. No second reader would see it. After that, every application had to be seen by at least two people.

Tyler Cowen: How did you get over your fear of flying?

(someone): Oh, really? Did you, did you already, did I already talk about this?

Tyler Cowen: Do you know the answer to this? There are either two or three places in your writing where you mentioned that you had a fear of flying, but you used the past tense, which implies you got over it, but you never told anyone how.

(someone): Oh, it's a bizarre strategy. I learned how to hang glide. Which sounds crazy. That will do it though, right? If you're afraid of flying, how could you learn how to hang glide? But the answer is you learn how to hang glide gradually. You start by just running along the flat. And if there's a headwind, maybe you feel a little lift, right? And then you go 10 feet up the hill and run as fast as you can. And you reach a total altitude above ground level of a foot.

21

Paul Graham on Ambition, Art, and Evaluating Talent

Conversations with Tyler

(someone): The way you would judge determination, because people act determined. People think they're supposed to act determined. No one walks into their Y Combinator interview thinking, I need to seem diffident. Nobody thinks that. They all think they're supposed to seem tough, which is actually really painful and stressful. It would be better if they just were themselves. Because someone trying to act tough is just, ah, it's so painful to watch. But the way you tell determination is not so much from talking to them as from asking them stories about things that have happened to them. That's where you can see determination.

Tyler Cowen: And it's how they tell the story or it's what happened? No, no, no. It's what they did in the story.

(someone): What they did in the story. That something went wrong and instead of giving up, they persevered.

Tyler Cowen: Why are there so few great founders in their twenties today? Is that true?

(someone): Is that true though? I've heard about that.

Tyler Cowen: 10, 15 years ago, you have a large crop of people who obviously have become massive successes. Today, it's less clear. Companies seem to be smaller. The important people seem to be older. Sam Altman was important early on, but now he's very important. He's about 37, 38. Something like that. Seems like more of a synthetic set of abilities we need.

22

Paul Graham on Ambition, Art, and Evaluating Talent

Conversations with Tyler

(someone): There is a sort of skill to blowing up ideas, blowing up, not in the sense of destroying, like making them bigger, right? There is a skill to it. There is a skill to it, to take an idea and say, okay, so here's an idea. So how could this be bigger? There is somewhat of a skill to it.

Tyler Cowen: So it's helping people see their ideas are bigger than they thought. Yes. Oh, yes. We often do this in YC interviews. And people say, you're especially good at that. This is what the other people say.

(someone): That's why I'm mulling over what actually goes on, because there is this skill there. The weird thing about YC interviews is, in a sense, they're a negotiation, right? And in a negotiation, you're always saying, oh, I'm not going to pay a lot for that. It's terrible. It's worthless, right? And yet, in YC interviews, the founders often walk out thinking, wow, our idea is a lot better than we thought, just because what we do. You know what we do in YC interviews? We basically start YC. The first 10 minutes of YC is the interview. So you see what it's like to work with people by working with them for 10 minutes. And that's enough, it turns out.

Tyler Cowen: So you think the 11th minute of an interview has very low value?

23

Paul Graham on Ambition, Art, and Evaluating Talent

Conversations with Tyler

Tyler Cowen: Conversations with Tyler is produced by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, bridging the gap between academic ideas and real-world problems. Learn more at mercatus.org. For a full transcript of every conversation, enhanced with helpful links, visit conversationswithtyler.com. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Conversations with Tyler. Today, I'm here with Paul Graham. Paul, welcome. Thank you. You've written several times that your wife, Jessica Livingstone, is a better judge of character than you are. What other areas of talent judgment is she better or much better than you?

(someone): Practically everything to do with people. She's a real expert on people and like social protocol, what to wear. what to say to someone, anything like that.

Tyler Cowen: But you have all this data, so why can't you learn from the data and from her to do as well as she can? What's the binding constraint here in limiting someone as a judge of human affairs?

(someone): Partly I just don't have as much natural ability and partly I just don't care as much about these things. The conversations we have are not, Paul, you can't wear that. They're like, Paul, you can't wear that. And I'm like, really? Why not? What's wrong with this? I just don't care as much.

Tyler Cowen: But say when you're judging talent, Sam Altman, Patrick Holliston, you're judging people.

24

Paul Graham on Ambition, Art, and Evaluating Talent

Conversations with Tyler

(someone): And then you go 10 feet up the hill and run as fast as you can. And you reach a total altitude above ground level of a foot. Right? You're not afraid when you're a foot above the ground. So you go a little further up the hill until a month later, you're like jumping off a cliff with a hang glider on your back. And so after I was good at hang gliding, I took flying lessons. So there's this intermediate point where I was comfortable, totally comfortable jumping off a cliff with a hang glider on my back, moderately comfortable flying a Cessna 172 where the instructor had just turned off the engine and said, okay, land it, because the glide ratio is actually similar to a hang glider and still afraid of getting on an airliner. That shows you how irrational these things are. But when I finally did get on an airline, oh my god, it was like a spaceship compared to the planes I'd been flying. It was fabulous. And it totally worked. My fear of flying was completely cured.

Tyler Cowen: And what did you learn about startups and talent selection from that process?

(someone): Boy, if I learned anything, I haven't considered it until this moment.

Tyler Cowen: But you might have learned it quite well, just not articulated it.

(someone): I don't know. You ask me these hard questions. I don't have time to think about them. Did that have anything to do with, I don't think I've ever consciously used anything I learned there.