{"id":951563,"date":"2026-11-03T22:22:20","date_gmt":"2026-11-03T22:22:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/951563\/"},"modified":"2026-11-03T22:22:20","modified_gmt":"2026-11-03T22:22:20","slug":"y-combinator-co-founder-paul-graham-86-offers-startup-advice-urges-students-to-finish-degrees-in-campus-visit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/951563\/","title":{"rendered":"Y Combinator Co-Founder Paul Graham \u201986 Offers Startup Advice, Urges Students to Finish Degrees in Campus Visit"},"content":{"rendered":"

Paul Graham \u201986, co-founder of Y Combinator<\/a>, the start-up accelerator and venture capital firm that has launched industry giants including OpenAI, Kalshi, Airbnb and DoorDash, spoke to a packed 600-person auditorium in Kennedy Hall. He discussed entrepreneurship, the value of a liberal arts education and why dropping out of college isn\u2019t the only path to success for aspiring startup founders.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Graham co-founded YC in 2005, which invests in early-stage startups in exchange for equity, runs them through a 3-month program and ends with founders pitching to investors. YC has since launched<\/a> over 5,000 companies with a combined valuation exceeding $1.3 trillion. Among YC\u2019s earliest success stories was OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who participated<\/a> in the inaugural 2005 batch.<\/p>\n

Graham began his Wednesday talk by joking that he was \u201cthe first graduate\u201d in artificial intelligence as a student who designed his own major at Cornell.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI was a philosophy major most of the time here,\u201d he said. \u201cBut a lot of people thought I was a [computer science] major because I took so many CS classes.\u201d<\/p>\n

A multi-millionaire, Graham made his first millions by co-founding Viaweb,<\/a> an early e-commerce company. Graham is one of Silicon Valley\u2019s most widely-read<\/a> thinkers, especially for his blog<\/a>\u2019s personal essays.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Reflecting on the value of a college degree today, he noted that the \u201clatest trend\u201d his company has noticed is college students dropping out to found startups.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou do learn more in a startup, but \u2026 you don\u2019t get to choose what it is, \u201d Graham said. \u201cWhat you can\u2019t do in a startup is learn about things just out of curiosity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Graham pushed back on the idea that students must launch a startup as soon as possible. While the opportunity to launch a startup \u201cwill always be there,\u201d he said that \u201cschool has an expiration date like fresh fish.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhatever startup idea you have now, you\u2019ll have a better one in two years anyway,\u201d Graham said. He dismissed the fear of waiting as \u201cnonsense.\u201d<\/p>\n

Provost Kavita Bala opened and moderated the event, titled \u201cHow To Turn Yourself Into a Startup Founder<\/a>,\u201d with remarks on Cornell\u2019s ongoing efforts<\/a> to provide students with entrepreneurial opportunities.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we launched Cornell Tech<\/a>, Cornell\u2019s aspiration was to create a Y Combinator kind of atmosphere in New York City to fuel the startup economy in New York,\u201d Bala said during the event.<\/p>\n

Bala also highlighted the Cornell Committee on the Future of the American University<\/a>\u2019s findings<\/a> in a report<\/a> last month, which highlighted the education of the \u201cwhole person.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThis commitment now with the kinds of changes in technology we are seeing is more important than ever before, and I believe this aligns with how [Graham] thinks of education,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

During his talk, Graham said that ideas for startups should be rooted in genuine interest and argued that money alone is a poor incentive for successful startups. In the best case, he said, founding a startup should sit at the \u201cintersection\u201d of \u201cloving\u201d the work and \u201cmaking money.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only way to discover the very best ideas is to let yourself be drawn along by pure curiosity,\u201d Graham added. \u201cYour curiosity is not random. It\u2019s doing a lot of selection.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

During a rapid-fire Q&A session moderated by Bala, Graham addressed pre-submitted questions from the audience on entrepreneurship.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Responding to a question from Jay Patel \u201926, who founded VigilantAI<\/a>, on when startup founders should keep working on ideas that have previously failed, Graham emphasized the importance of understanding \u201cwhy\u201d ideas failed, and noting what others \u201cwere overlooking.\u201d He pointed to Dropbox as an example of a YC-backed company that succeeded in syncing user data while other companies failed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a really good answer,\u201d Patel told The Sun, who interviewed with YC in August and plans to reapply.<\/p>\n

Prof. Matt Marx, the newly-appointed<\/a> vice provost for entrepreneurship, innovation and external management, was also in attendance. He noted Graham\u2019s long-standing influence as a \u201cthought leader\u201d in the tech ecosystem.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been a fan for literally three decades,\u201d Marx said in an interview with The Sun. \u201cHe\u2019s the G.O.A.T.\u201d<\/p>\n

In his new role, Marx developed Foundercentral.org<\/a>, an AI-powered tool to help Cornell students, alumni, faculty and staff with their startup endeavors. The tool is part of the University\u2019s Entrepreneurship at Cornell<\/a> program, which runs conferences and hackathons for the entrepreneurship community.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the kind of culture we\u2019re trying to build,\u201d Marx said, referring to the website. \u201cIt\u2019s connecting people. I\u2019m all about telling people what\u2019s happening here\u2026. We\u2019re … re-embracing those alumni who love this campus, but maybe feel a little disconnected.\u201d<\/p>\n

Students in attendance voiced varying perspectives on Graham\u2019s advice regarding higher education.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI think people should be open to dropping out of college,\u201d said Bilal Munawar M.Eng. \u201927, who traveled from Cornell Tech\u2019s campus in New York City for the talk. \u201cThere\u2019s nothing apart from experience that teaches you how to do things.\u201d<\/p>\n

After the talk, Graham led a small group, invitation-only discussion, which students were invited to in an email from Director of Alumni Engagement Kristie Blake.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Orion Hoch \u201928, a team lead for Cornell GeoData<\/a>, a project team focused on engineering in earth and atmospheric sciences was among around 30 attendees, alongside members of various Cornell project teams<\/a> and the entrepreneurial club Armada<\/a>. Hoch noted that while he expected a \u201ctech-focused\u201d discussion, the event was more about entrepreneurship.<\/p>\n

While Hoch described Graham as \u201ca very nice\u201d and \u201cwelcoming guy,\u201d Hoch walked away from the event \u201cmore on the skeptical side.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIn my opinion… as an engineer, you\u2019re young, and you look up to these people, [so] you just have to be careful,\u201d he said. \u201cYou have to be more cognizant [and ask] why does somebody want me to invest in these high-risk, volatile startups?\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Wyatt Sell M.Eng. \u201927, told The Sun the talk was \u201cinspiring\u201d and gave \u201ca very pleasant picture\u201d of creating a startup that was against \u201canti-intellectualism\u201d in startup culture.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI really like that he\u2019s very much like, no, writing and reading is important and being broadly curious is good,\u201d Sell said.<\/p>\n

Concluding his lecture, Graham linked the journey of becoming a founder of a major company back to what he saw as the core principles of an undergraduate education.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe recipe for turning yourself into a startup founder, the advertised purpose of this talk, is pretty much identical with the traditional ideal of liberal education,\u201d Graham said. \u201cAnd that is pretty cool when you think about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Yuhan Huang<\/p>\n

Yuhan Huang is a member of the Class of 2028 in the College of Arts and Sciences. Yuhan is a staff writer for the News department and can be reached at yhuang@cornellsun.com.<\/p>\n

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