Perhaps he likes to talk and think about other things these days, but I'm sure he's still an expert in that area. Certainly he knows more about startups than just about any HN commenter.
It's kind of true.
Basically when PG was writing about stuff they considered part of their in-group then it was great and wonderful.
When he writes about stuff that's no longer aligns with their existing political in-group's beliefs (his arguments against the wealth tax [0], his essay about conformism [1], his essay about economic inequality [2]) - suddenly he's 'disconnected' and they're 'disappointed' in the essays.
I thought those essays were great and the points were interesting/well argued. I liked his old essays too.
I find the tribal responses to them (and the comments here) to be lame.
[0]: http://paulgraham.com/wtax.html
I think this is unfair. For example, I don't really relate to building a multi-million-dollar startup in my 20s, so the wealth tax article is simply not relevant. The article on Conformism is just highfalutin pseudo-psychologizing. Compare these to classics like "What We Look for in Founders" or "Ramen Profitable" and we have a pretty clear shift in focus. This takes nothing away from pg being a bonafide genius, it's just that his focus is no longer actionable and insightful advice to founders.
I think it's fair to point out that there are fewer actionable startup advice essays recently, but 'highfalutin pseudo-psychologizing' is just dismissive without talking about any of the ideas, and he did have well-liked essays like What you Can't Say and Why Nerds Are Unpopular that were of a similar type - so that kind of thing was something he's always written about (though he also wrote about more actionable advice alongside it too).
If you went back and reread them, would you say they're "highfalutin pseudo-psychologizing"?
Both you and pg have changed in the intervening decade-and-change; I think you're over-weighting his changes, and under-weighting your own.
Which is natural, but I'm curious what you think of those essays in that light.
[1] http://paulgraham.com/nerds.html [2] http://paulgraham.com/say.html [3] http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html
I think it was harder to narrowly categorize those as in-group vs. out-group than the newer ones though.
Maybe it's because people are more polarized now and there's less room for talking about interesting points that don't clearly fit into an existing political group? Maybe if those were written today people would find them similarly 'disconnected'?
I don't know, but I agree his new stuff isn't that different from the kinds of topics he's historically written about.
Those who don’t have a knee-jerk reaction to the politics they seem to imply, aren’t as loud as those who have to disagree.
It's just that based on current political climate, I think it's hard to keep politics aside.
My thoughts about pg have essentially gone through this flow: - Start reading some of the old essays in college, agree with most of the points - Start working, the essays slowed down. I read old ones once in a while, still mostly agree - Start following pg on twitter. There's some stuff I don't agree with but it's alright. - See a lot of stuff that I don't agree with [1]
(in between somewhere, I got convinced that keeping politics on sidelines is not an options)
Then I see the essay on wealth tax. My read is that main argument is that the tax compounds. But I don't see any alternative arguments. So I see his position as against the transfer of wealth and societal equality and I don't agree with that.
Maybe I'm being too opinionated or not reading deep enough, but that was my line of thought.
There aren't any arguments in that essay at all. It just describes, with numbers, the consequences of a wealth tax for startup founders.
> I see his position as against the transfer of wealth and societal equality
The essay states no position whatever. Not every essay has to state a position. Some essays are just about stating some facts.
That would be consistent with his previous writings on the topic. He doesn't necessarily seem to be against all taxation that results in some transfer of wealth away from the rich, especially, I suspect through inheritance. Someone who believes founding startups are an important way humanity's wealth increases is likely to be hesitant about anything that might put the brakes on that process; a wealth tax would diminish the incentive for smart people to go all-in on high-risk high-reward ideas.
Before YC, there was no real playbook about how to start a startup. Now there is one (startup school). That's one reason why sama switched gears towards openAI. Starting up is now kind of a solved problem, conceptually
But on top of that playbook, there is tons of advice available from countless people in any kind of niche imaginable, state of the art, updated almost every week. SaaS, e-commerce, platforms, engineering, marketing, you name it.
But this very differentiated professionalism was a direct result of the success of YC, among a bunch of other players. Starting up in your early 20s in your doorm was a niche itself before YC, now it's very much mainstream (thanks as well to cloud and mobile).
PG never was a 'startup expert' it seems to me. He always has been and still is a hacker that enjoys building things that are interesting. It just so happened that between 1995-ish and 2015-ish that very niche-y hobby turned out to be extremely valuable for (more or less accidentally) building the foundation of one of the most lucrative global commercial and societal transformations in history.
The period between 2000 and 2010 laid the foundation. But not because it was intended, but because in hindsight, the right people with the right mindset turned out to build the right tool set that paved the way.
And once this way was paved, the 'army' marched in with trillions of dollars and a global flocking of talent and ambition.
Job done, it seems.
That's why he lives in England now, writes, codes and checks out interesting stuff built at Demo Day. Like it has always been, but in a completely different world, in which building tech became the most valuable thing.