The more we see the legacy of PG’s various protégés and “thought leadership” out in the world the more I start to think Jessica Livingston might have been responsible for much more of YC’s successful trajectory than people realized at the time.
https://www.paulgraham.com/jessica.html
He also seems to give some credit to Jessica for choosing to back the Reddit founders:
we thought that we were funding ideas rather than founders, we rejected them. But we felt bad about it. Jessica was sad that we'd rejected [them].
PG, for example, didn’t realize that discriminating against people who have children might not be great until he himself had kids.
He’s a mid dude with gross feet who came up with a wildly profitable business model (6% equity in as many promising founders as possible).
Does he sell feet pics :) ?