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by DoreenMichele 744 days ago
Paul Graham would have been officially retired from YC at the time. Jessica Livingston still worked full-time at YC for some years after Paul Graham hired Sam Altman to replace him as president and hired Dan Gackle to replace him as moderator. If Paul Graham had not been retired, this entire conversation wouldn't exist. His retirement is why Altman was president of YC.

Accusing Graham of being "absent" sounds silly.
2 comments
theGnuMe 744 days ago
What does it mean to be officially retired in the YC firm world view anyway... if you have a significant ownership stake are you actually ever really retired? Are major decisions not vetted by the stakeholders? YC was founded by JL and PG (I'd assume equally). And this decision is now described as a JL decision.

Anyway, there's a Hollywood movie in this drama... maybe I'll write a script using ChatGPT... :)

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DoreenMichele 744 days ago
As a guess: It means he got to see his kids grow up instead of working 100 hours a week.

He handed off a lot of the day-to-day scut work. He didn't go "I'm just a shareholder who reads the annual report and counts my pennies from the DRIP."

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ml-anon 744 days ago
And yet here he is talking about how he was making the decisions.
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DoreenMichele 744 days ago
He was still one of the two main founders and married to the other main founder. He wasn't totally uninvolved with the company.

He still did Office Hours, at least for a time. He described that as "ten percent of what he did" and hired at least two people to divide up the other 90 percent.

I imagine he and Livingston discussed the company over breakfast/dinner and a lot of decisions were likely joint decisions privately hashed out. It's a company founded by a dating couple who later married. There is probably no clear, bright dividing line between "her" decisions and "his."

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tptacek 744 days ago
No, we're talking about Jessica Livingston making a decision. It's right there in the statement.
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ml-anon 744 days ago
Lol no in the statement he says "we" in the wsj its just his wife. The buck stops...somewhere?
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tptacek 744 days ago
Well, if you want to read it tendentiously, I guess your choices are the buck stopping with Jessica, with Paul, or with Jessica and Paul. Seems straightforward to reason about.
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