Paul Graham, Founder of Y Combinator, Live from Stockholm

### TL;DR Paul Graham posed two questions in his Stockholm talk: Should you go to Silicon Valley? And how can Sweden become a thriving startup hub? His answer: Go to Silicon Valley for a while, then come back. This is good for you personally and also the best way to help Sweden’s startup ecosystem. ## First question: Should you go to Silicon Valley? ### Historically, every ambitious person has faced the same problem For thousands of years, whenever people were deeply committed to something, there was always one place in the world that became the center of it. In 1870 the center of painting was Paris, in 1900 the center of mathematics was Göttingen, in 1950 the center of film was Hollywood. Back then, every ambitious person asked the same question: Should I go there? The answer never changed: Yes, you should. You can go for a while and then come back, but at least go once. ### What does moving to the center bring? - **The best peers**: The talent pool expands in two dimensions – people are better and there are more of them. During YC batches, every dinner feels like this room. Imagine having that every week for three months. It's incredibly exciting, especially when you’re doing something not many people do – you finally find your tribe. - **More chance encounters that matter**: Unplanned meetings seem extremely important. Maybe because there are more of them, or maybe they have special benefits. Planned meetings are too conservative – they cut out outliers – while unplanned ones let you decide whether to continue the conversation after the first few sentences. If you’re working on an ambitious project, bumping into someone doing the same thing is one of the best things in the world. - **Things move faster**: In a big center, people are better, more confident, more decisive. They inspire and compete with each other; someone with an idea doesn’t shelve it. In smaller places, people often have half-baked ideas and then ten years later see a successful startup and think, “I thought of that too.” - **Investors decide faster**: Silicon Valley investors make decisions much faster, not just because they are better and more confident, but because competition is fierce. For example, Yuri Sagalov invested immediately when he met Max, because he felt anyone else who met this guy would invest too. Even though investors complain about high valuations and rushed decisions, experience shows it hasn’t hurt them – Silicon Valley investors have better returns than those in Europe. - **More respect back home**: As Jesus said, no prophet is accepted in his own hometown. Investors outside Silicon Valley implicitly assume any local startup is second-rate. But if you go to Silicon Valley, the rule reverses – once you announce you’ve been accepted into YC, they often suddenly scramble to invest. Dropbox in 2007 is a case in point: a Boston VC went from just giving encouragement and advice to, after learning Sequoia was interested, faxing founder Drew a term sheet with a blank valuation, saying “let us invest at any price.” Drew chose Sequoia instead. ### The biggest benefit: What it does to you The biggest benefit of moving to these centers isn’t what it does for you, but what it does to you. When you’re a big fish in a small pond, you don’t even know how big you are. When you move to the big pond, you can compare yourself to known big fish – like seeing Brian Chesky or Sam Altman and thinking, “This guy is impressive, but he’s not a different species. If I work that hard, I could do what he does.” You just saw it here – Max is almost the biggest fish out there (“Swedish fish”). Startup life is really hard, but seeing someone like that sets a high, clear bar. For an ambitious person, nothing is better than a clear, attainable standard. Moving to “Mount Olympus” clears the fog around the summit – the summit is there, quite high, but not unreachable. ### In Silicon Valley, people help you unconditionally Silicon Valley has a culture of “paying it forward” unlike anywhere else in the world. It’s the fastest place to go from nobody to billionaire, and people who are nice to nobodies end up with truly powerful friends. This custom has been around for 60 years and is now just how everyone behaves. Ron Conway is the perfect example – his whole day is helping people, and he doesn’t even keep track of favors. When multiple people do this, favors stop being zero-sum; there are only more favors. Moving to Silicon Valley subtly changes you, making you more helpful to others. ## Second question: How to help Stockholm become a thriving startup hub? ### The answer is hidden in the answer to the first question The answer to the first question was “Yes, you should go, and you can stay for a while then come back.” The answer to the second question is: You should go for a while and come back. As long as you actually return, that’s one of the best things you can do to help Sweden and help Stockholm become a thriving startup hub. ### Historical evidence If 19th-century mathematicians had boycotted Göttingen, saying “No, we must stay and develop Swedish mathematics,” would that have helped? Of course not. They didn’t, in fact – the government scholarships of the time were conditional on going to Göttingen. ### Summary Moving to Silicon Valley is not a betrayal of your country – it’s one of the most beneficial things you can do for it. Go there to learn, grow, and build connections. Then come back with experience, network, and mindset to help Sweden’s startup ecosystem become stronger. --- **Source**: Paul Graham, Founder of Y Combinator, Live from Stockholm – YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHJkUw31YX8)