The co-founder of Silicon Valley’s most influential startup accelerator is delivering a reality check to ambitious teenagers everywhere. Paul Graham, whose Y Combinator has funded giants like Airbnb (NASDAQ:ABNB), Stripe, Dropbox (NASDAQ:DBX), and Reddit (NYSE:RDDT), is warning high schoolers to pump the brakes on their entrepreneurial dreams.
Graham's warning challenges the wave of social media stories celebrating teenage founders, stressing that high school years are better spent building skills than chasing the next billion-dollar startup, according to the Y Combinator co-founder.
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The Learning Trap Facing Young Entrepreneurs
“If you’re in high school and you want to start a startup one day, you might think the best thing to do now is to start startups. But it probably isn’t,” Graham wrote on X in a series of posts, addressing young entrepreneurs who dream of Silicon Valley success.
The Y Combinator co-founder advised teenagers to focus on developing knowledge and skills first: "The thing to do now is to learn new things and increase your skill at the things you already know. Startups are rarely the optimal way to do this."
He added that startups demand constant focus on user needs, which can limit the flexibility young people require to learn: "The point of a startup is to make something people want, not to learn."
"You will learn things in a startup, of course," he said in the thread. "But the way to learn the fastest is to work on whatever you're most curious about, and you don't have that luxury in a startup."
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Sam Altman as a Rare Outlier
Sam Altman, now CEO of OpenAI, received Y Combinator funding at age 19, a case Graham cites as uncommon among teenagers considering startups. “When he was 19, he seemed like he had a 40-year-old inside him,” Graham wrote in a 2007 essay about Altman, highlighting the rare maturity that separated the future AI leader from typical teenagers.
But Graham emphasizes the flip side of this success story. “There are other 19-year-olds who are 12 inside,” he noted, pointing out that Altman represents an extraordinary exception rather than a replicable model.
Graham points high school students toward learning and skill-building before founding, framing Altman as a rare exception rather than a general template.
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Graham’s Maturity Tests That Separate Adults From Kids
Graham explained that founder readiness can be measured through behavior, not age. One test is whether a young person relies on what he calls the "kid flake reflex," meaning making excuses by saying they are "just a kid" when faced with difficult tasks. He wrote that adults no longer excuse this behavior, meaning responsibility is expected.
A second test involves handling criticism. Graham said the adult response is not to retreat or rebel but to stay curious, asking, "Really? Why do you think so?"
He added, "What you don't often find are kids who react to challenges like adults. When you do, you've found an adult, whatever their age."
Y Combinator highlights on its website that its portfolio of more than 5,000 companies has reached a combined valuation of $800 billion.
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