Sep 23, 2026
On what made pg great, c. 2009-2016:
- every person tends toward particular kinds of ideas. Someone might tilt toward ideas that are entertaining, or elegant, or useful. Pg tended toward ideas that are surprising. He would look for surprising observations, generate surprising hypotheses, select surprising inferences. He'd never put it this way, but he seemed to find a lot of alpha in surprise
- pg was averse to abstractions. He almost always preferred a concrete way of doing things. Investors might ask about products or markets or business models. Pg would ask "what are you building?", "who is it for?", "how much will you charge?" It's the same questions, but he'd be as concrete and plain as possible
- being a hacker, he made things. His ideas were always practical and embodied in books, essays, software, YC, etc. They were meant to be used. It's very difficult to imagine pg writing a treatise on ethics or the nature of time or smtg
- this ethos is very much from Unix/C school of thought. Ironically, Pg was a Common Lisp hacker who embodied the worse-is-better philosophy. He would find the minimal possible thing that solves the problem, and it would be unmistakingly pg-esque. (If you haven't read The Rise of Worse is Better essay you should. Will the thesis be relitigated as AIs get much better?)
- that said, I'm not entirely sure he himself cared about making something people want. His output seems like an exhaust product of his curiosity that turned out to be useful by accident. Then again, he just couldn't help himself but stumble upon such accidents. Perhaps his way of thinking produces things people want, so for pg the score takes care of itself. The rest of us have to work at it deliberately
- he delighted in his ideas. The word "arrogance" has negative connotations, but pg was arrogant in the best possible way. If he thought an idea or an argument is good, it filled him with delight. It would then go into canon and he had no interest in revisiting it. There was no moving him once that happened
- the slop version of this is he "trusted his process" but again he would never put it this way. I don't think he was capable of navel gazing. It's impossible to imagine pg considering whether he'd be a favorite of fortune, or what posterity will think of him, or what he thinks of himself. In pg, the brain cycles most people spend on this would go to object level ideas
- I never saw the slightest sign he cares about what people think of him, nor did I ever see him try to impress anyone. I don't think he suppressed this impulse by force of will; as best as I could tell he has no such impulse. There is a Conversations with Tyler episode where pg keeps answering "I don't know" to a series of erudite questions without any embarrassment whatsoever. This is very pg
- he was interested in you if he thought you're smart and ambitious. If you did something to disabuse him of this, he'd lose interest completely. But this was never permanent; if you showed evidence of being smart and ambitious again his interest would rekindle. (You only got so many strikes, though) This brought out greatness in ppl because they would try very hard to impress him
- at the same time he genuinely cared about people's wellbeing. There are many stories where ppl had trouble in their personal life and he'd extend himself to help. I experienced some of this myself. Some values were much more important to him than ideas or ambition
- Thomas Jefferson once wrote "I am of a sect by myself", which I think sums up pg's character really well. If you read enough founding-father bios, you start noticing that most Silicon Valley figures resemble one founder more than the others. Imo pg is very much Jeffersonian