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How to Earn a Billion Dollars

paulgraham.com · 2,371 words · saved by 11 readers

June 2026 (This is based on a talk I gave at the Oxford Union.) Since this is apparently the future prime ministers' club, I'm going to tell you about something it would be good if more politicians understood: I'm going to tell you how people become billionaires. I hope this will be useful to you even if you don't plan to go into politics. Those of you who don't become prime minister can become billionaires instead. The reason I know about this topic is that 21 years ago Jessica and I started something called Y Combinator. If you haven't heard of Y Combinator, it's a cross between an investment firm and a school for startup founders. Since we started it in 2005 we've funded about 6500 companies. Starting a successful startup is the most common way to become a billionaire, so in effect I've spent the last 21 years training people to become billionaires. So far about 30 of them have, but there are many more in the pipeline. So you can imagine how astonished I was last month w

How to Earn a Billion Dollars --> June 2026 (This is based on a talk I gave at the Oxford Union.) Since this is apparently the future prime ministers' club, I'm going to tell you about something it would be good if more politicians understood: I'm going to tell you how people become billionaires. I hope this will be useful to you even if you don't plan to go into politics. Those of you who don't become prime minister can become billionaires instead. The reason I know about this topic is that 21 years ago Jessica and I started something called Y Combinator. If you haven't heard of Y Combinator,

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