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Paul Graham on AI · ViralLoop

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Paul Graham@paulg

A lot of the emails I get from founders are now written in a hard-hitting journalistic style. I know they're written by AI, because no founder ever wrote this way before. And once you realize something is written by AI, it's hard not to ignore it.

10K likes605 repliesPosted May 25, 2026

View the original on X Written by Paul Graham. Captured Sep 4, 2026.

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Viral score

Based on absolute engagement — the platform doesn’t expose follower counts here, so large accounts score higher.

From likes, comments.

Why it worked

Written from experience rather than as advice, which is harder to argue with.
Short enough to read in full without expanding, which removes a step before the point lands.
Short sentences keep the pace up, so the reader never has to re-read a line.

The mechanics

Hook: Plain observation
Structure: Hook → Landing
Style: Conversational paragraphs at a steady pace.
Tone: personal
Written for: People building with AI

Analysis by ViralLoop — not written by the original author.

Topics

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More from Paul Graham

A recent YC startup spent 250k on a domain. I was slightly shocked. But when I asked how much they raised after YC, the answer was 6.5m. So 1/26 of their round. This is the time we live in; one shocking number counterbalances the other.

A Brown professor gave his students a take-home midterm exam. After suspecting many cheated using AI, he made the final in-person. The orange dots are the midterm scores and the gray dots are the final scores. Looks like all but 3 cheated on the midterm.

One of the things Musk vs Altman shows is how much more promising AI is than anyone expected. Sam could have started it as a for-profit company. His life would be much simpler now if he had. But he didn't realize in 2015 that AI would warrant more than you can raise in donations.

When companies grow fast, it makes founders doubly rich. The company not only hits a given revenue number sooner, but is *more valuable when it hits it*, because the value of the company will be a multiple of the growth rate.

If you're working on an early stage startup, don't be deterred from using Anthropic just because you might want to sell to the DoD one day. Early on you need to focus on making your product the best. If you get the best results from Anthropic models, use them.

An experienced programmer told me he's now using AI to generate a thousand lines of code an hour. When I posted a similar stat 6 months ago, I got about a 50-50 mix of indignant disbelief and "Yeah, me too." I'm curious if the split will be different this time.