"We write in order to leave behind notes for one another. I mean, how do we live 10, 000 lifetimes in one? What advice do you have for writing a good YC application? If I can learn something immediatel..."

"This was before the internet. So like 1991 92. Um, you know, there are these things called bulletin board systems. Sure. And so that was sort of the proto internet. And, you know, being really, really..."

"You know, what if you were going to make a newspaper, what would you write about and it was all kinds of stuff Like I remember one of my best friends at the time wrote about how you know Pete Wilson a..."

"you know, 8 11 sheets, it would be like 10 or 15 pages of just, like, writing by the kids in, like, our English class, and, uh, she'd photocopy, you know, 150 copies and then every single person in ou..."

"Yeah, it's, it's a good line. So then, so you go from, you go from that, and then you're the editor in chief at this magazine called Express? Oh, it's just our school newspaper in high school. So, um,..."

"with the mind very early. Tell me about that. I guess I always sort of expected That we are, we write in order to leave behind notes for one another, um, you know, that's what writing is to me. I mean..."

"What do you mean? Uh, I was, I think, December of, what, 1998, and I was doing, uh, my college essays, and, um, I had sent off my Stanford one already, and then, uh, I remember being in the Fremont Pu..."

"synesthesia Who knows what it means, but I mean by the synesthesia Oh literally like I can see like a halo around this book and that and like for whatever reason I Needed to read that book at that mom..."

"But my dad also really struggled with alcoholism. And so, um, you know, whether it was love of family or Actually, growing up, I was a rabid atheist, um, and I really struggled with the idea of uh, th..."

"I tried to find solace in, uh, the great writers, you know, in, in Kerouac, in Kundera, in like whatever, in even in Rand, right? Like in anything I could find, um, I was trying to understand, like, w..."

"uh, one of the more salient things for Asian Americans often is like this idea of existing of like, and I distinctly remember what do you mean by existing, just, um, Of being? Of being, of, of being a..."

"intuitive sense of That the internet was gonna radically reshape both economics, especially the economics of information, and that personal blogs were gonna be this liberating thing. Now, I actually t..."

"Like anytime you walk into most workplaces, like if you leave Silicon Valley or you leave, like, even the top four or five, like, sort of, you know, intelligentsia cities in America and you walk into ..."

"Yeah, have you ever seen the clip with David Bowie talking to that BBC interviewer? Yeah, I love it. Yeah, he's like, The BBC interviewer is like, Yeah, so I don't understand why you keep saying this ..."

"and so, um, I'm really taken aback by, uh, the whole idea that, Peter Thiel invested in Facebook very early because of his, um, you know, studying of Girardian writing. Yeah. Simply because, yeah, lik..."

"Otherwise, you know, it's someone else's experience or someone else's beliefs that are sort of, uh, merged with my own. And then to what we were saying earlier, like, I do think about creation as, um,..."

"Yeah, I'm totally with you. I guess as an investor, the other weird thing that I really like is that, um, I want people to know that when I, you know, for whatever reason, the internet seems okay with..."

"be authentic. Being yourself is always a little bit weird. That seems interesting. Let's pull on that thread. I guess that's what I like about just meeting all sorts of people. And you know, my job no..."

"Like, if I was just, um, I mean, maybe this is why earlier in my career, like, When I graduated from college studying computer engineering, like I applied to the gap thinking like, oh, maybe I could b..."

"What have you learned about forums? And how they have shaped the Internet. I think it goes back to what we were saying earlier. Basically, the Internet's turning into a global brain literally. Um, and..."

"weren't being counted, um, and I think it's just very interesting, like, um, we're sort of at this moment, I'm very obsessed even today about, like, new types of organizations, because, you know, I th..."

"Yeah, that sounds smart. Therefore, it's true. I mean, but I think that there's something to this. How does your background as a designer shape your writing? I think design is very helpful in that. It..."

"I remember when I was spending a lot of time working with companies, like, almost all of it was. Uh, a lot of people think, think of design. They think of, Oh, what color is the button or, you know, s..."

"I actually, uh, left to my own devices, I probably would have studied, uh, rhetoric at UC Berkeley instead of computer engineering at Stanford. Is that right? Yeah. No complaints over here. It all wor..."

"Like it sort of loads and it's there. Um, you know, the opposite I think of is, you know, for a wedding, you have to get very fancy stationery. Right. Like a webpage, um, is actually somewhat adversar..."

"What advice do you have for writing a good YC application or just broadly any grant application or something like that? I guess personally, I always like, um, very plain spoken and then if I can learn..."

"hanging out with the bar, at the bar with my friends. That's true. Conformity is actually totally what society, uh, teaches you to do. Of course. And most people have to write in sort of a school cont..."

"Mm hmm. How does good documentation work as someone who has no experience coding? What, how does good documentation read and is it different from reading an essay? Hmm. I guess documentation is really..."

"How many? Influencers have you invested in at YC and is that a path you want to go down more or is? writing and running startups directly Oh, I think they work really well together, honestly. Um, I th..."

"What have you learned about effective writing from reading the Bible? I guess the number one thing from Girard is actually just this idea of monesis period that, um, writing is, um, the most potent fo..."

"But at the same time, he's not always in the room, and if you talk to people who are there, they say, yeah, Peter's not in every single meeting. And that idea that through writing, through narrative, ..."

"time, like, I mean, it's crazy vulnerable, right, like, things that could open you for attack or, um, or close people off, um, I think you have to be careful with it, right, like, on the other hand, f..."

"And, um, you know, I've, they're definitely like, absolutely obsessed with words. And sometimes I would, like, Yes, I think I, like, sent some, uh, you know, overshare type emails to, um, I think my p..."

"I did not mean that as part of the metaphor. It might be this, it might be vulnerability, right? But so far, um, I was saying earlier, uh, you know, I have this weird tendency of doing, uh, therapy wi..."

"A lot of the writing that has moved me the most was some feeling that either I didn't feel alone, or somebody was putting words to an experience that I'd only felt but never actually verbalized. And I..."

"How crazy is that? Yeah, well, we talked about vulnerability talked about novelty. I guess I think people are really obsessed with novelty. And when people first start writing, um, they're not really ..."

"All creative acts really are, like, sort of establishing, you know, you as an individual. Yeah. Sort of sounds like artistry at that point. How do you think about the establishment of you as an indivi..."

"one body of work and then boom, you're a success. And within, you know, 12 or 18 months, you got to hit them with like the next thing. And how could you do that? That would like match that first, like..."

"Yeah. So, um. YouTube videos? The obvious one is there's my top viewed video is, uh, how to get rich. And, uh, I almost feel silly. It seems to be a fairly effective title. Yeah, but I feel good about..."

"Yeah. But, I mean, that's the tricky thing, like, I came up through blogs, I came up through YouTube videos, like, these things are not books. Mm hmm. Like, they are, uh, almost meant to be, you know,..."

"Like this past weekend we had 2, 700 people together and um, it felt like a massive reunion cause literally everyone who you could meet, we all had the same set of values and um, it felt like home. We..."

"celebrating. Well, we need to keep going. I mean, the outcome is that we just want more abundance. Like, we just want more people to actually succeed. Um, I think the thing that got me was realizing w..."

"There's like a why that is way beyond like sort of the classic, you know, tropes or the classic things that you might run across. Like when you meet most people, it's like, Oh, I want to be more famou..."

"Like, all of these things were happening to me. I had, like, certain skills. I had, you know, certain things that I, like, didn't understand. Um, I was dealing with, like, something that, you know, ho..."

"Deep things that had happened in my life beliefs that I hadn't made sense of things that felt intimate and private and revealing and then I published it and I just shared it with the world and Of cour..."

"experience. There's something paradoxical and profound about that. I guess that's what media is to me. It's actually less the like outcome of some process and more about building relationships. Unders..."

"at while relying on, um, you know, human intuition and reasoning. And I guess what's tricky is now that we say it, the large language model might be beyond it because, you know, there are aspects of t..."

"been with you the entire time. And as I looked at your career through the lens of that kid, I just saw this fire that radiates everything that you do, and had I not seen that. I would have thought abo..."

"right? So, uh, but that was the beauty of it that, um, without their permission, you know, without their Having an editorial board come and see it like without having to, you know, have access to a pr..."