Paul Graham thinks it's a good idea to start a startup during a recession. As is usually the case in anything he writes, Graham uses a lot of text to convey very few ideas. His most recent diatribe, though, has a solution-to-word ratio of zero.

In the text mining world, we would consider this to be very poor signal.

YCombinator, LLC.

Venture capitalists are telling entrepreneurs in their portfolio to buckle down, and that shit's not gonna be very good for a while. It's a shame more of them don't live in PG's fantasy land. Let's take an example:

Fact: Investors are shaky now, fleeing to more stable investments, thus giving less to venture capital firms, which in turn distribute less to startups.

PG's Solution Investors are dumb. They are doing it wrong. They shouldn't do that.

Well, that's a fantastic theory, but how does it help us?

Let's say you're a YCombinator company just starting out right now. Two founders, so YC throws you about $15k. Fifteen thousand dollars for you to get your idea off the ground, which has to cover capital expenditure and your personal cost of living. After that money is done, you are expected to have raised venture capital, be acquired, or be self-supporting.

Trying to raise venture capital in the next year is going to be like trying to raise the dead. Being acquired, well maybe, but unlikely without raising VC. Be self-supporting? Then maybe you've got yourself a for-reals business plan, and don't need Paul Graham's chump change.

The 43 Word Version

Here are the salient facts distilled from Graham's verbal diarrhea:

You should start a company now. The economy is of no importance. All that is important is that the founders are smart and the idea is good. Don't worry about raising money because magic will happen. After all, this is Silicon Valley.

Ah, yes. It's a crying shame that your landlord won't accept an explanation of your idea in lieu of rent. Oh, right...also ignore the fact that ViaWeb was acquired by Yahoo in the height of the first dot-com bubble.

See, I've cut almost 1,100 words out and offered the same amount of hope and the same number of solutions.

It's unfortunate that being an expert in a dead programming language can't make a person into an expert in a living, spoken one. Also, to clarify, I have never and will never seek investment from Paul Graham or anyone that looks like Paul Graham. I don't like Paul Graham because he is a false prophet.