Paul Graham on rage-bait startups: “Scammers don’t make the giant companies”

In a TBPN interview, Paul Graham is asked for his opinion on how marketing startups has changed in the last few years and the explosion of rage-baiting exemplified by companies like Cluely and Clad Labs’s “brainrot ide”.

PG replies:

“That sort of technique sounds like the technique that would be popular with someone you’d describe as a bit of a scammer. And the thing about these scammers is they don’t make the giant companies. They don’t have a long-term focus. They’re not earnestly doing engineering. They’re thinking about, ‘What’s some gimmick I can use to get ahead?’ And so long-term they don’t matter. You can skip the companies that do random sh*t like that because they’re never going to be that big.”

He urges founders to focus more on building a great product than hype:

“All you have to do is make something really good and find the people who want it. You don’t even need a coalition. Do you think when Facebook was taking off at Harvard there was some coalition of investors and the media that wanted it to take off? All that mattered was that Zuck made this thing that everybody at Harvard wanted to use. That’s all that matters: a small, intense fire. Or when Apple was getting started and the users were the people at the Homebrew computer club — the media didn’t know about that.”

Full video: TBPN “Live From YC Demo Day“ (Dec 2025)