I built this because GPT kept hallucinating what PG “might say.” This custom GPT only pulls from paulgraham.com — no summaries, no fluff, just cited answers straight from his essays. Built for builders who want clarity, not noise.

I’m a founder and like many here, I often turn to Paul Graham’s essays when I’m stuck, thinking about ideas, markets, ambition, or just getting unstuck.

But asking GPT “What would PG say about this?” often returned vague summaries, hallucinations, or web-scraped noise. So I built a GPT that only pulls from the essays on paulgraham.com. No web search. No guesswork. Just direct answers with citations.

You can ask:

• What does PG say about cofounders?

• How to find startup ideas?

• What mistakes do early founders make?

…and it will respond with actual passages from his essays + links.

Try it here:
👉 https://chat.openai.com/g/g-6867a263ed588191bd44cc5d059680d5-essays-by-paul-graham

Would love your feedback, feature ideas, or thoughts on expanding this to other thinkers (e.g. Naval, Ben Horowitz, etc).

Interesting. Are you also planning any series? Like Essays by [... add any personality] :)

@busmark_w_nika +1, good idea

@busmark_w_nika Definitely can, was thinking of the YC library as well, that's another resource I frequent. Do you have any recommendations?

@raunaqvaisoha Actually, when this is mentioned, why not reach out to YC Combinator to create such an initiative and get their support as well?

Is that kinda of a best practice as a well-trained personal kb?

Essays by Paul Graham GPT

A tool for thinking — unrestrictive and full of surprises.