PG Removes Corporate Stickers

A story about Paul Graham's strong aversion to corporate culture, demonstrated by his reaction to a copy machine at YC.

"We had one person who did all the books, finances, audits, all the CFO stuff, and she needed a copy machine. She got one of those waist-height copy machines that looked corporate and had these little stickers on it.

Paul Graham came in and said 'What is this? Why is this here?' It was like a totem of corporateness. He said 'I remember seeing these at Yahoo and I hated them.' He started scraping off the sticker that had the phone number of the company that would maintain the copy machine.

It jumps out at me as this interesting quirk of Paul that was absolutely right. I stay up at night thinking about how to make sure YC never feels corporate. PG would show up in shorts and Birkenstocks all day. He wore khaki pants to my wedding - my sister-in-law was like 'Excuse me sir, this is a private wedding' and I had to say 'No, no, that's my boss.'

What I learned from Paul was there's an insidious nature to formality and corporateness. There's incredible value in being very unconventional whenever there is prestige or convention - you should be wary of that thing."