Fireside chat with Paul Graham at #GMIC2013

Two weeks ago, I was fortunate enough to attend the "Global Mobile Internet Conference" (#GMIC2013 ), held at the Mosconne Center in San Francisco , CA. It was full of excellent lectures about technological trends like "mobile health" , startups , mobile marketing and more. One of the talks that I liked most was the one that took place on stage A in the morning of the first day. It consisted of an interview with Paul Graham, co-founder of Y Combinator seed capital firm, by Richard Waters, editor of the Financial Times.

During the conversation, Paul Graham stressed that his cell phone has only four applications installed. A few of the apps he has in his cellphone are Pebble, Uber and Lockitron.
Later Paul brought up several concepts about the current landscape of technology sector. Since the audience was full of tech guys some of the concepts turned out to be obvious. For instance the fact that the "software is eating the world".

By the time Waters asked about the the future of the technology industry, Paul had put ​​special emphasis on the phenomenon of mobile devices. He claimed that if anyone has an idea where something traditional is replaced by a mobile device, then it is a good idea. This is because today everyone has a cell phone and if you can improve a process using a mobile device you would be adding value to the world. Regarding the future, and in especially in relation to their investments, Paul Graham stated that we are entering to a multi-device world where both applications that coordinate people and wearable devices have great potential. Finally he concluded that in mobile market the monetization model should be charged for coordinating things. Furthermore, we should not try to export old business models that are successful in other technologies to cutting edge technologies, because this almost never works.

In regards to YCombinator, Paul Graham specifically told us that they seek good ideas that may seem bad but have potential. He also put special emphasis on the founding team. The team must be passionate and have a lot of potential.
According to Paul Graham, YCombinator has financed 564 companies that are valued at 13.7 billion dollars and they take 3% of the capital.