Paul Graham made his fortune selling his ecommerce platform Viaweb to Yahoo for $49 million in 1998.
More recently, he has become something of a 21st century messiah for tech company founders. His numerous essays about tech startup strategy, along with his work as a founding partner of Y Combinator, have allowed him to influence a new post-bubble generation of software programmers. Some entrepreneurs are said to listen to recorded copies of his speeches over and over again in an attempt to internalize his gift.