“But as long as you're over a certain threshold of intelligence, what matters most is determination.”
Intelligence Above a Threshold, Determination Above That
From Paul Graham’s October 2010 essay “What We Look for in Founders” (paulgraham.com/founders.html), commissioned by Forbes. The essay ranks five founder qualities: 1. Determination, 2. Flexibility, 3. Imagination, 4. Naughtiness, 5. Friendship. The quote sits in the opening paragraph under “1. Determination”.
In the same paragraph Graham flags the ranking as a correction: “This has turned out to be the most important quality in startup founders. We thought when we started Y Combinator that the most important quality would be intelligence. That’s the myth in the Valley.” Determination’s #1 spot is not a general life maxim; it is YC, five years into running batches, telling Forbes readers what its own experience had pushed it to revise. When YC started, Graham says, they thought intelligence would be the most important founder quality, and this essay is the after-the-fact correction.