Keep track of your progress reading Paul Graham's essays. - Mark essays as "read" until you've read them all. - Bookmark your favorites to come back to later. Learn how to build startups from the legend himself. (no affiliation with Paul Graham or YC)
Reading Paul Graham's essays changed my life... and eventually led me to start Whalesync (YC S21).
When I first discovered PG's essays, I read one essay a day for almost a year. At the time, I wished there was a better way to keep track of my progress and save my favorites.
So I figured I'd make that possible!
Hoping this helps others benefit from PG's essays in the way I did when I was first starting out :)
@julia_zakharova2 hahah, love that comparison! Indeed a long exciting adventure.
appreciate the kind words and good luck on your upcoming launch!
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Ran your PG essay tracker through a quick scan. A few things worth a look: some text falls under the minimum contrast ratio, harder to read for people with low vision, there's no main landmark, and no top-level (h1) heading, so both screen readers and search engines lose the page's primary signpost. Also missing several standard security headers (CSP, X-Frame-Options, X-Content-Type-Options, Permissions-Policy, Referrer-Policy). All quick to add. Nice tribute to a genuinely good reading list.
Instead of scrolling on Instagram for 5 minutes, we can now read legendary essay for 5 minutes. Just created an account, will use this for sure! Congrats Matthew🥳
@maurizioisendoorn 😄 haha yes! so glad - let me know if there's anything that would make it better for you.
btw, ringly looks awesome!
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Awesome idea @mbusel !
I've just created an account and read two essays already. It matches perfectly today as I decided to grow my habit to read more really meaningful things instead of using social media.
Upvote! 💪🏽
Suggestions to better your tool:
-It would be awesome to have a short summary of 2-3 sentences each essay or keywords what it is about.
-Search for mentioned companies and people.
-Add more high quality free sources later.
Thank you and keep building! 🙏🏽🫶🏾
@david__fischer thanks David! And love those ideas!
I actually tried to add that keywords feature but it got a little complex so I decided to cut it before launch. Will have to try again!
Thanks again for the feedback!
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@mbusel You are welcome!
I'll share more ideas having them while using :-)
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Love this idea Matthew, and this could be a very great community with cool self-reflective people. I am curious to see how this platform develops and become more collaborative!
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This is such a cool idea. Paul Graham's essays are packed with insight, and having a simple way to track progress and save favorites makes it way easier to stay motivated. Definitely bookmarking this!
Whalesync
Whalesync
Ran your PG essay tracker through a quick scan. A few things worth a look: some text falls under the minimum contrast ratio, harder to read for people with low vision, there's no main landmark, and no top-level (h1) heading, so both screen readers and search engines lose the page's primary signpost. Also missing several standard security headers (CSP, X-Frame-Options, X-Content-Type-Options, Permissions-Policy, Referrer-Policy). All quick to add. Nice tribute to a genuinely good reading list.
Ringly
Whalesync
Whalesync
This is such a cool idea. Paul Graham's essays are packed with insight, and having a simple way to track progress and save favorites makes it way easier to stay motivated. Definitely bookmarking this!
stagewise
Whalesync