In the Age of AI, the Programmer’s Mindset Still Matters

Judy Faulkner and Paul Graham show how technical thinking powers durable, contrarian businesses

In the recent Acquired podcast episode on Epic Systems, hosts David Rosenthal and Ben Gilbert made an interesting observation about founder Judy Faulkner (at 3:23):

“The distance between Judy Faulkner and Paul Graham is actually not nearly as far as you would think… It's applying computer science principles and common-sense ways of running a company that are obvious to you, but contrarian to the way that most people seem to run companies, and just being a programmer turned business person to its logical extreme.”

At first glance, Faulkner and Graham might seem to occupy very different corners of the tech world—one built a dominant enterprise software company in healthcare, the other co-founded a startup accelerator that helped define Silicon Valley's modern era.

But both are examples of technical founders who applied engineering logic and long-term thinking to company-building. They each rejected conventional business norms, opting instead for approaches grounded in simplicity, control, and product focus. Faulkner kept Epic private and founder-led, with no outside funding; Graham backed founders who could build, not just pitch, and structured YC with minimal friction. In different ways, both pushed the programmer-to-founder model to its full potential—applying first principles not just to code, but to organizational design.

In today’s AI-driven landscape, there’s a growing belief that technical depth is being commoditized—replaced by abstraction layers and automated tools. But Faulkner and Graham both demonstrate how a foundational understanding of computer science still provides a significant advantage. It’s not just about writing code; it’s about systems thinking, abstraction, scalability, and knowing when complexity is necessary versus when it’s a liability. As AI tools proliferate, the ability to reason about underlying structures—and to build organizations with the same clarity and discipline—remains as valuable as ever.