Welcome Home, Garry Tan
ycombinator.com
ycombinator.com
I went to Startup School, me and my cofounders applied, we got an interview, and we got in. I was an engineer, designer and PM. I'd built teams and products, but I'd never built a company.
YC gave me a shot, a community, knowhow, and the ability to access capital, talent, and customers.
YC changed my life. I want it to help a lot more people achieve their dreams and goals. It did for me, beyond my wildest dreams.
Hope you enjoy the ride!
Hacker News & YC have changed my life too. HN pulled me out of a funk during a Master's thesis that my heart was no longer in, and thrust me into the world of startups. Going through YC did the same, and put me onto a path of success with my own startup.
I'm very excited to see you back at the helm of YC, because I know how many others you'll be able to help. I'm excited for this future.
Either ways, good luck!
(btw, love the production quality of your videos on youtube; and now, YC-- Dalton, Michael et al-- who do have fantastic content, can use a bit of that production magic).
Being from a non-coastal area, my HN engagement has for many years been a lurker and general technology trend interest. I'm pleasantly surprised how well developed YC content is.
I'll be really interested to see the perspective you bring, especially when it comes to the human side of the equation of founding a startup.
I remember for some time you were looking seriously at mental health for teams. Any early thoughts on how you might adjust the current sentiment of hustle culture?
YC changed my life too and I can't imagine it in better or more capable hands.
300k to 2.4 billion WOW
I really think there's no one better for this role, it makes me really excited about YC again! Congrats!
I can't thank you enough for giving a nobody like me a shot, and I can't wait to passively watch as you continue to do this for countless others!
I've gotten death threats, no joke. Hitman showed up at my house one time. No joke.
No joke.
I'm sorry if I got it wrong, and I am happy to unblock if I did get it wrong.
I don't have a problem with him blocking people on Twitter at all. I actually sympathize with him. Twitter is a troll fest and he exposed his real self by getting involved in local politics. You know how "passionate" people can get when it comes to politics.
My problem with Garry isn't with his "pettiness" or Twitter blocking. It's solely with his crypto shilling.
Which is fine. I block plenty of people. I also mute people, because a block carries a message. And if I found myself in role that gets considerable scrutiny, I'd probably reevaluate my entire approach to social media.
I agree blocking people is fine and should be stigma free. But Mr. Tan's framing of his reasons for blocking seems at odds with the visible pattern. Fair enough; feel free to block me just because you're tired of my bullshit.
I don't particularly care that I triggered his Twitter blocking scripts. But I do take it as a sign that he wants to send a signal to founders looking to raise from his firm that they'd do well to support his political views or stay quiet on social media.
Ok come on, a tax on gross receipts is asinine. Of course low margin businesses with high volumes left. Square left, Stripe left, PayPal left. That cuts into the tax base which in turn means less revenue to help the homeless.
Regardless of whether you think what they did with it was good, the actual calculus of who has to pay how much makes zero sense.
Then of course there's the fact that money went to putting the hobos under highway overpasses in tent cities instead of building more houses.
I'm with Garry on this one.
Bonus points for saying “hobo”!
[1] https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/SF-Citi-video-plugs-...
Now, look, Graham blocked me on these grounds, so I'm not thrilled to say that I think he's completely right about this. I block people I haven't interacted with all the time. Not everybody on twitter is a good actor there, even if they're nice people in other contexts, and it makes life easier to kick some of those people to the curb before they're even aware you exist.
I probably said something tendentious or snarky or unfair or maybe even mean and I might have blocked somebody for the same thing, were the shoe on the other foot.
This gives me the impression that there's a specific political agenda being advanced at YC ...
[1] https://twitter.com/anildash/status/1564285359755874304?s=20...
[2] https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FH6Y9DCUYAEkV1p?format=png&name=...
[3] https://twitter.com/sama/status/1564256798323851265
edit: deleted a not very clear link about certain politically charged individuals.
Hardened political rhetoric and seasoned talking points aren't on topic here (regardless of which way the political vector is pointing). If you check out the site guidelines, it should be clear why: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
You don't have to agree with anyone's views but this style of argument is deathly to the curious conversation we want here. Curious conversation requires, among other things, respect across differences—wanting to learn more about how someone thinks, and why they think that way, and trusting that they have good reasons for all that even if, in the end, they're wrong. And, of course, you and your views deserve the same consideration.
If you want to argue against someone's views here (Garry's or anyone else's), you'll get much further by making your substantive points thoughtfully. We're trying to avoid the online callout/shaming culture here, at least to the extent possible on the open internet.
The culture of political attack goes very much the other way, of course—people save screenshots of the worst things they can find, bring them up at every opportunity, and so on. Guilt by association is another common tactic. None of this helps us really understand each other—anyone can be made to look bad that way, so it really doesn't have much persuasive power. It does get one's own side riled up (in a yay way) and the opposing side riled up (in a boo way), but riler-uppers are what we're trying to avoid on HN, because they destroy the curious conversation I was just talking about.
(I hope it's clear that all of the above should and does apply equally to opposing political sides.)
I explicit reject this idea that it's unfair to point to things people have said, even if they're screenshots. Sorry, that's just deciding that you can pick and choose data to ignore.
Re 'facts': this is a red herring. There are infinitely many facts. They don't select themselves; humans do that, and they do so for non-factual reasons [2]. As a matter of fact, "but it's a fact" is the most beloved defense of trolls—not that you mean it that way. (Edit: incidentally, I have no idea whether your claims about Garry, including the ones you deleted, were facts or not - but I'm assuming they are for present purposes because it makes the moderation point stronger.)
The problem with your post is that it was obvious online agitprop—in fact one couldn't find a more classic case (edit: before you edited it—it's less that way now). That's off topic on HN, but not because of trying to protect YC from criticism (we don't moderate HN that way [3] – plenty of people criticize YC here), nor because of political disagreement (there's room for a wide range of views, as long as people are using the site as intended)—but rather because it makes threads more predictable and nastier, and therefore more boring. We're trying to optimize for something else on HN [4].
Edit: I just noticed that you edited your GP comment to take out a couple of extreme guilt-by-association references and to add a relevant tweet by sama. Those are two steps towards an on-topic sort of political argument (good), but if you're going to edit comments after they've gotten replies, it's only fair to do so in a way that doesn't deprive other posts of their original meaning. My description ("hardened political rhetoric and seasoned talking points") was accurate about your original post and is less so now. In other words, you subtly changed the thread to make the moderation look less neutral and fair than it originally was. I hope that was just an accidental side effect, and that your motive for making those edits was a sincere desire to use HN as intended.
[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&type=comment&dateRange=a...
[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
[3] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
[4] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
There's not really much curious conversation when they happen, and not really a huge chance of it, either. As an example, the announcement of sama taking over was a hundred and fifty comments of almost exclusively "Congratulations!"
They're posts that are almost exclusively doomed, either to incurious compliments, insults, or needless pessimism; what questions that are asked usually don't get answered, so there wouldn't really be a loss in it anyway.
Also, job ads get placed on the front page by software. This submission got on the front page by upvotes like any other.
edit: sorry I realise that I may asking some stupid questions that everyone knows already. But to me Garry Tan was just the Posterous guy. I'm just a bit floored to hear that there's more to this and I'm trying to find my bearings. Seeing the name Andy Ngo is a massive red flag to me, but I can't really parse what was being said in the tweet.
This is your red flag for motivated reasoning
When we’re talking about left-winged workers, we’re talking about a bunch of ivory tower armchair leftists who get free lunch ( no irony intended ) and artisanal coffee, and have been the privileged class most of their lives.
If we’re talking about actual laborers, the democrats has abandoned that platform and serves the political gap that Donald Trump capitalized on.
Are you serious! Garry I pay for one of your fucking services I just wanted to check that these people were WRONG not that they were correct. What the hell.
Cool! Ok so, confirmed. Garry Tan is a sinister guy. Glad I asked here!
Edit: Sorry but how is this downvoted to zero? I have done nothing except add five "likes" to Twitter and my account is now banned there. This is insane. I was pro-or-neutral-Garry at the start of this convo, he was just the Posterous guy. Now my Twitter is gone. What the hell?
Edit 2: uhh so how do you get an account back?
Long-term computing research is one of the best ways to ensure YCombinator's continued growth and avoid dominance from companies that are increasingly avoiding the publication of their own research (and, divorced from either of those two things, it would do a substantial amount of good, which is more important to some people but less an immediately-swaying argument to capital); it seems absurd how it was sort of thrown to the wayside on what seemed to be a whim (judging by when VPRI shuttered and the other two stopped seeing activity, possibly by the 2017 crypto crash causing YC to momentarily get more conservative in its funding).
This is disappointing.
YC needs a fresh perspective. Recycling older members is not a positive sign for continued innovation. I wouldn’t point to “HODL diamond hands” crypto hype (suddenly disappeared..) and personal brand-building content creation as the type of leadership YC needs at this stage.
Specifically in this, someone who has been running a large VC fund for the past half-decade with considerable inside deal access through YC. The conflicts of interest are sizable, and we can’t really pretend that they won’t compound now that Garry’s at the head of YC.
Lastly, to balance flood of positive reviews, there have been consistent (if quiet, again, small world) reports of pettiness and using power/influence against personal grudges. I have not worked with Garry directly, founder friends have and back channels are..not same as the public comments here. Everyone has weaknesses. This isn’t a good one for the position.
That they may need [0], but I wouldn't be as dismissive about their current crop of partners either, given their ridiculous and sustained success.
> Lastly, to balance flood of positive reviews, there have been consistent (if quiet, again, small world) reports of pettiness and using power/influence against personal grudges.
I wouldn't know for sure, but there's two sides to every coin: With great power comes great responsibility" / "With great power comes the absolute certainity that you will turn into a right c*"
[0] In the lieu of other firms doing things differently, including ex-YC Daniel Gross' Pioneer.App, BeOnDeck, Enterpreneur First, Sequoia Arc, a16z Start, and others.
So you don’t think they can check your email? Sincere question.
This is my biggest worry. I'd have preferred a non-crypto-junkie.
This is Gary saying that ETH will go up to $10k soon: https://twitter.com/garrytan/status/1402648829732614146
It went to $1k instead.
At times, following Gary on Twitter felt like following a dumb crypto bro.
Everyone looks like a genius during a bull market and 0% interest rate environment.
You don't have to keep shilling crypto just because you invested in Coinbase early. You can take the win and not be a crypto bro.
You can shill crypto if our lives are improved by it and that if crypto disappeared one day, our lives would be worse. But not now. It kills your reputation hurts people. Right now, I see you as a Matt Damon who knows how to code.
PS. I'm forever grateful for you pushing Boudin out in SF.
Well actually,
1. He didn't say it will go up to $10k "soon." That video is talking about long-term performance.
2. ETH is down just ~~27%~~ 41% since that video, and has moved farther up than down.
3. It's only been a year since the video, which is talking about The Merge as one of the factors behind this belief, and The Merge hasn't happened yet.
4. Quote from the video: "It's not really gonna be that smooth a ride to $10000."
I remember reading his LinkedIn post on this $10k topic. In it, I think he said something along the lines of "soon".
But it really doesn't matter. Saying $10k ETH is the same as a random crypto bro saying $100k BTC soon. There are no fundamentals. Just shilling. Marketing. Ponzi-like behavior.
I don't doubt that ETH might go up to $10k eventually, given enough time. After all, crypto is basically trading with Nasdaq nowadays.
>2. ETH is down just 27% since that video, and has moved farther up than down.
Down 40.97%
>3. It's only been a year since the video, which is talking about The Merge as one of the factors behind this belief, and The Merge hasn't happened yet.
He said the biggest factor is that ETH is deflationary: https://youtu.be/jo58qEoThSs?t=381
He suggests that this makes ETH "ultra sound money".
I'm not going to argue for or against this idea.
>4. Quote from the video: "It's not really gonna be that smooth a ride to $10000."
Sure. Anyone who's been in crypto long enough knows crypto isn't a smooth ride. It doesn't say anything.
Ok, I can't find his LinkedIn post on $10k ETH anymore. Maybe he deleted.
But I distinctly remember wording around "soon".
That's why I think YC under Garry will pivot to something like: "Catch the next big thing" even if the next big thing is a scam and an environmental disaster.
I look forward to YC becoming full-time crypto shills and pump and dump scams.
My favorite is the software he built that YC alums get to use.
From 2008-2012 we had an email list.
Garry wrote a Rails site (IIRC) in 2012 and that was a clear inflection point for YC alums. Total game changer for many of us and has provided lots of value over the years. I think it was also the starting point for online SUS.
Congrats Garry/YC!
All the best!
I've had one brief interaction with Gary a long time ago, and he's been a role model ever since
I had a difference in opinion with my cofounder and wanted to leave the startup we'd founded, even if it meant leaving the YC program (which I adored), and would likely lose my visa to stay in the US. Seeing how distressed I was, Gary took me aside somehow simultaneously made me feel heard, but also told me that it's up to me to come back stronger from this moment.
It made all the difference to me, and I've thought back to that moment many times in the years to come.
To me, Garry is one of the people that embodies the spirit of YC. See some kind of potential in early founders (my cofounder called this "a twinkle in his eye"). Believe in them. Give them a shot.
Being a founder is SO lonely. Especially when few believe in what you're doing.
So happy that Garry's back.
Also, I did attend Garry's 30th birthday party. Great memory how casual and down to Earth everything was.
Good luck with new/old adventure.
I got to chat with Initialized (Garry was one of the co-founders) a while ago and I must mention that I was greatly impressed by Garry down-to-earth questions, knowledge, kindness and humility. I've been following him since on his Youtube channel... it's a gold mine for any entrepreneur out there.
Excited for what lies ahead for YC.
The list for his channel includes some likely suspects like TechCrunch, Y Combinator, and a16z but also some smaller names doing business advice like Section4 and David Perell:
Congrats Garry!
Congratulations, Garry!
One question: what does this mean for Initialized Capital?
That it could be a massive conflict of interest situation where Garry could funnel the best YC startups into Initialized before demo-day.
Congrats Garry. Feels like a John Frusciante comeback.
Really hoping to be part of the W23 batch.
We probably wouldn't have instacart where it is if it weren't for Gary. Thanks Gary.
I also remember being surprised that he drove a humble old car, perhaps a late-90s Camry? Respect.
As a HN lurker and YC fan, it's very exciting to see this. Bless up!
There will continue to be many hardcore fans of tulips and crypto regardless of the price, but marketcap adjusted for inflation has passed the max
Or where it is headed it more dystopia.
AI has already been democratized to death by the same gate keepers creating dystopian deep fakes and training on tons of your data on lots of data centers to incinerate and burn up the planet with zero efficient alternatives.
The AI game has run its course, with nothing left other than the same Tech giants and one hypocritical Open 'faux' AI company.
We need to concern ourselves with AI running its course and with wasteful deep learning models constantly training, retraining with that burning up the planet via the data centers especially with zero efficient alternatives, which that is the main concern here and using our data to fuel this dystopia.
What is happening to your current VC fund? I may have missed it, but who do you hand the reins to?
https://blog.initialized.com/2022/08/jen-wolf-and-brett-gibs...
Very excited to see the next chapter of growth at YC!
Congratulations Garry! Your blogs were my inspirations when I was running my startup. I always remember this line:
“The ideal startup team involves really two major roles — builder, and hustler. I used to say it took three roles (designer, engineer, hustler).....In reality, I think designer / engineer can be abstracted to builder”.
> they out themselves as either evil or stupid
I mean, it’s kinda in the name.
I served in the Marine Corps. I've had some exposure to Palantir's 'offerings'. It's a fucking nightmare of a company, morally and ethically, and it always has been.
Specially, that Facebook suffocated voices of Trump’s advisors who opposed the lockdown.
“Social media, particularly Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook, was actively suffocating voices, including mine, that dissented from the accepted COVID narrative. By August, Facebook told the Washington Post they had taken down seven million posts “for spreading coronavirus misinformation.” Meanwhile, Wikipedia crafted smears and distortions of my background and then locked it to edits”. —Dr. Scott Atlas, A Plague Upon Our House: My Fight at the Trump White House to Stop COVID from Destroying America
Doesn't come across evil to me unless by evil you mean just not mainstream left, which might be the correct in the valley.
https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/educatio...
https://www.opensecrets.org/2020-presidential-race/donald-tr...
If your viewpoint is so myopically constrained by a single data point, I don't know what to say.
I find intellectuals from all corners of political spectrum to be interesting. Usually, when people dismiss intellectuals not for their arguments, but by some ostensible thinly veiled morality or the media zeitgeist; it is already an indicator that something interesting is out there. Anyways, all I am saying is that Peter is not evil in any stretch of the definition as the media portrays him. He is just not your typical conformist thinker.
[1] They only paused after Jan 6th, they were happily donating to both parties: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-corporate-go...
Do you remember why Thiel invested in Confinity which became PayPal? Because he thought a digital wallet could lead to “the erosion of the nation-state”. If it's not self evident to you why that's a bad thing perhaps read https://eand.co/how-america-collapsed-and-became-a-fourth-wo...
Max Chafkin argues that Thiel “has been responsible for creating the ideology that has come to define Silicon Valley: that technological progress should be pursued relentlessly—with little, if any, regard for potential costs or dangers to society.” continued with “Palantir, his second company, popularized the concept of data mining after 9/11 and paved the way for what critics of the technology call surveillance capitalism”.
And of course there was gawker. No, what gawker did was not right but Thiel's reaction was not right either. That's some straight up vigilante BS.
this is crazy talk. Sorry.
etc
As far as I know the 'monarchy' dude is Yarvin. I'd be surprised if Thiel had publicly committed himself to anything so sophomoric, and it would be interesting to see an actual example.
If you want a proper critique of Thiel, proper as in properly sourced/researched, not opinions of what someone has made up in their mind: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/04/inside-the-new-right...
My issue with Thiel is his hypocrisy: he warns about surveillance AI and how it's evil, which is just rich, since he founded Palantir and holds shares of Clearview.
???
kind off topic, but I am curious what other people in SF think about this statement. I don't live there, but I find it surprising and dubious that the extreme anything is also "the establishment", not saying it's not possible but seems unlikely to me.
"The extreme left in SF politics (which in SF = the Establishment)"[1]
[1] https://twitter.com/stevemushero/status/1461013669114892288
So too in SF, outside of cali they would be considered extreme (left, right, you pick) but in SF they are the establishment.
Not passing judgment on whether that’s right or wrong just saying that’s what that line could mean.
San Francisco gets a lot of press as being radical, but the government strikes me as pretty middle-of-the-road and wealth-focused. i can't think of a policy here that would be out of place in any other sensibly run city in the US. And we're definitely to the right of places like Copenhagen and Amsterdam. And that goes back a long way; CA's current governor was a centrist mayor here back in the day.
[1] https://posthaven.com/ [2] https://blog.posthaven.com/read-about-how-fly-has-helped-wit...
(asking because i have minor pain points but not sure if enough)
This is a reminder that Palantir is the firm that sells data mining software to US police and military organizations that then use it to violate human rights.
It should be a black mark on anyone’s record.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
Exactly. I have always maintained that a small but significant way to put pressure on 'evil' companies, like Palantir, is to blacklist any employees who have them on their resume, making it difficult for them to attract talent. Unfortunately, I have found that very people share that view, and I am hard-pressed to figure out why.
Also everyone's personal set of shit companies doesn't overlap, so it's very easy for no one to get hired fairly quickly, and sometimes people chose the unpopular place out of necessity vs. choice at the time.
A large amount of employees people want to hire have probably worked at a company that people didn't like at one time or another. It's pretty easy to think of a set of nerds who don't like that you've worked at any one of google, microsoft, apple, amazon, facebook, netflix, robinhood, stripe, hospital system, any bank/finance/fintech, government, etc. Pretty much the only companies left are the ones that are not relevant enough to do anything to the world that would lead to someone being a hater in the first place.
I am still not hiring ex-Palantir people anytime soon, though. It would creep me out to look at them.
Without MS Office, the USG probably could not make the scale of the wars that they do.
Most people are apathetic, and having the military-industrial complex in your work history simply doesn’t register to many.
It’s not that they endorse evil; it’s just that they don’t care.
Employees at Meta{Facebook, Instagram, Oculus, etc}, Twitter, Google, Palantir and Uber are all complicit in building systems that amplify surveillance capitalism and this goes for any other company engaging in this space.
It should be a big black mark on anyone’s record working at those companies.
The same cannot be said of Instagram or Gmail or iCloud (you forgot Apple on your list).