Silicon Valley 40 under 40: Garry Tan | Hacker News Reader

Silicon Valley 40 under 40: Garry Tan

bizjournals.com

114 pointspg38 comments

garrytan is one of the best people I have ever met.

There are many different functions for evaluating "good person". Some look to kindness, compassion and trust. Raw intelligence or creativity. Wealth and influence. You name it, garrytan has it. Of course no one is perfect. But some people are inherently good.

Garry is a true nerd, a social maven, a serial helper. He's the kind of person that you want beside you in a foxhole. It's worth making an effort to get to know him. There's a reason that he keeps showing up in these "N under N" things.

It's good to see a nice guy finish first for once. And I believe that his best work is yet to come.

Additional data point: Garry helped me prepare for my YC interview in 2008. He was happy to help and provided great feedback.

"Personal testimony + superlative = win!" - for some marketing creep, I'm sure.

"X is one of the best Y's I've ever met" is one of the most annoying piece of public relations blather I know. I can only hope that now it's getting enough exposure to go the heck away.

Not even to say any bad about this Garry person but this kind of empty rhetoric is more than a bit annoying.

Edit, see: "Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Manchurian_Candidate_%28196...

Really, in our industry, is it necessary to specify an upper age bound? It's not like we're nurturing new circuit court justices.

Why not, "Top 25 over 25?" We all know what happens when the taurine receptor count starts to tank...

It's a journalistic hook. It doesn't come from within our industry.

I think The Onion put it best:

http://www.theonion.com/articles/40-numbers-under-40,32809/

It is and it isn't. Here in Vancouver (Canada) I occasionally see meetups at GrowLab (our off-brand Canadian Y Combinator) for e.g. 'innovators under 30'. Presumably there is at least one such event being held elsewhere in the world, meaning it's not local to the Canadian tech scene. Moreover, if it's sculpting your networking opportunities, it's definitely more than a 'hook'.

Journalistic hooks are a lot like API hooks. They point the ways to power.

For me, these "Top X under Age X" articles always used to create these needless benchmarks and comparisons in my head, as if I had some expectations to live up to by a specific age. I'd read the "30 under 30" and think to myself, "Crap, I'll be thirty in a few years. I need to get on the ball".

On one hand, reading about all these people doing great things is both inspiring and motivational for the reader to get out there and make something happen. On the other hand, its easy to look at yourself perhaps a bit too critically when you compare yourself to the folks listed in these articles. Focus on your own projects, career, business, etc not about whether you get there by 25,35 or 40.

Back to the article... I've never met Gary, but have enjoyed his writing and he's always struck me as a class act. It's great to see him get some more recognition.

Just quit interneting. I'm in the process of it. It's been making me happier and more productive.

How are you doing this? Where are you at in the process?

I kind of had a personal epiphany of an analogy: eating empty calories makes you fat, so having empty "friendships" on something like Facebook makes you socially inept.

So, I deleted half of my Facebook friends--anyone I haven't talked to directly in the last 6 months got axed. Some of those people were even extended family members. There is nothing my redneck cousins have to say that I need to be reading. I'd quit completely but it has lately served a significant purpose for coordinating meat-space socializing; apparently most people have forgotten how to email. I only check HN once a day, and I only open technical articles now. No more news site trawling, and no more politics. No more Facebook and Tumblr on the phone, only on a real computer.

It's helped a lot.

Don't aim so low. How about the "Top 4,000 over 40"?

At last, a list that I might qualify for (I'm 53).

I'm also willing to toss in a 50,000 over 50 category too. Why not?

I must have missed the memo that everyone must have gotten about taurine. I have no idea what you're referring to and Google isn't really helping. Care to share?

Here is the entire list/slideshow in case anyone is interested

http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2013/12/10/40-under-...

Garry is among the best people I've ever worked with--he's both a very smart and helpful investor and a great guy. Extremely well deserved.

Yeehaw! Much deserved, Garry.

OK, maybe I'm self-centered by I want to see a "SV 40 over 40 newcomers/founders" list! Or at least a 50 under 50

The good thing about being older is that it becomes easier to figure in lists like this. Had I played my cards right, I could be in the 50 under 50 list right now, but, in just a couple years, my odds of being in the 60 under 60 list will be 20% higher even if nothing else changes.

Aside from Garry almost always being the one YC Partner we could guarantee would show up at every drink up during our batch of YC I always enjoyed his straight to the point feedback and awesome design opinions on our product.

It's an honor well deserved. Congrats Garry!

Garry is not just an awesome investor and advisor, he is one of the best human beings I know! I don't think I have ever had a conversation with Garry where I didn't leave more energized.

It'd be cool to have a Q&A with the YC team on HN!

I think Garry may be the nicest guy I have ever met. He is incredibly helpful. I have nothing but good things to say about him.

This guy was cool. I pitched my idea to him for this winter batch of YC and didn't make it, but he was one of the ones in the room that I felt was most interested about the idea. I'd like to cross paths with him again some day.

I'm not going to lie, once I read the title I immediately looked to see if it was Garry who submitted the article, Even thought I didn't expect it to be him:)

I feel bad about that.

In all seriousness, Congratulations, this is a big honor!!

Dear BizJournals.com, what could you possibly be doing in order to serve up text and pictures that would cause my browser to freeze for 10 seconds?

Not sure about this specific case, but I remember NYT.com completely freezing up Mac one morning few years ago. I opened up NYT and noticed some fancy ad done in flash on the page. And then I noticed my Mac was just crawling. After a few minutes I thought maybe flash was the cause. Updating flash plugin in firefox took care of the problem.

With auto update of flash in chrome, no more issues with flash related stuff.

Winnipeg? G Tan! I never knew you were Canadian brethren.

Congrats Garry! Well deserved.

Awesome, congrats Garry!

Congrats to Garry. hooande has said it best.

Congrats Garry!

Garry is awesome.

Congrats Garry!

Woot!

Go Garry!

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