Garry Tan

President & CEO of Y Combinator. Y Combinator funds hundreds of companies per year via web-based application and has an acceptance rate of less than 1%, lower than any other selective process of its kind. YC has funded 90 companies worth a billion dollars or more, each at the earliest possible stage (usually a few people even before launch), and about 10 to 20 companies per year that go through the program will go on to product market fit and become a Unicorn. Over $800B in market value has been created so far, and counting. Before becoming CEO, I was a partner at YC 2011-2015 and built major software including Bookface and Demo Day realtime video. 

I'm a designer, PM & engineer turned investor and helper to startups.

Subscribe to my YouTube channel at youtube.com/garrytan

Founder, board partner and advisor at Initialized Capital, an early stage venture capital fund that was earliest in Coinbase and Instacart. Previously managing partner where we grew it to $3.2B in assets under management and startups worth more than $200 billion in market value in 10 years. Forbes Midas List Top 100 Global VC 2019-2023, last at #6 in the world before returning to YC.

Before that, I cofounded Posterous and helped build it to a world-class website used by millions. (Acquired by Twitter) I also cofounded the engineering team for Palantir Technology's quant finance analysis platform, and designed the current Palantir logo and wordmark.

I love building things.

Specialties: user-centered design, project management, software engineering, interaction design, visual design, entrepreneurship, bootstrapping, branding, design, technical architecture, scaling

Cofounder

Easy, simple blogs for $5/mo forever. This is a replacement for Posterous.com, but now one that we intend to charge money for, and keep online for as long as possible. We needed a replacement, and other people do too.

Software engineering accounts for nearly 50% of all AI agent tool calls. Healthcare, legal, finance, and a dozen other verticals are barely touched, each under 5%. That's a hundred AI unicorns waiting to be built. 

https://lnkd.in/g7EAeeJg

Open article: Half the AI Agent Market Is One Category. The Rest Is Wide Open. by garryslist.org

Half the AI Agent Market Is One Category. The Rest Is Wide Open.

A developer used OpenAI’s codex to port the entire SimCity (1989) C codebase to TypeScript in 4 days—without reading a single line of code. This is vibe coding at scale. The brave new world awaits your prompt.

https://lnkd.in/g7EdH9n5

Open article: AI Just Ported SimCity in 4 Days Without Reading the Code by garryslist.org

AI Just Ported SimCity in 4 Days Without Reading the Code

One of the most important questions for founders is: How do I make sure agents know about my product and service and choose it? All the old tricks won’t work. 

People who figure this out will win big 

This is a good essay: https://lnkd.in/gGSU2HPR

A pundit called Asian students "grade grinders" destroying American schools. Reality: n=20,000 survey shows Asian American kids lead in sports (63%), arts (59%), AND community service. The real complaint? "They're too good and we can't compete."

https://lnkd.in/e7whkc_m

Open article: The New War on Asian American Excellence by garryslist.org

AI just moves the excuses out of the way. You don’t get to say “I can’t edit” “I don’t know how to code” or “I’m not technical” — Intelligence is officially too cheap to meter. Your taste is your evals. Your desire to win is your agency. Time to build.

https://lnkd.in/gs2MhDX5

Open article: AI Didn’t Kill Creativity. It Killed Your Excuses. by garryslist.org

AI Didn’t Kill Creativity. It Killed Your Excuses.

Red Robin’s stock collapsed from $92 to $3.61 after management saved on labor costs and lost 96% of their market value.

Chili’s invested in making the experience 10x better and posted 31% growth and is 50x the market cap.

A lesson for the AI age.

https://lnkd.in/gi4rP3q2

Open article: Red Robin Died by Spreadsheet. Don't Make the Same Mistake. by garryslist.org

Red Robin Died by Spreadsheet. Don't Make the Same Mistake.

Top 1% startup exits have grown from $1.4B to $20B over 20 years. This is what an ascending market looks like: more tech, more jobs, faster growth.

Imagine being zero-sum, wanting to destroy tech at a moment when tech capability is going parabolic.

https://lnkd.in/gxs_5dwW

Open article: Startup Exits Double Every Five Years by garryslist.org

The one skill everyone who uses AI needs to master in 2026. Meta-prompting: using an LLM to generate, refine, and improve the very prompts you use to get work done.

https://lnkd.in/g9mFEHDj

Open article: Metaprompting is a skill everyone who uses AI needs to master in 2026 by garryslist.org

Metaprompting is a skill everyone who uses AI needs to master in 2026

Open article: Boil the Ocean by garryslist.org

I found a paper that actually quantifies the amount of money that is lost by society because NIMBYism prevents NY, SF Bay Area from building enough housing for their highly productive workers: $8,775 for every worker in America every year. That's wages you would have had, and GDP the USA would have had.

Open article: NIMBYs Steal $8,775 From Every Worker by garryslist.org

Data Center NIMBYs Are Killing $1 Trillion in AI Infrastructure
Housing NIMBYs already reduced 36% of GDP. Now the same playbook is blocking the AI economy. The states that figure out how to share the upside will win the future.

https://lnkd.in/g5-jEJMh

Open article: Data Center NIMBYs Are Killing $1 Trillion in AI Infrastructure by garryslist.org

Data Center NIMBYs Are Killing $1 Trillion in AI Infrastructure

BART’s ‘Leave Them Be’ Order Burned the Transbay Tube

Two encampment fires shut down BART in seven days. BART knew about the RV site, had legal authority to clear it, but the board’s “leave them be” culture resulted in system disaster.

Open article: BART's 'Leave Them Be' Order Burned the Transbay Tube by garryslist.org

BART's 'Leave Them Be' Order Burned the Transbay Tube

Early Site Reliability Engineer (SRE) at Instacart and built resilient systems now handling millions of orders.
3x Co-Founder at Rootly (YC S21), Mylk Guys (YC S18) and PopSQL (YC S19).
Originally from France, loves rock climbing, and unsurprisingly great wine!

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