Garry Tan
President & CEO, Y Combinator. On 7 shows, 51 appearances, plus 1 compilation re-air not counted. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
investorexecutivefounderengineerhost@garrytan ↗LinkedIn ↗blog.garrytan.com ↗Wikipedia ↗YouTube ↗Instagram ↗
Garry Tan is the President and CEO of startup accelerator Y Combinator and co-founder of venture capital firm Initialized Capital and blogging platform Posterous. An early backer of companies including Coinbase and Instacart, he previously worked as an early designer and engineering manager at Palantir.
7shows
51appearances
350statements
62resolved
42supported
12contradicted
68%fully supported
239said about them ↓ Everything Garry Tan said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Tan: Companies can reach $15M ARR in four months with two people
“Literally, you can go from zero to 15 mil ARR in about four months with, like, two or three people and, like, hundreds of agents. Like, you know, a few hundred skill files.”
Garry Tan: AI startups will not replace incumbent giants like Microsoft
“There are real motes to these things. Like, there are structural reasons why a Microsoft isn't going anywhere. And then, I guess, This is sort of a little antithetical to what most, you know, most people in Silicon Valley would say, like, I want to start up to…”
Tan: San Francisco ABC affiliate refused to cover anti-Asian hate crimes
“ABC News you know, literally the mainstream media TV channel of San Francisco and the Bay Area would not cover anti-Chinese and anti-Asian crime.”
Tan: Returning to Coding with AI Yields 400x Output
“It was 13 years of not coding and then suddenly, boom, I'm doing about 400 X the amount of work that I was that year. The last time I was even sort of like two thirds of the time writing code.”
Tan predicts everyone on Earth will have a personal AI by 2027
“And then I guarantee you like this time next year, like everyone's going to be saying what you heard here first, which is like every single person on the planet will have their own personal AI.”
Garry Tan: Claude in Chrome MCP is among worst software ever used
“Claude in Chrome MCP is one of the worst pieces of software I've ever used. You know, every time it would try to do an action, it would think and think and think. There was crazy context bloat. Often it wouldn't even do anything, but it would take two to three…”
Tan: Artificial general intelligence is literally actually here
“So, you know, there's sort of this explosion in model capability. You know, we've been talking about this for several years, but then it feels like it's here. Like AGI is literally actually here.”
Tan: Harvey and Open Evidence are overcapitalized 'foie gras' startups
“I think they're like, there might be a case of two foie gras startups, like one being Harvey and the other one being open evidence, right?”
Tan: Small YC startups routinely hit $20M revenue in 20 months
“We're seeing routinely YC companies with 10 or 20 people get to 10 or twenty million dollars a year in revenue in 10 or 20 months. And that's like literally never happened before in software.”
Tan: YC startups average 10% weekly revenue growth over 12-week batches
“The average rate at which YC companies grow their revenue during the YC batch, which is a 12 week process, is a 10% per week on average. I mean, some of the batches have been growing 15, 20% a week, but it's been at least 10% a week for more than a year.”
Garry Tan: Scammy founder programs produce future SBFs and Theranos fraudsters
“I worry that some of these programs are just literally trying to teach people to become more you know, SBFs and Theranos. And that's like, you know, that's a waste of time. Like, and you're going to go to jail.”
Tan: OpenAI o3 operates around 130 IQ, smarter than many past hires
“I think of O-three as basically about a 130 IQ, maybe O-three pro can be even smarter than that. When I really think about that, it's like, oh yeah, like a lot of the people who I've ever hired in my lifetime are like, yeah, O-three is smarter than that person…”
Tan: There will be very few successful defense tech companies
“I don't think, I agree more with Dellian comments about that there's not going to be many successful defense companies.”
Tan: San Francisco would still be dying without OpenAI
“Without OpenAI success, SF would be dead and still dying.”
Tan: Delegating without founder agency turns tech companies into political fiefdoms
“If
The founder and the CEO does not exercise agency, you know, then it's actually a political game, and then you have sort of fiefdoms that are fighting it out with one another, and the leader is not there, then you enter the situation where, ah, neither the l…”
Tan: Big tech talent hoarding decelerated overall technological progress
“I guess it felt like a little bit of a prisoner's dilemma, because I think the result is that you know, tech progress itself decelerated. You have, like, the smartest people of a generation basically retired in place, working at places that, you know, the worl…”
Tan: YC founder conference unlocked $10B–$100B in value
“I think that we brought together about 200 of all of our top founders. You know, there are about 60 or 70 unicorns represented. And I think that we unlocked, you know, easily 10 to a hundred billion dollars in new market cap like that very night”
Tan: Albedo builds spy satellites superior to the US government
“Albedo is super hardcore because they basically have made spy satellites, but you know, they're better than what the U S government can do. And, you know, they might just replace replace that market for that.”
Tan: Sam Altman aims to scale AI compute to $1 trillion spend
“Since then, Sam has told me that he actually wants to go to four orders of magnitude to get to a trillion dollars in you know, sort of spend.”
Tan: AGI is effectively already here for most knowledge worker tasks
“Like you could make a strong case that AGI is basically already here. The majority of the tasks that, you know, 98% of knowledge workers do day-to-day it is now possible for a software engineer probably sitting in front of cursor, to write something that gets …”
Tan: SF declined because people feared advocating for basic policies
“I think that SF got very, very bad because you couldn't say basic things like, I believe in algebra for middle schoolers, right?”
Tan: Politically motivated education researchers control math curriculum debate
“There are researchers who are highly politically and ideologically motivated who have Control of the apparatus that is like, you know, sort of quote unquote science, I guess. And then you have real scientists, real mathematicians, real computer scientists at B…”
Mutual fund private startup valuation marks are based purely on sentiment
“We're more or less at the worst possible scenario right now. We have no information rights, no liquidity. Valuation committees at Fidelity and BlackRock basically get to mark things up and down with no information, so it's basically all sentiment.”
The other half of the tape: Garry Tan's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 236 times in 89 episodes across the shows. 3 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 53John Coogan 45Jason Lemkin 30Jordi Hays 18Alexis Ohanian 14Ryan Hoover 6Andrew Warner 5Ooshma Garg 4
Statements about Garry Tan, by other people (3)
Hays: 1GW Data Center Generates $92M in Annual Taxes and 430 Jobs
“A fully built one gigawatt data center complex generates around thirty one million dollars per year in state taxes and sixty one million per year in local taxes from data center operations alone. Also, it creates roughly 430 direct jobs at the facility itself,…”
Rabois: Passing on an early Coinbase meeting was a massive mistake
“Is this the, you know, whatever, let's say Coinbase that I, you know, was introduced to very, very early by Gary, who really, Gary Tan, who really wanted me to invest. And, you know, I basically wrote back. I really didn't want to meet them, even though I actu…”
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
20VC 126
TBPN 83
the Y Combinator Startup Podcast 14
Mixergy 5
the a16z Podcast 4
No Priors 2
the Knowledge Project 2
2026 25 mentions in 16 episodes 2 per episode
- Anthropic Inference Costs Skyrocket |TikTok Deal Closes |The IPO Market:Wealthfront & EquipmentShare · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- The Axios Supply Chain Attack Explained
- Is Meta Really Addictive?, Jetsons Prediction, Artemis II: Back to the Moon | Diet TBPN
- Cursor Acquired for $60BN | Anthropic Hits $1TRN in Secondary Markets & Figma, Adobe, Canva Dead? · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Anthropic’s $10B Raise | a16z’s $15B Fund: Is the Middle Dead in VC? | How OpenAI Could Go to Zero? · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- AI Safety Timeline Takeover, Bending Spoons Acquires Miro, iPhone Duo Reactions | Diet TBPN
- Open Source vs. Closed Source, NVIDIA Backs SSI, YC Startup School Fills Stadium | Diet TBPN
- Zuckerberg Back on X Challenging Codex & Claude Code | SK Hynix’s $26BN IPO · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- 8 more episodes that year, every mention in 2026 →
2025 48 mentions in 27 episodes 2 per episode
- Daniel Gross and Nat Friedman: Acquired by Meta | Microsoft Layoff 9000 People | OpenAI's Bombshell · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- DeepSeek Update, Market Crash, Timeline in Turmoil, Is VC Cooked, Zero Cope Policy
- Weekly Recap: Gwyneth Paltrow Saves Astronomer, Figma’s IPO, Top AI Researchers Ranked
- Is DPI The Only Thing That Matters? with Sam Lessin, Jason Lemkin & Rory O’Driscoll · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- #2289 Building companies using Zapier’s AI automations
- #2287 AI made a “no code” founder into a coder
- Weekly Recap: The Soham Parekh Drama, Meta Attacks OpenAI, Trump's Mega Bill
- Building Cluely: The Viral AI Startup that raised $15M in 10 Weeks w/ Roy Lee
- 19 more episodes that year, every mention in 2025 →
2024 92 mentions in 20 episodes 5 per episode
- Jason Lemkin: Predictions for 2024 - What Does a Trump Administration do for Startups? | E1099 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Tom Blomfield: Do the Best All Raise Pre-Demo Day & YC's Fundraising Advice to Startups | E 1152 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Low T levels at Y-Combinator (ep9)
- Inside Facebooks Secret "Red Book" (ep18)
- You are NOT a Lottery Ticket (Peter Thiel Breakdown)
- What is the TRUMP BUBBLE? (ep11)
- Surviving a VC Holiday Party (ep22)
- Kevin Hartz: "How I Lost Airbnb at Seed Because of an Exploding Term Sheet" | E1180 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- 12 more episodes that year, every mention in 2024 →
2023 6 mentions in 4 episodes 2 per episode
- Sheel Mohnot: How I Got Married in the Metaverse; Founder vs Product vs Market | E1035 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- The Best Way To Launch Your Startup | Startup School · Y Combinator
- Is the VC Model Broken? Jason Lemkin, Mike Maples, Eric Paley & Harry Stebbings Debate | E1062 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- 20VC: What are the World's Tech Leaders Running From? Fear? Insecurity? Poverty? What Drives the Best with Orlando Bravo, Bill Ackman, Dara Khosrowshahi, Parker Conrad, Tobi Luttke, Brian Armstrong and more..
- every mention in 2023, scene by scene →
2022 7 mentions in 4 episodes 2 per episode
- Jason Lemkin: Cold Email Tips; Why Only 15% of Founders Listen to their VCs | 20VC #954 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Kyle Harrison: Why 75% of Active Investors Will Disappear in the Next Few Years | 20VC #940 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Keith Rabois: The End of Woke Capitalism; Time Allocation Tips; Silicon Valley vs Miami | 20VC #891 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Parker Conrad: How I Got Ousted from Zenefits and Came Back with a Vengence | 20VC #932 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- every mention in 2022, scene by scene →
2021 2 mentions in 2 episodes 1 per episode
- 20VC: Coinbase President & COO Emilie Choi on Building Coinbase Ventures into One of the Best Performing Funds with 0 Employees, How Coinbase Thinks Through Internal Resource Allocation and Prioritisation & Why, When and How To Hire Your COO and Head of C
- 20VC: Rippling's Parker Conrad on Why The VC/Founder Marriage Analogy is Weird, Why The Notion of Focus, Focus, Focus is Overrated, Why Narrow Point Solutions Are Not Best in Class Products & The Rise of the "Compound Startup"
- every mention in 2021, scene by scene →
2020 4 mentions in 1 episode
2019 15 mentions in 7 episodes 2 per episode
- Ryan Hoover on Product Hunt's Acquisition and Lessons Learned About Launches with Dalton Caldwell · Y Combinator
- 20VC: Why You Must Have A Customer Acquisition Strategy From Day 1, How To Test and Validate Ideas At Speed & Why You Should Speak To Investors Before Starting Work On Your Idea with Kulveer Taggar, Founder @ CEO @ Zeus Living
- 20VC: Y Combinator's New President, Geoff Ralston on The Single Most Important Perspective An Investor Can Provide A Founder, The Biggest Lessons From Working Alongside Paul Graham & Why You Will Lose As An Investor If You "Profile Invest"
- 20VC: Worklife Ventures' Brianne Kimmel on Why More Operators Should Start Their Own Fund, How To Structure Your Round for the Highest Signal Round & What The Multi-Stage Funds Playing At Seed Means For The Rest of The Asset Class
- 20VC: How To Build True Human Relationships with VC Pre-Investment, Why Valuation Is Not The Only Term and When To Take Lower Offers & How To Approach Mental Health As A Founder with Jon Dishotsky, Founder & CEO @ Starcity
- 20VC: So You Want To Be Acquired? Instacart VP of Corp Dev, Dave Sobota on His Biggest Lessons From 10 Years in Google's M&A Team Working on The Acquisitions of Motorola, Waze & Android
- 20VC: One Question Founders Must Ask Themselves When Approaching Investor Selection, Why Series B Is One Of The Most Challenging Phases & What Makes For A Successful CEO Transition with Jeff Russakow, CEO @ Boosted
- every mention in 2019, scene by scene →
2018 6 mentions in 1 episode
2017 15 mentions in 5 episodes 3 per episode
- 20VC: Why You Should Build Your Investor Team Like A Sports Team & How To Leverage The Abilities Of Your Investors Effectively with Ted Blosser, Founder & CEO @ WorkRamp
- 20VC: Biggest Takeaways From Working With Paul Graham and Jessica Livingston, Why You Should Put Off Hiring For As Long As Possible & Why Seed Stage Investing Is All About Optimising The Top Of The Funnel with Harj Taggar, Founder & CEO @ Triplebyte
- 20VC: Elad Gil on Becoming One of Silicon Valleys Top Angels, Why Most People Get Market Sizing Wrong & Should VC Services Always Be Bundled Together?
- The Challenges a Repeat Founder Faces - Tikhon Bernstam · Y Combinator
- 20VC: Coinbase's Brian Armstrong on The Rise & Short Term Correction in ICOs, The Regulatory Framework Required For Blockchain To Succeed & How The Rise of Blockchain Disrupts The VC Industry
- every mention in 2017, scene by scene →
2016 16 mentions in 2 episodes 8 per episode
- 20VC: Reddit's Alexis Ohanian on How It All Started With Paul Graham @ YC, The Biggest Surprises About Making The Move Into VC & Why Alexis Believes All The Best Investors Have Operating Experience
- 20VC: Learnings From Mary Meeker & Larry Summers, Missing Out On Uber & The Changing World of VC with Canvas Partner, Rebecca Lynn
- every mention in 2016, scene by scene →
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Garry's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Y COMBINATORLEDGER | President & CEO, Y Combinatorhost | 40 | 161 | 80% 20/25 | full record on the Y Combinator Startup Podcast → |
| KNOWLEDGE PROJECTLEDGER | President & CEO, Y Combinator | 1 | 72 | 47% 8/17 | full record on the Knowledge Project → |
| 20VCLEDGER | President & CEO, Y Combinator | 2 | 29 | 57% 4/7 | full record on 20VC → |
| TBPNLEDGER | President & CEO, Y Combinator | 5 +1 | 28 | 60% 3/5 | full record on TBPN → |
| a16zLEDGER | President & CEO, Y Combinator | 1 | 23 | 50% 1/2 | full record on the a16z Podcast → |
| NO PRIORSLEDGER | President & CEO, Y Combinator | 1 | 19 | 100% 3/3 | full record on No Priors → |
| MIXERGYLEDGER | President & CEO, Y Combinator | 1 | 18 | 100% 3/3 | full record on Mixergy → |