Opinion
Garry Tan: Sam Bankman-Fried's quirky public persona was a pure artificial affectation
“Like you might think of an SPF that's like, that's all artifice. Like, think about that guy. Like, that guy was, like, full of shakes and, like, the guy was, like, on meth, right? Like, the guy was, you know, everything about it was an affectation. Like, he wa…”
Opinion
Garry Tan: Sam Altman pulled the future forward by at least a decade
“Sam Altman probably brought forward the future by, you know, five years, 10 years, at least 10 years.”
Assertion Contradicted
Garry Tan: Paul Graham created the first web browser-based application
“He actually basically created the first web browser based program. So he was one of the first people to hook up a web request to an actual program in Unix.”
Insight
Garry Tan: AI companies increasingly sell intelligence rather than traditional software
“Today, because people are not selling software, they're increasingly actually selling, ah, intelligence. They're like, you know, like it or not, like, these are things that you could not buy before.”
Assertion Contradicted
Garry Tan: About 2.5% of Y Combinator startups become $10B decacorns
“Yeah, about two and a half percent end up becoming Decacorns sooner or later, so.”
Assertion Supported
Garry Tan: Y Combinator's unicorn hit rate increased from 3.5% to 5.5%
“If anything, I think that the unicorn rate has gone up over time. You know 1015 years ago, I think it was closer to maybe three and a half to four percent, and now we're around five and a half percent. Some batches from You know, maybe 2017, 20 18, or, you kno…”
Insight
Tan: Startup founders often kill their companies by angel investing
“If you're a startup founder, and suddenly some, you know, people have heard of you, and people try to add you as a scout. Like, people kill their startups all the time by that, just by taking their eye off the ball.”
Assertion Contradicted
Garry Tan: San Francisco had zero housing starts last year
“Literally, there were no new housing starts in all of, you know, San Francisco proper for the last year.”
Disclosure
Tan: YC passed on ADHD medication telehealth startup over ethical concerns
“There are lots of examples of, you know, maybe five or six years ago, there was a rash of telehealth companies that are focused on, for instance ADHD meds, and I distinctly remember one of our partners Gustav Alströmer, I, he met that team, and he said, you kn…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Garry Tan: 5-person YC startups are hitting $12M revenue in 12 months
“We have companies basically
You know, going from zero to six million dollars in revenue in six months.
We have companies going from zero to twelve million dollars a year in revenue in 12 months, right?
And with under a dozen people.
Like, usually five or six p…”
Opinion
Garry Tan: Five or six competing AI labs prevent monopoly pricing power
“Sitting here a year after a lot of those attempts I feel pretty good, because it feels like there are five, maybe six labs, all of whom are competing in a fair market, trying to deliver models that, you know, honestly, any startup, anyone, you know, any of us …”
Disclosure
Garry Tan: Screen time, Minecraft, and Roblox foster agency in children
“I'm actually personally pretty pro screens, and pro Minecraft and Roblox, and, you know, giving children, like, this sort of playground where they can exercise their own agency.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Garry Tan: AI reasoning models will drive biotech breakthroughs within a year
“Like, if only by applying, you know, dollars to energy that then goes into these models, will there be, ah, real breakthroughs in, you know, biological sciences, like being able to do new processes or come to a deeper understanding of you know, whether it's, a…”
Opinion
Garry Tan: Training AI on published data ultimately feels like fair use
“The funniest thing, my main response to all of that around, like, provenance of the data itself is, at some point, like, it feels like it actually is fair use, though.”
Opinion
Garry Tan: Meta open-sourcing foundational AI models is 'God's work'
“What Zuck and Ahmad and the team over there are doing is frankly God's work. I think it's great that they're doing what they're doing and I hope they continue.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Garry Tan: Every major AI lab will release computer-use agent capabilities
“What Anthropic is doing with computer use is, you know, I think that you know, what I've heard is basically every major lab is probably going to need to release something like that, whether it's an API the way Anthropic has, or literally built into this you kn…”
Assertion Contradicted
Garry Tan: $4 billion currently funds AI safety organizations and think tanks
“There's something like four billion dollars of money sloshing around think tanks and AI safety organizations”
Assertion Contradicted
Garry Tan: AI code generation makes engineers 5 to 10 times faster
“Today, with CodeGen, you know, today, engineers are basically, you know, writing code about five or 10 X faster than they would before.”
Assertion Contradicted
Garry Tan: Apple opened RCS messaging in reaction to DOJ pressure
“Apple even today still, you know, they're opening it up a little bit more with RCS, but, you know, it's those are actually in reaction to the work of Jonathan Cantor and the DOJ.”
Disclosure
Garry Tan: I didn't vote for Trump but I support the administration
“Even though I didn't vote for Trump, I am a 110%, you know, down for making America truly awesome.”
Insight
Tan: Automated systems will always require a human in the loop
“Like even if 90% of the time you're using the autopilot, like you always need a human in the loop.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Tan: China will likely rely on a single, centrally controlled ASI
“That society probably, you know, unless there's other changes there, like that's, you can sort of count on a single, ah, artificial super intelligence, like sort of setting the, how everything works over there.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Garry Tan: AI passing the Turing test will jump to 30% this year
“I think in a lot of domains, and this is sort of the year where, like, Maybe there's, like, five or 10% of things that, like, it's, you know, sort of hitting the Turing test and, you know, really satisfying that, but, you know, I think maybe this is a year whe…”
Insight
Garry Tan: Breaking knowledge work into micro-steps prevents LLM hallucination and failure
“Garry Tan: It's like, what is a specific thing that a human does? Break it down into the very specific steps that a real human would do, and then actually, basically, if it breaks, you're just asking in that step to do too many things, so like, break it down i…”
Garry Tan