Opinion
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?”
Opinion
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…”
Opinion
Tan: Calling AI Startups ChatGPT Wrappers Is Like Calling SaaS MySQL Wrappers
“ChatGPT wrapper thing is actually just wrong. It's like saying that all of SaaS and cloud are basically, you know, MySQL wrappers. It doesn't make any sense.”
Insight
Tan: YC backs technical founders because business mechanics can be taught
“Which actually, I think that's even, you know, going back to the YC, the cult of YC, I'm starting to realize that is actually one of the core things that we've always believed that extremely technical people
those are the people who probably should be, like, …”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Tan: Last YC Batch Grew Aggregate ARR from $6M to $30M
“I think last batch the average ARR of a YC company was six million dollars at the beginning. And at the end, it was, ah, north of 30 mil, and this was over three months. So, to get that kind of growth in a very short amount of time, like, I actually don't thin…”
Insight
Tan: Mega tech giants are incapable of crushing agile startups
“Actually the mega tech companies have such unassailable moats, and they make so much money that they're actually somewhat incapable of, like, stomping anymore.”
Opinion
Tan: Only SF Directly Connects AI Model Builders With Edge Deployers
“Only here can you know, can the tool makers and the foundational model builders and the researchers literally sit down and break bread with the people way out on the edge, like, trying to practically Deploy these things to every industry and every type of know…”
Opinion
Tan: Private enterprise cannot fix public school education
“Private enterprise literally cannot help people have a great public school education.”
What-if
Tan: Without middle school algebra, I wouldn't have gotten into Stanford
“Like if I couldn't study algebra in middle school, if I couldn't study calculus by senior year, I couldn't have gotten into Stanford. I couldn't have studied computer science, and I never would have been able to participate in, like, what is the craziest thing…”
What-if
Tan: Posterous had a chance to be Instagram without realizing it
“Posterous was funny because we had a chance to be Instagram, but we didn't know it at the time.”
Assertion Supported
Tan: About 70% of current Y Combinator batch companies are AI-centric
“About 70% right now.”
Disclosure
Tan: YC funds startups building foundation models in bio and robotics
“So we absolutely have companies that are building foundational models. You know, Diffuse Bio is doing over on the bio side. You know there, you know, there's a company working on, like, robotics foundational models.”
Insight
Tan: YC group office hours use peer pressure to drive founder accountability
“I think Paul Buchheit, like creator of Gmail, he was one of the first people to make a group office hours, which is sort of using social pressure. It's almost like Alcoholics Anonymous as like, but for founders where it's like you really don't want to You, I m…”
Insight
Tan: Raising too much capital prevents founders from making necessary cuts
“Too much money equals potentially just not doing the right things, and then the worst thing is, like, not even being able to cut to the point where you can get back on track.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Tan: YC sees surge in 19–21-year-olds dropping out for AI
“So we've seen far more, you know, 1920, 21 year olds dropping out of college to start AI companies now, mainly because if they don't, like, they'll just miss the boom.”
Disclosure
Garry Tan: Y Combinator has 14 group partners funding 15-25 companies each
“We have 14 group partners at YC now, and each of them fund between 15 and 25 companies each.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Tan: Two-Thirds of YC AI Companies Are Applications, One-Third Are Infrastructure
“Yeah, it's about, I mean, two thirds is still like very practical implementation of like ideally frontier models. And then maybe one third increasingly are some sort of infra.”
Assertion Supported
Tan: Y Combinator Founder Average Age Is Trending Down Toward 25
“I think that that's actually the average age of YC at this point. It is trending younger. Like, I wouldn't be surprised if this year was this current batch for summer was close to 25 or 26.”
Assertion Supported
Tan: Median YC startup post-batch fundraising has reached $1.5M–$2M
“The median YC startup, I think In 2015, 20 14, did not raise, like, that much. It probably still was, like, below a million dollars, and then these days, it's, like, close to a million and a half to two.”
Garry Tan