Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan reflects on how excessive fundraising destroys startup discipline and prevents necessary 50% to 80% staff reductions.
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.”