Garry Tan

Y Combinator

President, CEO, and Group Partner

Initialized Capital

Board Partner & Advisor

Lead investor in early stage startups. Was early (pre-seed, seed, Series A) investor in founders who have created more than $200B in market value in 9 years.

We are a team of partners with deep expertise in product, engineering, marketing and design, with a fully institutional LP base and over $3.2B in assets under management.

Investments include Coinbase (NASDAQ: COIN), Instacart, OpenDoor (NASDAQ: OPEN), Flexport, Cruise Automation (acq by GM), Plangrid (acq by Autodesk), Rippling, Patreon, Bison Trails (acq by Coinbase), HelloSign (acq by Dropbox), EasyPost, Flock Safety, Envoy, Blend Labs (NYSE: BLND), Color Genomics, Ridecell, Lever (acq by Employ), Sift, Lob, Heap, Torch.io, Athelas, Drip Capital, Paperspace (acq by Digital Ocean), Empower Financial, Clipboard Health and many more. 

Hands-on help with product design, strategy, interaction design, visual design, and hiring.

Founder & Managing Partner

Posthaven

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.

Cofounder

Helped over 700 YC startups over the past 5 years (10 batches) build tomorrow's world-changing companies. Previously designer-in-residence.

Wrote key software at YC, including the internal alumni social network and forum Bookface (used by 1 in 3 YC alums every day) and the Demo Day website with realtime video updates.

Partner

Posterous.com

Dead simple posting of everything online using email. Attach documents, photos, music, video, and files of any kind and we'll transcode it to the most web friendly format and host it for you too. Autopost to facebook, twitter, flickr, and all your blogs.

I ran full stack design and development: from product definition, interaction design, visual design to software engineering, scaling, database management, systems administration. I designed and shipped major parts of the app including text processing, post editor, customizable blog theme engine, embed expansion, realtime and digest email notifications and subscriptions, and bookmarklet. 

Varyingly over the years I had to wear all the other hats too -- tech architecture, scaling and optimization, customer support, spam and abuse eradication, branding, PR. It was a blast.

Launched in July of 2008 and at peak was a Quantcast Top 200 site. We grew 10x in 2009 and 2.5x in 2010. Acquired by Twitter.

Posterous has been hailed in the design community for its focus on no-setup no-signup first time experience, and has been featured in Designing Social Interfaces published by O'Reilly and The Smashing Book by Smashing Magazine. 

"What might be the simplest blogging platform to date." --Michael Arrington, Techcrunch

"In terms of making things really dead simple Posterous beats every other service or app I have ever used. We can learn from them." -- Werner Vogels, CTO Amazon

"The quickest and easiest setup I've ever seen." --Huffington Post

Palantir Technologies

Cofounded v1 product/team for Palantir's financial analysis product. Joined as employee #10.

Defined product vision and design features for 14 engineers working on a next-generation financial analysis platform, now actively deployed to top hedge funds and banks around the world in partnership with Thomson Reuters. Hacked the first few early iterations of the software from scratch. 

Designed the current Palantir mark and logo.

Lead Engineer, Designer

Microsoft

Program management of ActiveSync 4.0, 4.1, 4.2 and Windows Vista releases of Windows Mobile synchronization and device management software.

Program Manager

Sun Microsystems

Software Engineer Intern

TheMan.com

Sapient

Worked during high school and college, part time during school, full time during breaks.

Web application development for clients such premiere brands as Caterpillar, PowerBar, Specialized Mountain Bikes, Esprit, and Virgin Megastore.

Perl web application development, linux administration, and build system integration.

President & CEO of Y Combinator. Y Combinator funds hundreds of companies per year via web-based application and has an acceptance rate of 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 $600B 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, recently #6.

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

In January, YC quietly opened its SF campus to founders, and now we're sharing details about it with the world. Here is the story of YC's new home and how we're building the world's first "college town" for founders.

For 17 years, Y Combinator ran out of a couple of large buildings in the quiet suburbs of Mountain View. But as the center of startups moved from the South Bay to SF, we knew we needed to move up with it.  When Garry Tan took over YC in early 2023, he made this a top priority.

The big question was: where? YC's original office on a culdesac in Mountain View had the feel of a college campus, with multiple buildings and quiet tree-lined outdoor spaces to walk around in. We knew we wanted to replicate that, but it's not easy to find a space to build a new campus in a densely packed city.

Garry Tan found us the perfect spot at the Pier 70 shipyard. Pier 70 has an extraordinary history. During World War II, Pier 70 was the most productive shipbuilding area in the US. 18,000 people worked here 7 days a week and built over 72 warships to fight the war in the pacific. 

After the war, the factories gradually fell into disuse, and ten years ago the city began repurposing the old shipbuilding factories as office space. 

We fell in love with Pier 70 as soon as we saw it. It's a huge area - it used to build battleships! It's right on the waterfront and adjacent to Crane Crove Park, which is a peaceful area to walk around. 

YC hosts large events and we needed space that could host hundreds of founders. Normal office buildings don't have that. But the Pier 70 buildings weren't office buildings, they were factories, and so they have huge open areas that work great for large events.

We're also surrounded by some of our favorite companies. Gusto (W12) is on our block. As is Astranis (W16) which actually builds telecommunication satellites in a satellite factory across the street. OpenAI just moved into new headquarters a couple of blocks away.

Pier 70 is in the Dogpatch area of SF. Historically the center of tech in SF has been downtown and SOMA but I suspect that the Dogpatch is going to play a much bigger role. Unfortunately, much of SOMA has become unsafe in recent years. The Dogpatch is just a few minutes out and is a really nice area to walk around.

Now that we're in SF, we were able to spin up way more in-person events than we ever did in Mountain View. We did weekly Bookface Launch live events, reunion events for YC alumni, hosted a healthcare conference and even invited the FTC Chair to give a talk.

Because of the non-stop stream of events, the YC campus is buzzing with activity every day. It feels just a bit magical, like the campuses of MIT and Stanford - a place where smart and interesting people come together to exchange ideas and invent the future. 

If you want to learn more, Melia Russell published an awesome inside look in Business Insider - I really recommend reading her article.

Why are YC companies worth YC demo day prices?Because you are more likely to find a multi-turn fund returner that makes your whole investing career in one check than any other place in the world

That's it, the HyLight team raised 3.7m€.

Our goal? 
To better observe and understand our world in the light of climate change without emitting GHGs in the process.

We begin by making sure our energy infrastructure is in good condition to deliver energy as efficiently and as safely as possible. Why ?

1️⃣ Because gas infrastructure operators need to make sure there are no leakages in the pipes.
So HyLight precisely and cost-efficiently inspect pipelines at large scale to find potential leaks.

2️⃣ Because power line operators need to make sure that the components of their grid are working safely and that vegetation is not growing too close to it.
So HyLight precisely inspect the grid at large scale to find potential defects and issues.

We do all of this with the HyLighter. A tech we developed, built and flew ourselves.
It already proved its value by collecting data of better quality than current solutions. More of that soon.

We are on a mission to change the way we observe and take care of our world.

Join us for this long flight, it is an amazing and meaningful journey.

One of the best designer/engineers I have met in my career is getting started with a powerful new idea applying coding LLMs to high quality collaborative UX design and looking for a cofounder

Get in touch with him here: https://lnkd.in/gdEme8nd

A truly excellent full stack engineer is founding a startup that could remove hours of paperwork per day from essential city workers. He is looking for a CV-focused founding engineer. You will get to work with me on this too. https://lnkd.in/gkSRagFH

We're excited to announce our $12M seed round led by Initialized Capital!

TechCrunch article: https://lnkd.in/gQQeWkf3

Press release: https://lnkd.in/g2XiqqnW

In addition, Starburst Ventures, Credo Ventures, Giant Step Capital, Domino Ventures, and Alumni Ventures participated in the round.

Christians in Tech, it’s time to get together in SF

Join us on Cinco de Mayo for "Holy" Guacamole at my home in SF for a happy hour serving tacos and tequila while DJ Canvas is spinning his famous remixed worship beats. During the second hour, Peter Thiel will lead a fireside chat to discuss what he calls "political theology" - the overlap between theology and various other fields like civil society, history, economics, and morality.

This event follows a "Nerdtastic Party on Purpose" at The Midway on Saturday May THE 4th at 9pm. Get your tickets here. Priority entry to the May 5th event will be given to those who purchase a ticket to the May 4th event.

May 4th event https://lnkd.in/g3PUhn5G

May 5th event at my house
https://lnkd.in/gKNXdNs5

tixr.com • 1 min read

I Hear Canvas tickets by The Midway SF

Excited to announce the YC alums joining us as new Visiting Group Partners for the Summer 2024 batch!

Welcome back, Andrew Miklas, Ooshma Garg, and Jon Xu!

ycombinator.com • 2 min read

Meet YC’s newest Visiting Group Partners | Y Combinator

Yoshi Mobility (YC S16) has raised $26M in Series C funding to make car ownership and management frictionless for consumers, fleet managers, and enterprise clients nationwide.

Founded in 2015 with the simple idea to “never go to the gas station again,” Yoshi Mobility now offers a full suite of mobility solutions, including eco-friendly washes, preventative maintenance, telematics installs, virtual vehicle inspections, and EV charging.

“Over the past few years, we have expanded our services well beyond just gas delivery to offer car owners and fleet managers comprehensive mobile car care,” added co-Founder & CEO Bryan Frist. “No matter how vehicles are powered - by gas, electrons, or even hydrogen - we are well-positioned to help usher in the future of mobility and accelerate the transition to alternative fuels.”

Today, Nashville-based Yoshi Mobility operates three main services: preventative maintenance, virtual vehicle inspections, and electric vehicle charging. With a physical presence in 15 states, Yoshi offers vehicle services nationwide and has completed millions of services already.

Congratulations Bryan, Daniel Hunter, and the entire team on the Series C!

techcrunch.com • 4 min read

Yoshi Mobility has come a long way since gassing up cars on the side of the road | TechCrunch

YC has a lot of software wins but some of the biggest mega Unicorns will be in hard tech. How did this happen? How can you go zero to one slinging atoms, not just bits? New on the Lightcone

A few years ago, I asked Naval Ravikant what he thought of “cfo.ai”.

He said “.ai” will obsolete quickly since everything will be AI, and suggested “runway.com” instead.

He was prescient as usual. 

Soon “powered by AI” will sound as weird as “powered by AJAX”.

runway.com • 1 min read

Runway Financial

Standard AI Debuts Vision Analytics Platform to Unlock Unprecedented Insights for Retail

https://lnkd.in/dRWTd9Bz

#readmagazine #news #artificialintelligence #retail #computervision #VisionAnalytics 

readmagazine.com • 3 min read

Standard AI Debuts Vision Analytics Platform to Unlock Unprecedented Insights for Retail

With LightTwist you can record and stream in a virtual studio in realtime. But, if you have network hiccups there might be times where things get low res or glitchy.

To solve this we shipped a feature that uses locally recorded video and audio to re-render the whole recording after the fact!

Here's how we do this - during live recording/streaming we record your video and audio locally in your browser AND we also record everything that happens in the virtual studio on the server to a custom file.

This means if you do things like change camera angles, play an animation, share a video - it all gets captured and used during re-render so everything you did during recording/streaming gets replayed in sync with your higher quality video and audio!

We're still refining and improving on this but wanted to share a quick work in progress example!

#VirtualProduction #UnrealEngine

Are you startup-curious but unsure if working at an early stage startup is right for you? On Wednesday, May 15, Initialized Capital is hosting its first Startup Talent Summit in SF. 

• Founders from Pano AI, Picogrid, Apero Health (Y Combinator), Automat AI Automations, TANDA, Terminal49, and more will demystify the startup landscape and share the upsides and the realities of startup life. 
• You’ll gain insights from hiring experts on networking, negotiating, and vetting potential employers to boost your job search success. 
• You’ll have the opportunity to connect with hiring startups looking for talent like you. 

This free event is open to all SF Bay Area talent looking for their next job opportunity at an early stage startup. Space is limited. 

Apply here. https://lnkd.in/e5TQcXKq

We're excited to see Rippling  on the 2024 Enterprise Tech 30 list, which features standout private technology companies chosen by over 100 leaders in VC and corporate development. 

Thank you to Wing Venture Capital, and congratulations to the other companies on the list.

https://lnkd.in/gvcrnMHS

Initialized managing partner Jennifer Wolf shared her views on leadership with Adam Bryant, executive development expert, author, and former NYT “Corner Office” columnist. She explained the importance of pairing ambition with agility, transparency for fairness, acting long-term, and why startups are her best teachers. 

She also shared some of the qualities she looks for in founders:
- Having a unique passion and understanding of their market.
- The ability to combine an idea with the hands-on building of a product.
- Self-awareness. The best leaders are usually people who are okay with being wrong.

”I find that the best leaders are people who are okay with being wrong. We fund people who have very strong opinions on things. They need that to be successful. But becoming self-aware is a skill you build and it does require you to look at the times when you’re wrong. If you’re just looking at all the times you’re great, you’re missing a lot of important lessons.“ 

Read the full interview ⤵️

https://lnkd.in/eHuitqYy 

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