Garry Tan on Spotting Extreme Winners, Advice for Founders in AI + Lessons from Paul Graham

My First Million

Episode 642: Sam Parr ( https://x.com/theSamParr ) and Shaan Puri ( https://x.com/ShaanVP ) talk to Garry Tan ( https://x.com/garrytan ), CEO of Y Combinator, about the sauce that makes YC outperform the rest of Silicon Valley plus lessons from Paul Graham, Peter Thiel and Garry’s first million.

—

Show Notes:

(0:00) Winning the game

(3:16) Being the Harvard of startups

(7:31) How YC outperforms most Silicon Valley investors

(9:36) Spotting extreme winners

(14:14) Capital-as-a-service

(16:34) How Garry hustled at 14 to get his into financial security

(23:04) Turning down Peter Thiel's offer to start Palantir

(32:20) Garry's first million

(44:57) Early days at YC

(51:31) The edge of startups with a 2-pizza team

(54:36) Advice for founders in AI

(1:05:57) The spoon-bending story

—

Links:

• YC - https://www.ycombinator.com/

• Founding Sales - https://www.foundingsales.com/

—

Check Out Shaan's Stuff:

Need to hire? You should use the same service Shaan uses to hire developers, designers, & Virtual Assistants → it’s called Shepherd (tell ‘em Shaan sent you): https://bit.ly/SupportShepherd

—

Check Out Sam's Stuff:

• Hampton - https://www.joinhampton.com/

• Ideation Bootcamp - https://www.ideationbootcamp.co/

• Copy That - https://copythat.com

• Hampton Wealth Survey - https://joinhampton.com/wealth

• Sam’s List - http://samslist.co/

My First Million is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by The HubSpot Podcast Network // Production by Arie Desormeaux // Editing by Ezra Bakker Trupiano