Believe it or not, my journey to Y Combinator started similar to how you may experience YC — through being a regular lurker and reader on Hacker News.
I went to Startup School, me and my cofounders applied, we got an interview, and we got in. I was an engineer, designer and PM. I'd built teams and products, but I'd never built a company.
YC gave me a shot, a community, knowhow, and the ability to access capital, talent, and customers.
YC changed my life. I want it to help a lot more people achieve their dreams and goals. It did for me, beyond my wildest dreams.
You gave me my start in 2009 when you let me build Posterous themes. That experience introduced me into the world of startups, pushed me to become better at code, helped me get my start in design, and ultimately changed my life forever.
I can't thank you enough for giving a nobody like me a shot, and I can't wait to passively watch as you continue to do this for countless others!
Garry, massive congratulations. Been watching your career growth for years, and been inspired by your every step. Being able to have you as one of my group partners was a blessed period in my own career that I'm glad to have had.
Hacker News & YC have changed my life too. HN pulled me out of a funk during a Master's thesis that my heart was no longer in, and thrust me into the world of startups. Going through YC did the same, and put me onto a path of success with my own startup.
I'm very excited to see you back at the helm of YC, because I know how many others you'll be able to help. I'm excited for this future.
Congrats Garry! So well deserved. I feel so lucky to have had your help as a group partner when we went through W13 as Errplane (hah, good thing we figured out something to pivot to).
YC changed my life too and I can't imagine it in better or more capable hands.
I have nothing but positive memories from all the times we met in S12. Your genuine excitement for the cool products everyone was building was refreshing in a time when all my conversations were about customer development and building an org. (Not that we didn't also talk about that, of course, but you were always the biggest reminder WHY we were here.)
I really think there's no one better for this role, it makes me really excited about YC again! Congrats!
Congrats. I was binge-watching on Youtube and came across one of your videos a few days ago which inspired me to start thinking of doing something with my 10 year experience, specially when you talked about there being no shortage of money :) No other investor has ever reached me via Youtube let alone inspire. Great move by YC.
Congrats Garry! Will never forget how you helped us design our logo during office hours. Took 2 minutes and the result was better than anything we came up with that month.
Just incredible to see you complete the circle here Garry.
I'll be really interested to see the perspective you bring, especially when it comes to the human side of the equation of founding a startup.
I remember for some time you were looking seriously at mental health for teams. Any early thoughts on how you might adjust the current sentiment of hustle culture?
(btw, love the production quality of your videos on youtube; and now, YC-- Dalton, Michael et al-- who do have fantastic content, can use a bit of that production magic).
What's your take on YC batch sizes? YC has gotten criticism for making them too big, but it seems totally natural to me to scale them up. Do you think they are right-sized now?
This is pretty fabulous news, Garry. You've been an inspiration, from meeting you back in the Posterous days during Summer '08 and seeing your contributions and achievements along the way since then. Bravo!
Congratulations! While I am going to greatly miss the videos you did on YouTube the truth is you are so right for the job. Two words of advice for you - be bold.
What advice can you give to solo founders trying to break into YC, outside of the normal platitudes? Seems like there is an almost impossible bar to meet.
I look forward to learning more about your journey. I've recently launched a company and I am finding the YC Startup School content fascinating.
Being from a non-coastal area, my HN engagement has for many years been a lurker and general technology trend interest. I'm pleasantly surprised how well developed YC content is.
Congrats Garry! This is wonderful news. Garry was extremely generous and helpful to us during our YC days. Cannot thank him enough for all his help. This is awesome for YC!
Twitter has been a tough one - I got involved in local politics which has been a challenge. Large accounts typically do have to block a lot to make it usable, and in particular I've had problems with folks doxxing my former home address (I had to sell that house and move), and making threats of violence against me.
I'm sorry if I got it wrong, and I am happy to unblock if I did get it wrong.
I'm seeing many people say you've blocked them without ever having interacted with you. Many have jumped to the conclusion that you simply block people who disagree with your politics. I don't tweet about SF politics, but after I tweeted this, you replied tell me it's funny but wrong, and then blocked me: https://twitter.com/sandofsky/status/1491167231467999236
Which is fine. I block plenty of people. I also mute people, because a block carries a message. And if I found myself in role that gets considerable scrutiny, I'd probably reevaluate my entire approach to social media.
I'm in the blocked club and have no idea why. Here's the one tweet I ever sent @garrytan, responding to his reply to me: https://twitter.com/nelson/status/1185919273065041925. (I'm happy to report that business reopened with new owners and the rumor was the old owners just went broke.)
I agree blocking people is fine and should be stigma free. But Mr. Tan's framing of his reasons for blocking seems at odds with the visible pattern. Fair enough; feel free to block me just because you're tired of my bullshit.
I don't think I ever interacted with him on Twitter, but I do from time to time press the "like" button on tweets in favor of criminal justice reform, in favor of the tax measure that voters passed in San Francisco to support homeless services (and that Stripe and its investors, YC included, loathe), and some similarly "progressive" issues in the Bay Area. FWIW, I also press "like" on some number of tweets that are considered "moderate" (to use the wacko language of San Francisco politics) but that's neither here nor there.
I don't particularly care that I triggered his Twitter blocking scripts. But I do take it as a sign that he wants to send a signal to founders looking to raise from his firm that they'd do well to support his political views or stay quiet on social media.
> ... in favor of the tax measure that voters passed in San Francisco to support homeless services ...
Ok come on, a tax on gross receipts is asinine. Of course low margin businesses with high volumes left. Square left, Stripe left, PayPal left. That cuts into the tax base which in turn means less revenue to help the homeless.
Regardless of whether you think what they did with it was good, the actual calculus of who has to pay how much makes zero sense.
Then of course there's the fact that money went to putting the hobos under highway overpasses in tent cities instead of building more houses.
God I was there at the time. I’m also old enough to remember when he looked like a normal human. Although with that in mind I was referring to Prop C in 11/18.
Same. It's clear there is a connected graph of follow edges all of whom were blocked by this guy. Seems he can't live outside his filter bubble. Perfect for the leader of YC, honestly.
We've banned this account for repeatedly breaking the site guidelines.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
There are a bunch of block-tools which are of the kind "block everyone that liked this tweet", "block everyone that follows this person" etc. Casting that wide of a net probably also carries some "false negatives" (which could explain the "I'm blocked but never interacted with the person).
Paul Graham does something similar. (He's blocked me and we've never interacted.) He said somewhere that he blocks people when he sees them behaving badly, or something like that, and that in the past when he has randomly stumbled across somebody he had previously blocked and taken a second look at their tweets he's felt only vindication.
Now, look, Graham blocked me on these grounds, so I'm not thrilled to say that I think he's completely right about this. I block people I haven't interacted with all the time. Not everybody on twitter is a good actor there, even if they're nice people in other contexts, and it makes life easier to kick some of those people to the curb before they're even aware you exist.
I probably said something tendentious or snarky or unfair or maybe even mean and I might have blocked somebody for the same thing, were the shoe on the other foot.
Twitter character limit makes tweets terse by default, which helps devolve any polarising topic into a frothy flailing ball of flamewar... it's one of the reasons people keep coming back for more IMHO, finding a tribe and an enemy tribe then the adrenaline rush of the tweet battles...
Hey garry it seems you blocked me on twitter today! I didn't say anything bad, I'm really confused. I guess it's a mistake - see https://twitter.com/sracka_omacka
I have been blocked in your Twitter. We just had differences of opinion on certain things. I guess you might have under lot of stress at that time so I understand.
He is 100% that petty. He literally mass blocks people who have simply liked or followed anyone he disagrees with, no interaction. Not an exaggeration at all.
If you read his post above, he stated that he was being threatened and doxxed. I'm sure he was dragged down by a lot of negativity on Twitter so mass blocking seemed like a decent strategy.
I don't have a problem with him blocking people on Twitter at all. I actually sympathize with him. Twitter is a troll fest and he exposed his real self by getting involved in local politics. You know how "passionate" people can get when it comes to politics.
My problem with Garry isn't with his "pettiness" or Twitter blocking. It's solely with his crypto shilling.
I am blocked by Garry despite having zero interactions with him on Twitter (nor ever tweeting anything controversial). I see numerous reports of other people stating the same both in this thread and on twitter: https://imgur.com/a/MOPDVSl
Besides the "block anyone remotely progressive" approach to social media (including industry folks like Anil Dash [1]) - he seems extremely uncivil and rude [2]. And Sam Altman has explicitly referenced his politics as a reason for this decision [3].
This gives me the impression that there's a specific political agenda being advanced at YC ...
Hardened political rhetoric and seasoned talking points aren't on topic here (regardless of which way the political vector is pointing). If you check out the site guidelines, it should be clear why: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
You don't have to agree with anyone's views but this style of argument is deathly to the curious conversation we want here. Curious conversation requires, among other things, respect across differences—wanting to learn more about how someone thinks, and why they think that way, and trusting that they have good reasons for all that even if, in the end, they're wrong. And, of course, you and your views deserve the same consideration.
If you want to argue against someone's views here (Garry's or anyone else's), you'll get much further by making your substantive points thoughtfully. We're trying to avoid the online callout/shaming culture here, at least to the extent possible on the open internet.
The culture of political attack goes very much the other way, of course—people save screenshots of the worst things they can find, bring them up at every opportunity, and so on. Guilt by association is another common tactic. None of this helps us really understand each other—anyone can be made to look bad that way, so it really doesn't have much persuasive power. It does get one's own side riled up (in a yay way) and the opposing side riled up (in a boo way), but riler-uppers are what we're trying to avoid on HN, because they destroy the curious conversation I was just talking about.
(I hope it's clear that all of the above should and does apply equally to opposing political sides.)
What is the difference between "shaming" and "referencing facts", exactly? I genuinely don't understand the distinction. Also, I'm commenting on YC's choice, not Garry's views. I understand if YC doesn't want to host criticism of its decisions, but you should be upfront about it.
I explicit reject this idea that it's unfair to point to things people have said, even if they're screenshots. Sorry, that's just deciding that you can pick and choose data to ignore.
Callout/shaming culture is a stock phrase I use to describe the sort of internet culture we don't want here [1]. Maybe the word 'shaming' isn't so applicable in this case, though I do think shaming is part of why online warriors like to preserve the worst internet traces left by those they dislike, and copy them into each fresh discussion.
Re 'facts': this is a red herring. There are infinitely many facts. They don't select themselves; humans do that, and they do so for non-factual reasons [2]. As a matter of fact, "but it's a fact" is the most beloved defense of trolls—not that you mean it that way. (Edit: incidentally, I have no idea whether your claims about Garry, including the ones you deleted, were facts or not - but I'm assuming they are for present purposes because it makes the moderation point stronger.)
The problem with your post is that it was obvious online agitprop—in fact one couldn't find a more classic case (edit: before you edited it—it's less that way now). That's off topic on HN, but not because of trying to protect YC from criticism (we don't moderate HN that way [3] – plenty of people criticize YC here), nor because of political disagreement (there's room for a wide range of views, as long as people are using the site as intended)—but rather because it makes threads more predictable and nastier, and therefore more boring. We're trying to optimize for something else on HN [4].
Edit: I just noticed that you edited your GP comment to take out a couple of extreme guilt-by-association references and to add a relevant tweet by sama. Those are two steps towards an on-topic sort of political argument (good), but if you're going to edit comments after they've gotten replies, it's only fair to do so in a way that doesn't deprive other posts of their original meaning. My description ("hardened political rhetoric and seasoned talking points") was accurate about your original post and is less so now. In other words, you subtly changed the thread to make the moderation look less neutral and fair than it originally was. I hope that was just an accidental side effect, and that your motive for making those edits was a sincere desire to use HN as intended.
I always learn from your posts dang - really appreciate this substantive explanation, informs my own thinking as we seek to build our own communities for curiosity.
Out of curiosity, why don't you make "YC churn" announcements read-only, like job ads are?
There's not really much curious conversation when they happen, and not really a huge chance of it, either. As an example, the announcement of sama taking over was a hundred and fifty comments of almost exclusively "Congratulations!"
They're posts that are almost exclusively doomed, either to incurious compliments, insults, or needless pessimism; what questions that are asked usually don't get answered, so there wouldn't really be a loss in it anyway.
I wouldn't call this a "churn announcement" - it's the biggest YC news in years. I guess I can think of a few different answers to your question. One is that since it's significant new information, it's on topic (job ads are the opposite of that). Another is that there's a special relationship between YC and the HN community, and it's good for the community to have space to discuss that. A third is that there is definitely no way that the community would support us trying to close such a topic to comments.
Also, job ads get placed on the front page by software. This submission got on the front page by upvotes like any other.
It's definitely newsworthy and relevant to the community. I support the status quo of non interference (laissez-faire) by the mods into publishing status of this news story and your reasoning stated in this comment.
You can talk about it but when most folks in tech are fairly to extremely liberal, why is it bad to have representation from all sides? The left (which I’m guessing you are a part of) preaches diversity. Shouldn’t diversity also include political views as well as race, class, and gender affiliation?
this is their first and only openly politically-active hire at this level, with the politics explicitly relevant to their hiring, I don't know why you're calling that balanced representation unless you mean that it's balanced to have right wing leader-owners dominate liberals and leftist workers (lol)
For one, it would mean leadership that recognizes that Asians have been unfairly represented.
When we’re talking about left-winged workers, we’re talking about a bunch of ivory tower armchair leftists who get free lunch ( no irony intended ) and artisanal coffee, and have been the privileged class most of their lives.
If we’re talking about actual laborers, the democrats has abandoned that platform and serves the political gap that Donald Trump capitalized on.
Kinda wondering what his beef with Hamasaki was that prompted "Resign you piece of shit". Seems like this was a Board of Education person, was he that bad, like poisoning the kids school lunches?
edit: sorry I realise that I may asking some stupid questions that everyone knows already. But to me Garry Tan was just the Posterous guy. I'm just a bit floored to hear that there's more to this and I'm trying to find my bearings. Seeing the name Andy Ngo is a massive red flag to me, but I can't really parse what was being said in the tweet.
John Hamasaki is a criminal defense attorney in San Francisco who was a former member of the police commission. He seems to advertise himself by being intentionally incendiary, making up lies like the police get paid overtime to participate (i.e. walk) in the pride parade. There is also a group of people around him who amplify his lies. I can imagine people being fed up with being the target of his harassment, which I believe Gary was.
This seemed to be about some board of education thing though - Garry's tweet features a screenshot saying "THANK YOU for donating to our campaign to recall the school board..." but it's aimed at the Hamasaki guy.
Hamasaki takes sides and works with prolific accounts over any salient prog vs. mod local political issue. The fact that the topic in the screenshot had to do with the BOE recall specifically is pretty irrelevant. He had probably been harassing Garry for any local political position for months. Unfortunately, Hamasaki also recently deleted months of tweets to clean up his image for a local election run, so it’s hard to find citations.
Garry pushed a political agenda specifically for a tough on crime via punishment approach (in terms of policing streets, not so much tough on wage theft or other more leading crimes). You make it sound like it was some specific tactics that were the issue, rather than that the issue he's taking is with an ideologically diametrically opposed approach to addressing crime
Is there a possibility that pragmatism may have played a bigger role than deeply ingrained philosophical and political ideologies? We are talking about a self described highly controversial and extreme political/social experiment in a local political setting that has global impacts for a variety of unrelated issues.
Because it reads like an extreme left wing talking point everyone is tired of. So many commens with the same wording makes people wondering if it's not a Russian disinformation/division campaign.
So as an outsider who is literally just trying to piece this together, it doesn't seem extreme or left-wing at all. Can you explain why this is an extreme left wing talking point?
HOLY SHIT no way this is ridiculous, I just wanted to check something that sounded "crazy" and it's true. I liked about 5 anti @garrytan replies as a test and I am unable to tweet or retweet! What the fuck!!!
Are you serious! Garry I pay for one of your fucking services I just wanted to check that these people were WRONG not that they were correct. What the hell.
Cool! Ok so, confirmed. Garry Tan is a sinister guy. Glad I asked here!
Edit: Sorry but how is this downvoted to zero? I have done nothing except add five "likes" to Twitter and my account is now banned there. This is insane. I was pro-or-neutral-Garry at the start of this convo, he was just the Posterous guy. Now my Twitter is gone. What the hell?
Twitter automatically bans new accounts all the time. (I’ve heard from others that contacting support helps, but I personally just gave up on getting an account.) If you want to test getting blocked, you need to do it with an established account.
Anil can be combative on Twitter. I have respect for him and positive interactions under my real name, but I’m not surprised he would have gotten into a heated discussion at some point with Garry.
OK so I was waiting for a reply like this that explained the accusation. I read this, liked a few @garrytan replies that weren't positive and ... it appears I'm now blocked!? What the hell!!??
edit: so apparently I conducted my test at a really unfortunate time when Twitter was having some global problems. It has recovered and I am not blocked at all.
Now that there's been some regime change, and now that it's been a while, can we finally get a report on why YC killed YCR, or at least (and most importantly) HARC & VPRI (which had become dependent on YCR funding)? And, in these times of VC prosperity, could there be another attempt at it, this time with longer-term dedications than "Whenever we get bored of the PR from funding computational research or there's a momentary lapse in market conditions?"
Long-term computing research is one of the best ways to ensure YCombinator's continued growth and avoid dominance from companies that are increasingly avoiding the publication of their own research (and, divorced from either of those two things, it would do a substantial amount of good, which is more important to some people but less an immediately-swaying argument to capital); it seems absurd how it was sort of thrown to the wayside on what seemed to be a whim (judging by when VPRI shuttered and the other two stopped seeing activity, possibly by the 2017 crypto crash causing YC to momentarily get more conservative in its funding).
YC needs a fresh perspective. Recycling older members is not a positive sign for continued innovation. I wouldn’t point to “HODL diamond hands” crypto hype (suddenly disappeared..) and personal brand-building content creation as the type of leadership YC needs at this stage.
Specifically in this, someone who has been running a large VC fund for the past half-decade with considerable inside deal access through YC. The conflicts of interest are sizable, and we can’t really pretend that they won’t compound now that Garry’s at the head of YC.
Lastly, to balance flood of positive reviews, there have been consistent (if quiet, again, small world) reports of pettiness and using power/influence against personal grudges. I have not worked with Garry directly, founder friends have and back channels are..not same as the public comments here. Everyone has weaknesses. This isn’t a good one for the position.
Also, if you're reading this Gary, just know that it's ok to say you won by investing in Coinbase early but let's not act like Coinbase isn't powered by scams.
You don't have to keep shilling crypto just because you invested in Coinbase early. You can take the win and not be a crypto bro.
You can shill crypto if our lives are improved by it and that if crypto disappeared one day, our lives would be worse. But not now. It kills your reputation hurts people. Right now, I see you as a Matt Damon who knows how to code.
PS. I'm forever grateful for you pushing Boudin out in SF.
> This is Gary saying that ETH will go up to $10k soon:
Well actually,
1. He didn't say it will go up to $10k "soon." That video is talking about long-term performance.
2. ETH is down just ~~27%~~ 41% since that video, and has moved farther up than down.
3. It's only been a year since the video, which is talking about The Merge as one of the factors behind this belief, and The Merge hasn't happened yet.
4. Quote from the video: "It's not really gonna be that smooth a ride to $10000."
>1. He didn't say it will go up to $10k "soon." That video is talking about long-term performance.
I remember reading his LinkedIn post on this $10k topic. In it, I think he said something along the lines of "soon".
But it really doesn't matter. Saying $10k ETH is the same as a random crypto bro saying $100k BTC soon. There are no fundamentals. Just shilling. Marketing. Ponzi-like behavior.
I don't doubt that ETH might go up to $10k eventually, given enough time. After all, crypto is basically trading with Nasdaq nowadays.
>2. ETH is down just 27% since that video, and has moved farther up than down.
Down 40.97%
>3. It's only been a year since the video, which is talking about The Merge as one of the factors behind this belief, and The Merge hasn't happened yet.
I didn't realize Garry was so crypto-y. Now as the President and CEO of YC where everyone constantly says "Make something people want", "Solve a real problem", I'm curious for him to chime in to the 'What's a real use-case for crypto?' debate.
>I didn't realize Garry was so crypto-y. Now as the President and CEO of YC where everyone constantly says "Make something people want", "Solve a real problem", I'm curious for him to chime in to the 'What's a real use-case for crypto?' debate.
That's why I think YC under Garry will pivot to something like: "Catch the next big thing" even if the next big thing is a scam and an environmental disaster.
I look forward to YC becoming full-time crypto shills and pump and dump scams.
That’s pretty funny. A sizable chunk of leaders I’ve encountered left a wake of discontent behind them. And it’s always in the form of pettiness and grudges. Some people just have weak morals. I imagine that’s why they chase power for so long—to prove that they don’t.
> YC needs a fresh perspective. Recycling older members is not a positive sign for continued innovation.
That they may need [0], but I wouldn't be as dismissive about their current crop of partners either, given their ridiculous and sustained success.
> Lastly, to balance flood of positive reviews, there have been consistent (if quiet, again, small world) reports of pettiness and using power/influence against personal grudges.
I wouldn't know for sure, but there's two sides to every coin: With great power comes great responsibility" / "With great power comes the absolute certainity that you will turn into a right c*"
[0] In the lieu of other firms doing things differently, including ex-YC Daniel Gross' Pioneer.App, BeOnDeck, Enterpreneur First, Sequoia Arc, a16z Start, and others.
I've used a lot of great products from Garry over the years.
My favorite is the software he built that YC alums get to use.
From 2008-2012 we had an email list.
Garry wrote a Rails site (IIRC) in 2012 and that was a clear inflection point for YC alums. Total game changer for many of us and has provided lots of value over the years. I think it was also the starting point for online SUS.
Small thing, but I asked Garry in the comments of his YC videos what his production setup was. He took the time to answer and I remember & appreciate that.
Garry, I only have one ask (maybe two)!... Force them all to keep making those YC Office Hour videos lol! Even better, whoever your editing team is for your channel... add them to the team as well.
I've had one brief interaction with Gary a long time ago, and he's been a role model ever since
I had a difference in opinion with my cofounder and wanted to leave the startup we'd founded, even if it meant leaving the YC program (which I adored), and would likely lose my visa to stay in the US. Seeing how distressed I was, Gary took me aside somehow simultaneously made me feel heard, but also told me that it's up to me to come back stronger from this moment.
It made all the difference to me, and I've thought back to that moment many times in the years to come.
I think Garry changed my life in 2013 and might be reason why an awkward inarticulate engineer got into YC. He believed in my me and my cofounder.
To me, Garry is one of the people that embodies the spirit of YC. See some kind of potential in early founders (my cofounder called this "a twinkle in his eye"). Believe in them. Give them a shot.
Being a founder is SO lonely. Especially when few believe in what you're doing.
Garry is incredible. I've met him 10 years ago during YC. He helped company I worked for a lot. Probably one of the most available people from the whole YC - at least it seemed that way to me.
Also, I did attend Garry's 30th birthday party. Great memory how casual and down to Earth everything was.
I got to chat with Initialized (Garry was one of the co-founders) a while ago and I must mention that I was greatly impressed by Garry down-to-earth questions, knowledge, kindness and humility.
I've been following him since on his Youtube channel... it's a gold mine for any entrepreneur out there.
I actually found his channel with the alternative YouTube recommendations database I'm working on. He was one of the top links off the list for Y Combinator's channel.
The list for his channel includes some likely suspects like TechCrunch, Y Combinator, and a16z but also some smaller names doing business advice like Section4 and David Perell:
When I was in YC Garry showed me how to be a founder. After YC Garry showed me how to be a more compassionate human to myself and others. I'd recommend everyone check out the inner work Garry has also achieved beyond his external achievements.
Garry Tan has been the most influential figure that I have ever had a chance to come across. He appeared right at my critical moments of life and death, at the turning points of the tide. I am certain to say that without Garry and his helping hand, my life would not be what it is today. I consider myself very lucky to have met him.
Garry took the time to meet with me almost a decade ago, when my startup was just a side project and I was still a full-time corporate lawyer. I wish I'd been more ready to take his excellent advice, which I still remember!
I also remember being surprised that he drove a humble old car, perhaps a late-90s Camry? Respect.
Congrats Garry! Thank you for sharing your thoughts and views through content you put out. Thank you for also standing up for what you believe in and I share strongly in that sentiment.
As a HN lurker and YC fan, it's very exciting to see this. Bless up!
Congrats! What is going to happen of the next few years with AI is going to be mind blowing. The more people you can stear away from crypto and towards democratizing AI, the better, IMO.
Realistically YC is about maximizing ROI and I would happily bet a crypto-related startup will be in Summer '23s cohort - they have crazy valuations and liquidity out of the gates. Personally I want those startups to showcase problems crypto is useful at solving rather than selling pickaxes to the gold rush but I'm less sure that that'll happen. Certainly the idea that Crypto has ran its course is, IMO, premature - people have said that during every bear market since the beginning yet overall usage appears to be increasing and institutional buy-in again appears to be increasing.
> What is going to happen of the next few years with AI is going to be mind blowing.
Or where it is headed it more dystopia.
AI has already been democratized to death by the same gate keepers creating dystopian deep fakes and training on tons of your data on lots of data centers to incinerate and burn up the planet with zero efficient alternatives.
The AI game has run its course, with nothing left other than the same Tech giants and one hypocritical Open 'faux' AI company.
Not quite. But the direct opposite after playing the market for fun, but that is totally irrelevant here and for another time. Let's not deflect and make this about me.
We need to concern ourselves with AI running its course and with wasteful deep learning models constantly training, retraining with that burning up the planet via the data centers especially with zero efficient alternatives, which that is the main concern here and using our data to fuel this dystopia.
“Garry Tan is a moral canary in a coal mine. When people hate on Garry Tan, they out themselves as either evil or stupid, because in fact Garry is as close to a 100% good guy as you get”.
—Paul Graham
https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1460931338131890180
————
Congratulations Garry! Your blogs were my inspirations when I was running my startup.
I always remember this line:
“The ideal startup team involves really two major roles — builder, and hustler. I used to say it took three roles (designer, engineer, hustler).....In reality, I think designer / engineer can be abstracted to builder”.
Being a good guy probably ranks the least IMO for leading VC. You need to be extremely shrewd and calculative, have a great bullshit detector, need to have solid intuition based on scant data, good general knowledge, well versed in various industries and areas of study, pragmatic and brutally honest. I am probably missing a few more. Speaking generally, nothing against Garry.
Do both. There's nothing preventing you from looking at the numbers, the pitch, and saying "no." In terms of being "good". You can be honest and kind the same as how one can be honest and mean.
I have no strong opinion of Tan, but calling a person who happily worked for (and profited from) Palantir a 'moral canary in a coal mine' seems a bit of a stretch.
By the time of the LoTR timeframe, when have the palantiri ever been used for good? Seems like malevolently misleading things happen even to the evil characters after they use it.
Based only on your comment, I'm guessing you're unaware of Palantir's work with intelligence agencies even when Tan was there. Also, Thiel's mission from the start was this kind of work.
I served in the Marine Corps. I've had some exposure to Palantir's 'offerings'. It's a fucking nightmare of a company, morally and ethically, and it always has been.
Not to defend Thiel, but don’t you think that his exist from Facebook (after 17 years) because of the stance they took at the beginning of the pandemic is worthy of some attention?
Specially, that Facebook suffocated voices of Trump’s advisors who opposed the lockdown.
“Social media, particularly Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook, was actively suffocating voices, including mine, that dissented from the accepted COVID narrative. By August, Facebook told the Washington Post they had taken down seven million posts “for spreading coronavirus misinformation.” Meanwhile, Wikipedia crafted smears and distortions of my background and then locked it to edits”.
—Dr. Scott Atlas, A Plague Upon Our House: My Fight at the Trump White House to Stop COVID from Destroying America
I tried to watch that interview. It's just dry, boring, slow and abstract (to me) but I'll grant you it wasn't what I was expecting.
My issue with Thiel is his hypocrisy: he warns about surveillance AI and how it's evil, which is just rich, since he founded Palantir and holds shares of Clearview.
Someone asked him directly this question and he addressed it in quite a lot of detail, something along the lines of two morally good ideas of extreme transparency and extreme privacy. I don't agree with him though, I personally stand strictly on the conservative/classical-liberal side that there is no compromise that's acceptable with regards to 4th amendment.
Not "mainstream left"? I guess the right, what was once the far right but today is just the right is indeed not "mainstream left". Make no mistake where he stands: he was one of the largest donors of Trump, served on his transitional team and has once written "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible".
There were hundreds of doners to Donald Trump's 2020 campaign, let alone 2016 campaign. If not directly, then through other superPACS including FAANG companies [1].
If your viewpoint is so myopically constrained by a single data point, I don't know what to say.
I find intellectuals from all corners of political spectrum to be interesting. Usually, when people dismiss intellectuals not for their arguments, but by some ostensible thinly veiled morality or the media zeitgeist; it is already an indicator that something interesting is out there. Anyways, all I am saying is that Peter is not evil in any stretch of the definition as the media portrays him. He is just not your typical conformist thinker.
you talk about donating to "both sides" however dems are also a conservative party and hardly a "leftist" organization, your point is not as strong as you make it seem
I am addressing "mainstream left" and honestly, the main point of contention is that we should debate about Peter Thiel, but calling him evil is wrong and extremely misinformed.
Do you remember why Thiel invested in Confinity which became PayPal? Because he thought a digital wallet could lead to “the erosion of the nation-state”. If it's not self evident to you why that's a bad thing perhaps read https://eand.co/how-america-collapsed-and-became-a-fourth-wo...
Max Chafkin argues that Thiel “has been responsible for creating the ideology that has come to define Silicon Valley: that technological progress should be pursued relentlessly—with little, if any, regard for potential costs or dangers to society.” continued with “Palantir, his second company, popularized the concept of data mining after 9/11 and paved the way for what critics of the technology call surveillance capitalism”.
And of course there was gawker. No, what gawker did was not right but Thiel's reaction was not right either. That's some straight up vigilante BS.
I disagree with Max Chafkin, I've watched probably every single Thiel interview (there is a Spotify podcast of collection of his interviews) and I do not share whoever this Max Chafkin guy is.
> As far back as 2004, Thiel lamented that “America’s constitutional machinery” prevents “any single ambitious person from reconstructing the old Republic.”
As far as I know the 'monarchy' dude is Yarvin. I'd be surprised if Thiel had publicly committed himself to anything so sophomoric, and it would be interesting to see an actual example.
> The extreme left in SF politics (which in SF = the Establishment).
???
kind off topic, but I am curious what other people in SF think about this statement. I don't live there, but I find it surprising and dubious that the extreme anything is also "the establishment", not saying it's not possible but seems unlikely to me.
20 years in SF, and I can promise you that the extreme left is not the establishment here. As an example, we had a relatively progressive prosecutor who tried occasionally to hold cops to account. After an acrimonious campaign, he was just recalled with extensive support from a chunk of the establishment. His replacement, selected by the mayor, volunteered as an active proponent in the recall. Except that it came out later that she received $100k in "consulting" fees from a billionaire via a sister organization to the recall campaign: https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/reports-sf-da-brooke-jen...
San Francisco gets a lot of press as being radical, but the government strikes me as pretty middle-of-the-road and wealth-focused. i can't think of a policy here that would be out of place in any other sensibly run city in the US. And we're definitely to the right of places like Copenhagen and Amsterdam. And that goes back a long way; CA's current governor was a centrist mayor here back in the day.
My guess is: the administration controlling North Korea would be considered by many to be extreme (left, right, you pick) but in North Korea they are the establishment.
So too in SF, outside of cali they would be considered extreme (left, right, you pick) but in SF they are the establishment.
Not passing judgment on whether that’s right or wrong just saying that’s what that line could mean.
It's from the twitter thread by paul graham that the OC linked. It was a response to someone asking who dislikes Garry Tan, to which Paul Graham replied:
"The extreme left in SF politics (which in SF = the Establishment)"[1]
Incredible, a public + private UGC hosting service with no service terms or code of conduct (that I could find, even in onboarding). That's so brave lol
> After earning a degree in computer engineering from Stanford, Garry was an engineer at Palantir and then created one of the earliest and best-designed blogging platforms, Posterous.
This is a reminder that Palantir is the firm that sells data mining software to US police and military organizations that then use it to violate human rights.
Exactly. I have always maintained that a small but significant way to put pressure on 'evil' companies, like Palantir, is to blacklist any employees who have them on their resume, making it difficult for them to attract talent. Unfortunately, I have found that very people share that view, and I am hard-pressed to figure out why.
You don't create an ability to have redemption, forgiveness, rehabilitation, or regret. The first step to get someone to change their mind is to remove the dependency of them having an income on said philosophy, and one of the best ways to do that is to give them a chance to not work there anymore and move past it. By forcing them into an association ghetto, you create stronger supporters for the group you dislike, because they have no other options left.
Also everyone's personal set of shit companies doesn't overlap, so it's very easy for no one to get hired fairly quickly, and sometimes people chose the unpopular place out of necessity vs. choice at the time.
A large amount of employees people want to hire have probably worked at a company that people didn't like at one time or another. It's pretty easy to think of a set of nerds who don't like that you've worked at any one of google, microsoft, apple, amazon, facebook, netflix, robinhood, stripe, hospital system, any bank/finance/fintech, government, etc. Pretty much the only companies left are the ones that are not relevant enough to do anything to the world that would lead to someone being a hater in the first place.
I definitely see your points. I would want to reserve sanctions for companies who are widely known to be evil so that anyone accepting a position there would know exactly what they are getting into. The main tech companies that come to mind as qualifying are Palantir, Clearview AI and ByteDance. But, yes, I agree that individuals' shitlists will never overlap.
I am still not hiring ex-Palantir people anytime soon, though. It would creep me out to look at them.
I believe that it is because most people are not actually actively anti-war or pro-human-rights. The median person can be made to endorse and support invasion and torture if they are fed the right media.
Most people are apathetic, and having the military-industrial complex in your work history simply doesn’t register to many.
It’s not that they endorse evil; it’s just that they don’t care.
Employees at Meta{Facebook, Instagram, Oculus, etc}, Twitter, Google, Palantir and Uber are all complicit in building systems that amplify surveillance capitalism and this goes for any other company engaging in this space.
It should be a big black mark on anyone’s record working at those companies.
Please keep generic ideological rhetoric off HN, regardless of ideology. It's repetitive and therefore tedious and therefore not what this site is for.
While I acknowledge business as a driving force behind tech, I think if you want to "change the world" all you really have to do is provide solid financial support to open source tech since that is where most of the "For profit" inspiration is coming from anyway.
I didn’t understand the title. Is it common to say welcome home when someone departs a company? I almost thought maybe he passed away and it was a reference to being “in a better place”
I spent 5 years as a partner at Y Combinator previously, left to work on Initialized Capital (which is in good hands now with incredible early stage investors Jen Wolf and Brett Gibson), but now will be returning in the new year to work on the next phase of Y Combinator with many of my old friends and colleagues.
working to advance surveillance state, pro-cop activism and political action, shilling crypto pump and dumps, gig economy, etc
good returns for investors on a lot of the above hence the interest and respect from business community. simple as that, accumulated dollars talk. someone can be a ghoul and a charlatan and still be pleasant, friendly, helpful on a personal level to many.
I’m aware of the website I’m using. You’re also here but are saying negative things and declining to provide more detail to back your position. I don’t have a dog in this fight and haven’t even heard of Garry until today, but since you had such a strong negative opinion of him I thought you might be able to tell us why.
Is it that unbelievable that its role in a years-long effort to destroy a good man's reputation, as well as in a coverup of that effort, has made your organization disliked by more than one person?
>When I wrote those earlier essays in the first half of the 2010s, I believed in neoliberal technological capitalism. I’ll spare the reader my own career history, but it failed me. It has failed society, too. Now that I’m older and smarter, I would say that in broad strokes I am a communist.
Wow, he's turned himself around in a way, and for the better
I went to Startup School, me and my cofounders applied, we got an interview, and we got in. I was an engineer, designer and PM. I'd built teams and products, but I'd never built a company.
YC gave me a shot, a community, knowhow, and the ability to access capital, talent, and customers.
YC changed my life. I want it to help a lot more people achieve their dreams and goals. It did for me, beyond my wildest dreams.