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How Did Coinbase Carry Initialized Fund One? · The Peel with Turner Novak

The Peel with Turner Novak

Garry Tan on the Past, Present, and Future of YC

Gary Tan is the President and CEO of Y Combinator. YC is the startup accelerator behind companies like Airbnb, Stripe, Coinbase, Reddit, Twitch, and thousands more. According to Garry, they’ve invested in 20% of all startups worth $5B or more started since 2012. Gary has lived every side of the YC ecosystem. He went through YC as a founder, later became a…

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Notes

  1. How Did a Summer Internship Experiment Grow Y Combinator? at 1:22

    On the show, Garry Tan says the program started as an experiment by Paul Graham and Jessica Livingston to give small amounts of money, almost… Full answer

  2. Why Did Garry Tan Call Going Direct the Counterbalance After Reporters Refused to Publish a Proposition? at 17:16

    Garry Tan sent an understanding of an actual proposition to a number of reporters, and the reporters would not publish it. Full answer

  3. How Did Airbnb Make Y Combinator Write Bigger Checks? at 21:48

    On The Peel, Dropbox becoming a billion-dollar startup around 2011 was called one lucky year. Full answer

  4. How Did Office Hours Turn Garry Tan Into an Investor? at 35:17

    Garry Tan joined YC with no plan to invest. After he raised and quit his startup, he was really burnt out and needed to recuperate. Full answer

  5. How Did Coinbase Carry Initialized Fund One? at 37:26

    Initialized Fund One was a $7 million fund that returned more than 55x DPI. Most of that return came from Coinbase and Instacart. Full answer

  6. What Share of Giant Startups Came From Y Combinator? at 42:27

    Garry Tan says Y Combinator is a managed marketplace for the smartest people starting the next companies, and he calls the setup a good thing. Full answer

  7. Why Does Surviving Rejection Mark a Y Combinator Founder? at 48:01

    Garry Tan says 99% of people who apply to Y Combinator end up getting a mortal ego wound by being rejected. Full answer

  8. How Many Y Combinator Applications Get Rejected? at 50:34

    On The Peel, Y Combinator gets about 80,000 applications a year. Something like 78,500 of them are mortal wounds, the rejections handed out. Full answer

  9. Why Do Two Y Combinator Years Beat Twenty in Venture? at 53:07

    Two or three years of YC time as a partner is equivalent to 20 years in venture. The 15 partners are practitioners of product market fit. Full answer

  10. Why Did Y Combinator Stretch the Batch to 13 Weeks? at 58:21

    Garry Tan says Y Combinator just extended the program to 13 weeks. The team talks to people about how things went and what can be done better. Full answer

  11. How Did Bathroom Notes Get Airbnb Funded Early? at 1:02:58

    The weekly growth chart on bathroom Post-it notes is why Airbnb raised from Sequoia before demo day. Full answer

  12. Why Did Y Combinator Build Bookface? at 1:07:09

    Bookface is internal software at Y Combinator. On The Peel, Turner Novak had heard about Bookface and asked whether Garry Tan made it. Garry Tan said yes. Full answer

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