cover of episode How YC Rewrote the Seed Playbook with Garry Tan

How YC Rewrote the Seed Playbook with Garry Tan

2020/9/29
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Garry Tan讲述了他从Posterous联合创始人，到YC合伙人，再到Initialized Capital管理合伙人的职业经历，分享了他对YC如何改变公司创建和种子投资的看法，以及他对早期投资领域未来发展的预测。他重点阐述了YC如何通过打造独特的创业文化，吸引特定类型的人才，并将其应用于招募公司创始人本身。他还谈到了Paul Graham的文章和Hacker News对YC的影响，以及种子投资作为一个资产类别在YC周围兴起的过程。此外，他还分享了YC从每批10-12家公司扩展到200多家的历程，以及Initialized Capital在YC内部成立并发展壮大的故事。他认为，早期创业风险极高，需要有独特的策略和眼光才能成功。他强调了打造优秀团队的重要性，以及如何通过各种方式吸引和留住顶尖人才。他还谈到了早期投资中，信息不对称和网络效应的重要性，以及如何利用这些优势来获得成功。最后，他还分享了他对未来早期投资领域发展趋势的预测，以及他个人对YouTube等平台的看法。 主持人与Garry Tan探讨了早期投资的演变，从早期投资的低金额到如今的高额投资，以及YC在其中扮演的关键角色。他们讨论了YC如何通过其独特的文化和网络效应，吸引顶尖人才和创业者，并如何影响了整个早期投资领域。他们还探讨了种子投资作为一个资产类别如何兴起，以及风投公司如何逐渐认识到YC的重要性。此外，他们还讨论了Initialized Capital的成立和发展，以及Garry Tan对早期投资领域未来发展趋势的预测。

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We're joined by Posterous co-founder, former YC partner and current Managing Partner of Initialized Capital Garry Tan to go deep on how YC changed the game for company creation and seed investing, how they thought about building the "cult" of startups, and what lies ahead as the early-stage world continues to globalize and evolve more quickly than ever.

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Topics Covered (among others):

  • How the recruiting challenge for early-stage startups led to outside-the-box thinking 

  • Peter Thiel’s “crazy” (but not actually crazy) offer to Garry to join Palantir

  • Leveraging “cult” startup culture into a magnet for specific types of people

  • Y Combinator’s path from fringe to mainstream 

  • Insight that those same cult recruiting techniques could be applied at a meta-level to recruiting company founders themselves

  • Initial strong reactions to YC, and knowing they were on to something

  • The beginning of “influencer investing” with Paul Graham’s essays + Hacker News

  • The blooming of Seed as an asset class alongside and around YC 

  • The landmark deal with SV Angel and DST / Yuri Milner to “auto-fund” every YC company starting in 2011

  • YC scaling from ~10-12 companies per batch to 70-80 and now 200+ per batch

  • Starting Initialized Capital within YC, and then spinning it out into one of the largest independent seed funds

  • Influencer investing and startup evangelism going mainstream 

  • The impact of The Social Network movie

  • Exporting the ~”YC message” to the entire world: you can start a startup

  • The power of direct, bi-directional access to people via the internet

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