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© 2025 SUPERLINEAR PTE. LTD. All rights reserved
Garry TanGarry Tan

Garry Tan

President & CEO / Y Combinator

Garry Tan is a prominent Canadian-American venture capitalist, executive, and software engineer, currently serving as the President and CEO of Y Combinator. He is also the founder of Initialized Capital, an early-stage venture capital fund that grew to $3.2 billion in assets under management and was an early investor in companies like Coinbase and Instacart. Tan previously co-founded Posterous (acquired by Twitter) and was an early engineer and designer at Palantir Technologies.

BS, Stanford University
United States
InstagramInstagram50K+
LinkedInLinkedIn290.5K
TwitterTwitter631K
Venture CapitalEntrepreneurshipFinance
$800B+
Total Market Value Created (YC)
$3.2B
AUM (Initialized Capital)
631K
Twitter/X Followers
90+
YC Unicorns Funded
Search More

Work Experience

Y CombinatorY Combinator
Y Combinator

President & CEO

Jan 2023 - Present
Position
President & CEO
Initialized CapitalInitialized Capital
Initialized Capital

Board Partner & Advisor

Jan 2023 - Present
Position
Board Partner & Advisor
Initialized CapitalInitialized Capital
Initialized Capital

Founder & Managing Partner

Jan 2012 - Dec 2022
Responsibilities
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 Jan 2012 - Dec 2022 · 11 yrs
PosthavenPosthaven
Posthaven

Cofounder

Mar 2013 - Present
Responsibilities
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.
Y CombinatorY Combinator
Y Combinator

Partner

Dec 2010 - Nov 2015
Responsibilities
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.
Posterous.comPosterous.com
Posterous.com

Cofounder

Jan 2008 - Jan 2011
Responsibilities
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 TechnologiesPalantir Technologies
Palantir Technologies

Lead Engineer, Designer

Sep 2005 - Oct 2007
Responsibilities
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.
MicrosoftMicrosoft
Microsoft

Program Manager

Jul 2003 - Sep 2005
Responsibilities
Program management of ActiveSync 4.0, 4.1, 4.2 and Windows Vista releases of Windows Mobile synchronization and device management software.
Sun MicrosystemsSun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems

Software Engineer Intern

Jun 2002 - Jan 2003
Position
Software Engineer Intern
TheMan.comTheMan.com
TheMan.com

Software Engineer Intern

Jun 2000 - Sep 2000
Position
Software Engineer Intern
SapientSapient
Sapient

Software Engineer Intern

Jun 1998 - Jan 2000
Responsibilities
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.

Education

Stanford UniversityStanford University
Stanford University

BS

1999 - 2003
Field of Study
BS - Computer Systems Engineering

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YC Partner @nicolas.dessaigne and Front cofounder @mathoo dropping truth bombs about the path to $10YC Partner @nicolas.dessaigne and Front cofounder @mathoo dropping truth bombs about the path to $10
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2025-11-06
205 likes
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2025-11-02
242 likes
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I don’t fear the net or the streets. I am the glitch that breaks the system. This is my upload. My aI don’t fear the net or the streets. I am the glitch that breaks the system. This is my upload. My a
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Absolutely incredible to see Keanu Reaves and Alex Winter in Waiting for Godot. Riveting.Absolutely incredible to see Keanu Reaves and Alex Winter in Waiting for Godot. Riveting.
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249 likes
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Social Media Presence

Twitter/X Followers

500K+

Instagram Followers

50K+

YouTube Subscribers

100K+

LinkedIn Followers

500K+

Content & Expertise

Garry Tan is a prominent figure in the tech and venture capital world, known for his roles as an entrepreneur, investor, and the CEO of Y Combinator. His content focuses on startup advice, venture capital, and personal development.

Core Focus
EntrepreneurshipVenture CapitalStart-upsY Combinator
Background
Software EngineeringInteraction DesignProduct Management

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