20VC: Garry Tan on The Biggest Takeaways From Advising 700 Companies @ Y Combinator & Why Now Is The Golden Age For The Early Stage?
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 14 December 2016
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Garry Tan is a Co-Founder and Managing Partner @ Initialized Capital, one of Silicon Valleys leading early stage seed funds. Prior to founding Initialized, Garry was a Partner at Y Combinator where he invested in and directly worked with over 700 companies in 5 years from the earliest possible stage, often just an idea. Garry's portfolio includes the likes of previous guests Tilt, Eero, Flexport, LendUp and many more incredible companies.
Before being at YC, Garry Co-Founded Posterous and helped build it to a world-class website used by millions, ultimately acquired by Twitter. Garry also co-founded the engineering team for Palantir Technology's quant finance analysis platform.
In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Garry made the transition from Founder @ PostHaven to YC Partner to Initialized GP?
2.) What were Garry's biggest takeaways from advising 700 startups at YC that he has taken with him to Initialized?
3.) Why does Garry believe now is the golden age for early stage investing? What opportunity does the mass of late stage capital provide the early stage?
4.) How does Garry approach desired ownership? What level of ownership provides incentive for a VC to work whilst also allowing collaboration with other VCs in a round?
5.) What are Garry's thoughts on the rise of thematic investing? Why does he not believe it to be optimal at the seed stage?
Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:
Garry’s Fave Blog: SaaStr
Garry’s Fave Book: Chaos Monkeys
As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Garry on Twitter here!
Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to the 20 minute VC in this feature week of one of the Valley's hottest seed funds, |
| 0:04.4 | with me, Harry Stebbings, at H. Stebbings on Snapchat, or found blogging at mahitovc.com. Now, if you |
| 0:10.1 | haven't heard Monday's episode with Alexis O'Hanian, that really is a must, because today we are |
| 0:14.1 | joined by Alexis's co-founder at Initialized, Gary Tan. Now, as for Gary, prior to family initialised, Gary was a partner at Y Combinator, |
| 0:21.6 | where he invested in and directly worked with over 700 companies in five years. From the earliest |
| 0:26.3 | possible stage, often just an idea. Now, Gary's portfolio includes the likes of previous guests, |
| 0:31.3 | Tilt, Eero, Flexport, Lendup, and many more incredible companies. And before being at YC, |
| 0:36.7 | Gary co-founded Posterous and |
| 0:38.3 | helped build it to a world-class website used by millions, which was ultimately acquired by Twitter. |
| 0:43.0 | Gary also co-founded the engineering team for Palantir Technologies' quant finance analysis platform. |
| 0:48.2 | I do also want to say, from speaking to lots of different people in preparation for this interview, |
| 0:52.4 | all I heard was how much Gary adds to the |
| 0:54.7 | founder ecosystem and it was so brilliant to hear. And a huge thank you to Judith Elcia at Weathergauge |
| 0:59.4 | Capital for the intro to Gary today without which the show would not have been possible. But before we |
| 1:03.9 | meet one of the Valley's most loved VCs, what if accounting could be easy, efficient, maybe even |
| 1:08.9 | enjoyable? Well, that's where Zero come in. Zero is beautiful, |
| 1:12.2 | easy to use online accounting software for small businesses. With Zero, you can easily manage your |
| 1:17.0 | accounting anytime, anywhere from your computer or mobile device. When you add zero to your small |
| 1:21.9 | business, you're able to send online invoices and get paid faster, get an instant view of your |
| 1:26.9 | cash flow, track your |
| 1:28.2 | payroll and keep tabs on your inventory, partner with your accountant and bookkeeper in real time |
| 1:32.6 | whenever you like, you can even customize your zero experience with over 500 business apps, |
... |
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