#2281 Garry Tan: Y Combinator Startups Growing 5X Faster – Here’s What Changed

Startup Stories - Mixergy

Andrew Warner

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4.5 • 591 Ratings

🗓️ 17 October 2025

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

AI changed everything. During their time at Y Combinator, startups typically grew revenue weekly by 2-4%. Now? 10-20%! PER WEEK. YC President Garry Tan told me the reason is simple: AI transformed software from a “nice to have” into an urgent necessity. “Before it was like, ‘Yeah, I know I need to replace my software.’…Today it’s becoming, ‘Oh. I see a demo. It’s really impressive… I need it right now. When can you start?'”

Garry Tan is President and CEO of Y Combinator, the world’s most successful startup accelerator. He previously co-founded Posterous, which was acquired by Twitter. Beyond the startup world, he’s a YouTuber with an eye for great design and understanding that three-act narratives aren’t just for movies.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	their freedom fighters my name is Andrew Warner and this is a new series for me it's called
0:04.7	the next new thing here's what's up in this interview then an intro then we'll get right to it
0:09.7	how do you compete with these bigger players we're seeing routinely yC companies with 10 or 20
0:16.2	people get to 10 or 20 million dollars a year in revenue in 10 or 20 months.
0:21.0	That's like literally never happened before in software.
0:24.5	Talk to me about how you use AI in your video creation.
0:27.8	I took the scripts of all of the top videos that I ever made from my YouTube channel.
0:33.5	I'd throw it at this prompt, and then it would generate these beautiful three-act narratives.
0:39.3	I could have a new 10-minute script ready, whereas it normally would take me like several hours.
0:44.3	How are you changing Y Combinator?
0:46.3	Let's stop competing with all the other VCs. Let's be their partners.
0:49.3	I'm going to ask you to do something you're uncomfortable with.
0:51.3	Oh yeah. What's up?
0:52.3	Gary Tan is the president and CEO of Y Combinator.
0:55.9	Let's get it.
0:56.8	The next new thing.
0:58.7	Why don't we start with the case text story?
1:01.4	Because I feel like there's a before AI for that story, an AI experimentation.
1:06.9	And then once it took AI, everything changed.
1:09.9	I worked with Jay Keller, the founder of Case Text, back in 2012, 2013, when he first went
1:15.6	through Y Combinator, and that was also my first stint at YC as a partner.
1:20.3	And they were sort of doing basically your Web 2.0 for law.
	...

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