Garry Tan

Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin

Rick Rubin

Arts, Society & Culture, Philosophy

4.6 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 13 May 2026

⏱️ 125 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Garry Tan is the president and CEO of Y Combinator, the startup accelerator behind companies like Airbnb, Reddit, Coinbase, and DoorDash. He previously co-founded the financial technology company Posterous, which was acquired by Twitter in 2012, and later founded the venture capital firm Initialized Capital alongside Alexis Ohanian. Before entering venture capital, Tan worked as an engineer at Palantir Technologies, where he helped develop early infrastructure and design systems. Now, he continues to make investment and product decisions as a General Partner, having read more than 6,000 YC applications, while overseeing programs for sourcing, advising, and scaling early-stage startups. ------ Thank you to the sponsors that fuel our podcast and our team: AG1 https://DrinkAG1.com/tetra ------ LMNT Electrolytes https://DrinkLMNT.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ Squarespace https://Squarespace.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ Lectio 365 https://Lectio365.com ------ Sign up to receive Tetragrammaton Transmissions https://www.tetragrammaton.com/join-newsletter

Transcript

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0:00.0	Tetragrammaton
0:02.0	Tetracketam.
0:03.0	I love technology and engineering and science because I would just spend every weekend as a kid reading things that were way, way above my pay grade.
0:33.7	Like I didn't understand half of it, but I felt like I could.
0:37.1	And it sort of brings us to today where the machines can help you learn.
0:40.8	Were you a good student in school?
0:43.0	Yeah, I mean, I didn't realize this at the time.
0:45.2	Like my childhood was so rough that I guess I viewed getting good grades and going to college and...
0:52.7	Your way out.
0:53.5	That was my... Yeah, that was the light at the end of the
0:55.4	tunnel that was always what i thought when i was a teenager and like i was suicidal i hated everything
1:01.7	about but when i was in my computer i could go in my code cave and i had control and everything in my
1:08.4	life outside of that was tumultuous and and I just didn't know when I would
1:12.0	catch a beating for no reason or whatever, but when I was in front of my computer, or even when
1:16.7	I was in school studying algebra or calculus, it's like, oh, the world is so beautiful and
1:23.3	well-arranged, and I can understand it. Yeah, order. Yeah.
1:32.7	When you would be on your dad's computer, would you play games or would you build things?
1:34.9	I guess games were my first love.
1:36.0	What were the games then?
1:37.0	Oh my gosh.
1:40.1	Like Spy Hunter on the Atari, I guess.
1:46.0	But I really loved adventure games like the Monkey Island games or the Indiana Jones games. The old Sierra adventure games were really fun because I loved, I didn't want just like the arcade.
	...

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