The Economic Club of Washington, D.C. was pleased to host Garry Tan, President and CEO of Y Combinator on Wednesday, May 22, 2024. Mr. Tan was interviewed by Teresa Carlson, Board Member, General Catalyst.
Garry Tan is president and CEO of Y Combinator, the leading startup accelerator for entrepreneurs. Since 2005, Y Combinator has invested in over 4,500 companies, including Airbnb, Dropbox, Stripe, Reddit, Instacart, DoorDash, and Coinbase.
Y Combinator funds hundreds of companies per year via web-based applications and has an acceptance rate of 1%, lower than any other selective process of its kind. Today, Y Combinator has built the most robust startup community, offering numerous products and programs to support founders for the life of their company.
Before assuming the role as CEO, Garry was a partner at Y Combinator from 2011 to 2015, where he built key parts of the YC experience for founders, including Bookface and the Demo Day website. He co-founded Initialized Capital and Posterous, a blog platform acquired by Twitter. Before that, he was an early designer and engineering manager at Palantir (NYSE:PLTR).
Garry holds a BS in Computer Systems Engineering from Stanford.
