Many of the owners that Garry Tan coaches are likely inspired by his success in Silicon Valley. Now, his posts on the social platform X are getting a lot of attention again.
The president of Y Combinator, an investor, and a past business owner wrote something on Friday night that might have made some people wonder if his X account was hacked. Tan wrote to seven supervisors in San Francisco who are in charge of running the city’s government services: “As a label and motherfucking band, Fuck Chan Peskin Preston Walton Melgar Ronen Safai Chan… Also, if you like Peskin Preston Walton Melgar Ronen Safai Chan as a group, fuck you too… “Slow down, you motherfuckers.”
The conversation was first reported by Mission Local over the weekend. It says that after one of Tan’s followers on X wrote, “I think Gary is hammered. Tan replied, “I’m all for it. You’re right, and motherfuck our enemies.”
The harsh tone of the post and reply shocks me. After the fact, Tan wrote that he was sorry and that he “thought everyone would get the rap reference but that wasn’t a good call, reference or not – sorry!”
Tan said that the rap reference was to “Hit ‘Em Up,” a song by famous West Coast rapper Tupac Shakur that came out in 1996 and was directed at Notorious B.I.G., who was on the East Coast at the time.
Furthermore, Tan wrote a formal apology to the Board of Supervisors, saying, “There is no place, no excuse, and no reason for this type of speech and charged language in discourse. I know the community will hold me accountable and keep focused on our true mission: making San Francisco a vibrant, prosperous, and safe place.”
Myrna Melgar, Supervisor of District 7, told Mission Local that the words made her feel “rattled” as a mother. “I don’t know how I got on this guy’s list,” she told the news source. “I haven’t met him.”
This evening, TechCrunch asked Tan for a statement but has not yet heard back. TechCrunch also tried to get in touch with Paul Graham, co-founder of Y Combinator, earlier this evening but have not heard back.
Tan was chosen to be the new president of Y Combinator in August 2022, after Geoff Ralston’s short time in office.
Both men have been connected to Y Combinator for a long time. In 2011, Ralston became a partner at YC. In 2019, when the company’s more well-known president, Sam Altman, quit after five years to become CEO of OpenAI, Ralston was named president. A newer story in the Washington Post said that Altman had to do what he did because of worries about his personal investments in YC companies and his rising interest in projects outside of YC, such as OpenAI. At an event in 2019, Altman told this editor, “If I could control the market—obviously the free market is going to do its thing—I would not have YC companies raise the amounts of money they raise or at the valuations they do.” This editor may have also seen the writing on the wall.
Tan was a partner at YC from 2011 to 2015, after going through the incubator program in 2008. Later, he started Initialized Capital with Alexis Ohanian, who was also a partner at YC. He recently returned to lead the company.
Tan’s personal story makes you feel good. The person from San Francisco has said that as a child of immigrants, they didn’t always have enough food to eat, and dinner was sometimes just bread and milk. Tan says that he got his first job and learned how to make websites by “cold calling the Yellow Pages.” After graduating from Stanford, he became a founder and an investor. As an investor, he has had a huge amount of success thanks to early picks like Coinbase, which he first put money into in 2012.
Tan has been making how-to YouTube videos for owners for a long time. One is called “How to Get Rich the Real Way,” and the other is called “Stop Wasting Your Life.”
Tan plays the wise man in the movies. At the same time, Tan, who is friendly in real life, has become more hostile on social media, attracting attention to himself and, by virtue of his position, Y Combinator in strange ways. Tan started a heated argument with Neo, a smaller startup accelerator program, on X last fall. Neo was founded in 2017 and has since raised $600 million from investors and given money to 175 companies. Some people thought he was hitting them and asked him why he would do that. (Y Combinator was started in 2005 and has given money to thousands of businesses and raised billions of dollars from investors.)
Tan has also been open about his own problems on X. He has also grown more angry at progressive politicians in San Francisco, whom he blames for many of the city’s problems, both obvious and not.
That might be the way things are in a world where social media has turned into a pretty bad place to be.
But Tan is the head of the world’s most powerful startup program, so it makes you wonder if he didn’t go too far this weekend. Giving politicians the “die” line, even if it’s during a wild rant, must make some people in YC feel bad.
You could also choose not to take him seriously, which some people seem to be doing, at least in public.
While talking to TechCrunch earlier today, a founder and investor who knows Tan and supported his actions on Friday night said, “This was dumb, but he’s human and deserves forgiveness.”
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