President & CEO @ycombinator —Founder @garryslist—Creator of GStack & GBrain—designer/engineer who helps founders—SF Dem accelerating the boom loop
San Francisco, CA
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Tech gave me everything I have
Its capacity to lift people into abundance is incredible and there is nothing like it
We must make that into prosperity for everyone
"I realized tech is this thing that can bring people out of whatever situation they're in and often into prosperity. And that's what I want for everyone."
@ycombinator’s @garrytan tells @emilychangtv how tech changed his family's life.
Watch here: trib.al/sxg1VGR
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"To fund his golfing ambitions, McIlroy's parents took on extra jobs. Gerry worked 100 hours a week; he cleaned toilets and showers at a local sports club in the mornings, served as a bartender at Holywood Golf Club from 12 to 6 pm, then returned to the sports club to work behind the bar in the evenings. Rosie looked after Rory during the day, and worked night shifts packaging rolls of tape at a 3M factory in Bangor, County Down. Due to their conflicting schedules, McIlroy's parents rarely saw each other during this period. Gerry later said: "I had no idea what else to do. I’m a working-class man. We wanted to give our only child a chance."
After finding success as a professional golfer, McIlroy bought his parents a house in 2009, and stated: "I’ll never be able to repay Mum and Dad for what they did, but at least they know they’ll never have to work another day. I’ll do whatever it takes to look after them."
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My best career advice:
At every job you should either learn or earn. Either is fine. Both is best. But if it's neither, quit.
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One state ***increased*** its reading literacy for the bottom 10% of students while 49 other states let standards keep slipping.
It was the poorest state in the country, Mississippi. In 2013 they enacted a rule where at 4th grade if you can’t read, you repeat until you can.
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In-N-Out puts cash into fresh beef and well-paid people. McDonald’s feeds corporate overhead. Result? In-N-Out makes nearly double per store while making a far better product cheaper.
I would always rather be In-N-Out.
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Little bro just enjoy elementary school don’t do this yet
Go make some Roblox games though
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George Orwell, 1984: “Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street and building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And that process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped.
Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”
Writers may wish to rethink their ambitions. If their work should prove lastng, it may end up being tortured for all eternity
This is not mere "sensitivity" editing, by the way. This is blunt, agenda-driven rewriting. It is idea injection. And it will be continual once it starts
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If you *only* used SAT to admit to elite colleges, share of admits from top 1% income falls 15.8% → 9.9% and representation from <$200k rises by +8.8%, with no reduction in post-college outcomes.
It's 'holistic review' and 'ban SAT' policy that allows the most wealthy and powerful to virtue signal while getting an edge.
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At a party tonight with politically active San Franciscans and we were just thinking... wow, NYC is cooked.
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Yes
The ratio of CEO pay to worker pay is almost 300 to 1. Are we really supposed to believe CEOs work 300 times harder or create 300 times more value than us?
jacobin.com/2023/11/ceo-perf…
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soken
No matter what your politics might be, or what you believe about how society should be structured, it is truly a sad day today that someone who spoke their mind would be killed for it.
RIP Charlie Kirk
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I am a six figure donor to Stanford and I am so embarrassed about this I don’t know if I will ever donate again
NEW @FreeBeacon: Amid a severe budget crisis, the SF Unified School District decided that some schools needed to close.
To do this, it paid a Stanford University professor $30,000 to create an "equity-centered" formula that targeted a high-performing, majority-Asian school.
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Next year, I'll be going back to Y Combinator as President and CEO.
It's a one in ten billion lifetimes kind of opportunity— YC gave me my start, and I'm deeply grateful to the community.
forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/…
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Degrowth is just saying the citizens of the most needy countries should just stay impoverished
Degrowth is a death cult
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I funded Coinbase in 2012. 6000x on my best startup investment yet.
piped.video/watch?v=x5YApjnT…
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DeepSeek search feels more sticky even after a few queries because seeing the reasoning (even how earnest it is about what it knows and what it might not know) increases user trust by quite a lot
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Tesla self driving is so good I am amazed anyone else can even sell cars anymore
Good reminder even if you make something truly great, it will still take many years before society catches up and figures it out
This is where Gates' wisdom becomes crystal clear.
We got caught up in the hype, imagining overnight transformation. Reality moved slower, but deeper.
Now Tesla's autonomous systems are proving safer than human drivers in California and Texas.
The future arrived. We just didn't notice.
-
The real revolution isn't about cars that can drive themselves.
It's about reshaping civilization.
When these vehicles become the norm, they'll communicate instantly, move in perfect harmony, reach speeds we never thought possible.
A hundred miles will feel like ten.
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NYC about to do the hard left doom loop thing
Ya’ll didn’t learn a thing from SF did you?
The innocent will receive no justice, the public school children will receive a far worse education, and housing will become far more expensive
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Palo Alto just removed Honors Biology and Honors English classes from public high schools. The education bureaucrats have run amok, and the losers are kids who can't afford private schools.
I remember they tried 'de-laning' at my public high school in Fremont in 1996. Our parents showed up in force and stopped the grifting bureaucrats from taking accelerated and personalized education from us. I'm glad they did. I never would have gone to Stanford if the water-it-down educrats succeeded.
nypost.com/2025/05/13/us-new…
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Chesa Boudin’s parents were domestic terrorists: The Weather Underground
They got tenured professorships after the violence
Chesa is now a UC Berkeley Law Prof now after making SF unsafe for Asian elders as failed DA
The corruption of the academy has been a 50+ year norm
This is important for understanding how we got where we are, and what needs to happen now. Prominent ultra-violent radicals of the 1970s were even given university jobs, influencing further generations. That cycle must end.
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In 2008 I showed up to Y Combinator Startup School to take photos of speakers and learn how to start a startup.
I was an engineer and designer and had never started a company before.
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Elon Musk is back on the main quest
Why fight on the beach when you have a 100ft tidal wave of superintelligence coming to remake everything?
Elon Musk (@elonmusk) on digital superintelligence, multiplanetary life, and how to be useful this week at AI Startup School.
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How long before people intentionally put in typos to make sure people believe an LLM didn’t write a thing?
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I refuse to appear at Web Summit and am canceling my appearance.
I condemn Hamas and pray for peace for the Israeli and Palestinian people.
Hard to take this statement at face value -- given all the tweets @paddycosgrave has been liking over the last few days. I saved several of them on the attached google doc (so we have a record when the @WebSummit PR team asks him to delete them).
docs.google.com/spreadsheets…
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Alexandr Wang: The future isn't humans vs AI - it's humans managing AI chaos. Even self-driving cars need 1 human operator per 5 cars to handle edge cases. The last 10% of accuracy? That's where humans shine.
Management isn't going away, it's evolving.
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Funny early Palantir story
We were doing some of our first sales meetings for Palantir and (team was all under 25 at the time) and were staying at the Mandarin Oriental
We said hey this is a startup! Why are we wasting money on this?
Alex Karp said the people you’re selling to will ask you where you are staying. And we aren’t selling Motel 6 software. We are selling Mandarin Oriental software.
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I just got forwarded the craziest email from SF Parking Enforcement
A vehicle used in narcotics trafficking with over $2600 worth of tickets has been parked for weeks across from the Marina Safeway.
A citizen asked to get it removed and this was the response.
🤯
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When I graduated with my computer engineering degree I went to Gap and wanted a job that could let me code and design clothes. They laughed at me and told me to go work in IT.
I went to an ad agency and said I wanted to work on creative and they said haha there is no role for you.
There is a place in the world for polymaths and now I realize that place is to be a founder, the only place where it is required that you be able to do every job.
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WE DID IT
BREAKING: San Francisco removes Chesa Boudin in historic recall.
See live election results, including vote breakdown by district: trib.al/A9Qcntx
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Elon Musk's formula for success: Ego ÷ Ability < 1
When your ego exceeds your ability, you break the feedback loop to reality. Smash your ego. Internalize responsibility. Do whatever it takes.
The goal isn't glory—it's true work that serves the most people.
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Something absolutely everyone should be doing right now, to get ahead of the coming wave of AI change:
Identify toilsome tasks in your work and life that AI could handle, freeing you up for higher-value activities.
There is massive alpha in being the 1st expert in your field.
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It’s wrappers all the way down
Platforms exist
Thanks @daniel_r_vega @inversionsemi
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The two most important things in the world from here is no longer what school you went to or what your resume looks like
It is the amount of **agency** you bring to the table, and the **taste** you have that lets you get the most out of AI
Agency (prompting) and taste (evals)
NEW: Replit founding data scientist and engineer @giansegato: “I’ve begun to see product managers developing business financial models; designers writing commercial ads; barbershops building custom booking systems; and restaurant owners creating advanced pricing tools... These people always had it in them to do these things. The key difference is that it no longer takes years to learn how.”
Gian’s in Pirate Wires today with a piece on the "unraveling of credentialism" — and how having an edge in the market is no longer about knowing how to do one specific thing very well, but about being biased toward making it happen. Link threaded 👇
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Flock Safety currently solves 700,000 reported cases of crime per year, which is about 10% of reported crime nationwide
And they're just getting started
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This was such a poorly done video I think I am even more supportive of the TikTok ban than I was before.
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It’s time for San Francisco to be radically pro-small-business instead of whatever virtue signaling nonsense it is right now
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RIP Tony Hsieh
“Happiness is really just about four things: perceived control, perceived progress, connectedness (number and depth of your relationships), and vision/meaning (being part of something bigger than yourself).”
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Don’t just lie flat on the ground because AGI is here and ASI is coming.
Your hands are multiplied. Your ideas must be brought into the world. Your agency will drive the machines of loving grace. Your taste will guide the future. To the stars.
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Whoever made the original graphic doesn’t understand the scale and speed of smart high IQ people who can program, and what they can do in a moment when intelligence now on infinite tap using LLMs
Luke being charge of our money is an incredible shift. I didn’t know this was an option, amazing development
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I am #TeamSriram all the way
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Legalize skilled immigration
Immigration is America's superpower.
Leaders from India:
CEO of Google 🇮🇳
CEO of Microsoft 🇮🇳
CEO of Starbucks 🇮🇳
CEO of YouTube 🇮🇳
CEO of Adobe 🇮🇳
CEO of World Bank 🇮🇳
CEO of IBM 🇮🇳
CEO of Albertsons 🇮🇳
CEO of NetApp 🇮🇳
CEO of Novartis 🇮🇳
Staple green cards to diplomas.
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It’s a great outcome for San Francisco. A near clean sweep of moderate Dems.
Hats off to Marjan Philhour, Danny Sauter, Bilal Mahmood and Michael Lai on retaking the Board of Supervisors.
Incredible work by @GrowSF @TSFAction @ConnectedSF @PirateWires @StopCrimeSFnews 🌉🚀
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Thiel on America: “Companies started since 1990 worth $100B+. 11 are in the US, 6 in China. Zero everywhere else.”
🤯
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Every CEO should sign up and onboard with their product or service at least once a quarter to make sure everything still works
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There is something deeply wrong with Google’s abuse, trust and safety teams
Well, that didn't take long. After less than 12 hours, Google has taken down the site with public information about which student groups endorse Hamas terrorism.
Only @X allows the truth!
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Hard left socialists destroy specialized public high schools
The idea of social mobility is offensive to them and cannot be allowed.
We need to fight against these people and normalize equality of opportunity as our goal, not equality of outcome.
NYC socialist mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani a fan of abolishing SHSAT for elite schools trib.al/eLLPSnJ
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I wish this were The Onion
Happy Sunday! I have a piece out in @NRO today about colleges’ new scheme to get around SCOTUS’ strike-down of race-based admissions: Redefine the concept of “merit” to include race.
Who’s behind this? One of the nation’s top education consulting firms.
nationalreview.com/2023/12/c…
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This is California healing
If the Dems want to fix themselves it’s going to be through actually supporting things like this
BREAKING: @VoteYesProp36 has won by one of the largest landslides ever! Thank you California for giving Judges and District Attorneys discretion to increase sanctions for repeat criminals!!! #YesOnProp36 THANK YOU! @Cal_DAA
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Apple has devolved into a late stage holding company
That Siri has no LLM while they are doing this scale of buyback is a complete lack of ambition and no understanding of what is about to happen to them
Apple announcing a $110 billion share buyback, the biggest in history, is sort of a weird flex.
Clearly their business has created more free cash flow than any in history.
But the fact that they can’t spend it well on R&D is concerning.
They should get better at M&A.
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The President of Stanford had to resign over doctored data
Stanford professor Jo Boaler should resign next. Her doctored data removed Algebra from SF public middle schools and will soon do so all over CA
Her impact on setting back access to advanced math is devastating to kids
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If you look at the crumbling policies that destroy blue cities it’s directly traceable to the rapidly growing nonprofit industrial complex
NYC’s changing of the guard: Wall Street’s shrinking, but the nonprofit industrial complex is exploding—fueled by $20B+ in public funds and staffed by anti-capitalist revolutionaries. Nonprofits now make up 17% of NYC’s private workforce and added nearly all new jobs last year. These taxpayer-funded networks will get out the vote for Zohran — their salaries depend on it.
The city that built capitalism is now run by those who want to dismantle it.
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Oakland had 30 brutal attacks & robberies at Westlake Christian Terrace Senior Living in a week
85 year old Asian grandmas getting beaten/robbed so bad they're sent to the ER every few hours.
And yet it is still not being investigated as a hate crime
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I think about spaced repetition forgetting curves for marketing/branding absolutely all of the time.
Did you just launch? You need to get in front of people again at 2, 7, 30 and 60 days later if you don't want to be forgotten.
This is the stuff brands are built on.
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It is shocking how often startups fail because of the personality flaws and deep seated childhood traumas of their founders and execs.
Get therapy. Get exec coaching. Do inner work.
It will save you if you let it. You’ll solve problems now and prevent problems in the future.
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Been thinking about this meme all week
Are you the kind of person who just rolls up your sleeves and plugs the hole?
Our world needs a whole lot more of that
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Just another day in the neighborhood where we are trying to raise our kids
I literally have to go pick up tamiflu for my 5 year old here tonight
We need to fully fund the police, fire the police commission, find a new police chief and replace the hard leftist judges
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Sam Altman says Artificial Superintelligence is thousands of days away. There is a lot of compounding left to do.
What happens then? Fix climate, space colonies, limitless intelligence, understanding physics, abundant energy.
Think bigger. The age of abundance is nigh.
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For 25% of the Winter 2025 batch, 95% of lines of code are LLM generated.
That’s not a typo. The age of vibe coding is here.
Andrej Karpathy recently coined the term “vibe coding” to describe how LLMs are getting so good that devs can “give in to the vibes, embrace exponentials, and forget that the code even exists.”
In this episode of the @LightconePod, the hosts discuss this new way of programming and what it means for builders in the age of AI.
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Most people don’t understand LLMs have changed the nature of management already, and this will be a bit of a shock to people
The Elon email demand isn’t stupid because it’s “too much to ask.” It’s not. It’s stupid because DOGE isn’t going to read millions of emails from workers in departments they have no knowledge of. Performance art.
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"One solution: Intifada revolution."
This is a call for genocide, full stop. They're shouting on the streets what they're going to do now: the final solution.
Not in America, not on our watch.
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Can’t get this stat out of my head today
A million seconds is 11.5 days.
A billion seconds is 31.7 years.
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Enjoy private life @DeanPreston @AaronPeskin
Maybe consider moving to Marin
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