Garry Tan on Taste, Agents and Founder Ambition

Summary

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The a16z Show: Garry Tan on Taste, Agents, and Founder Ambition

Date: August 12, 2026
Guests: Garry Tan (President & CEO, Y Combinator), Chris Dixon, (plus host and brief comments from the a16z team)

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Episode Overview

This episode dives into the evolving landscape of startups and technology, particularly in the era of AI-powered tools and agents. Garry Tan shares candid stories from his own journey in Silicon Valley—from career regrets to the rise of YC—and offers advice to founders navigating today's rapidly changing playbook. Core themes include the importance of earnestness over trend-chasing, why founder ambition should be radically bigger in the age of agents, how company building is being transformed, and the intersection of tech culture with local social impact.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Chasing Trends vs. Following Unique Knowledge

• Garry’s Early Career Mistakes:
  • Left web programming pre-Facebook because "the web was dead," missing an opportunity to get ahead ("I was sort of chasing what was hot instead of what was clearly the thing." [02:31])
  • Turned down a chance to join Palantir, prioritizing a "safe" promotion over joining brilliant peers ("That was like a $2 billion, $2 to $4 billion mistake at this point. I think about it all the time." [08:37])
• Key Takeaway:
  • “The classic question… is what's hot and what should I work on? And that's the wrong question… the right question is, what are you interested in? What do you know uniquely?” (Garry Tan, [04:36])
• Advice for Founders: Rely on direct experience, trust your instincts, and embrace earnestness with courage even when contrary to consensus.

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2. Silicon Valley’s Outsider/Insider Dynamic & the Power of Community

• Democratizing Access with YC:
  • YC has become a portal where global outsiders become tech insiders, regardless of background. "All they did was say, you know what, like, here's a website... and people on the other end who are builders are going to try to give you a fair shake." (Garry, [11:04])
• On "Scenesters" and Real Community:
  • YC is about authenticity and finding people you can be “super real” with; in contrast, "at a TechCrunch event, you… say, 'how you doing?' and they're gonna say, 'killing it.' ...but founders really need that… it's very solitary." ([12:38])

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3. Transformation of Startup Building: Solo Founders, Agents & Ambition

• Shift from Team Necessity to Solo Superpowers:
  • Technological advances (“vibe coding,” “agentic coding”) multiply output: "Literally any given person could be 400 of that person… you can be on multiple of yourself." ([14:32])
  • Implications for Structure: "We really, really believed you needed co-founders... but now, one person can operate like a team." ([13:40])
• Ambition in the New Era:
  • “The game done changed… You actually. You can't just do a SaaS thing... you better hope that that's like a leap to some sort of moat around data or network effects.” ([15:10])
• SaaS and Business Model Shifts:
  • SaaS as a wedge is less defensible—success now requires leveraging data/network effects, not just recurring revenue. ([15:39])

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4. Earnestness & Taste: Building Intuition in the AI Era

• Learning by Doing:
  • “Building intuition at this moment is just using the technology… use every model and build completely trivial things for no other reason than to have a chassis with which to learn.” (Chris Dixon, [18:29])
• Taste as Practice, Not Predestined:
  • “I don't actually think that those things [agency and taste] are innate or inborn... it's a practice.” (Garry Tan, [19:31])

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5. Loops, Agents, and Company Management

• Business Loops & Skill Files:
  • Agents can now handle repeatable tasks via "skill files" (markdown + code) that act like reliable employees: "A markdown file is an employee… that will do the job perfectly every single time..." ([23:39])
• Iterative Improvement:
  • Mistakes and iterative bug fixing lead to continuously improving, codified processes. "Anytime it screws up... is just a bug fix, and then it's there forever." ([24:08])
• Case Study: Brex’s Agent-Driven Management:
  • Brex founder Pedro uses agents to review meeting transcripts, surface conflict, and create executive clarity. “He can walk in and… say, 'actually, you're right, we're doing it your way.' And then he can leave.” ([29:36])

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6. How Agents & AI Will Reshape Organizations

• Replacing Bureaucracy with Agents:
  • The mid-layer of bureaucracy is ripe for agent-driven automation: “The whole management science sort of managerial class... maybe that was a 100 year distraction...” (Chris, [33:27])
  • Agents will coordinate, resolve conflicts, and handle tasks, freeing leaders for creative/strategic work.
• API Line & Empowerment:
  • “AI erases the API line... instead of being below the API line, this can be a back and forth.” (Garry Tan, [37:00])
  • Drawing an analogy from the Toyota Production System: "If you are the person doing the work on the line, you should be allowed to change the line..." ([38:20])

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7. Limits and Moats: The Real Pace of Change

• Human & Institutional Slowness as a 'White Pill':
  • Adoption will take decades—society, government, and big tech companies are structurally slow. “Society is way slower than you think… Like, the white pill to me is like, it's going to be 20 years. And that's not a bad thing.” (Garry Tan, [40:29])
• Moats Exist for a Reason:
  • “There are structural reasons why Microsoft isn’t going anywhere... the reality is like, start-ups won't just replace all of them.” (Garry Tan, [40:57])

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8. The Future of Computing: Form Factors, Memory, and Presence

• What’s Next for the “Computer”?
  • Short-term: Same form factor, long-term: "It's pretty clearly going to be voice... you’re gonna want a lot more context... all watched over by machines of loving grace." ([41:35])
  • Note: The “browser wars” will return as AI models become cheaper and pervasive ([42:54]).

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9. Technology, Local Politics & Pro-Social Change

• Garry’s Civic Engagement:
  • Motivation came from direct threats to opportunity in local education and anti-Asian crime: “We had a district attorney who was turning a blind eye to some of the most heinous crimes against our elders… and a school board that was openly hostile..." ([45:38])
• Power of Grassroots Action:
  • Organizing Asian American communities in SF drove significant political change, emphasizing the power and obligation to act locally: “If we fix local, state and national will fix itself…” ([50:29])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Chasing Trends vs. True Interest

  • "The classic question… what's hot and what should I work on? And that's the wrong question… the right question is, what are you interested in? What do you know uniquely?"
    — Garry Tan ([04:36])

• On Earnestness and Courage

  • "Often when we hear earnest, we think naive. But actually what it sounds like you're saying is… earnestness is a sort of result of maturity and courage."
    — Chris Dixon ([03:35])
  • "Courage is actually, I think, the right thing." — Garry Tan ([03:45])

• On Regret and Learning

  • "That was like a $2 billion, $2 to $4 billion mistake at this point. And I think about it all the time." — Garry Tan, on turning down Palantir ([08:37])

• On Agency, Taste, and Iteration

  • "A markdown file is an employee… It will do it as many times as you want. At that point, all you're doing is… just do it once perfectly."
    — Garry Tan ([23:39])

• On the Limits to Rapid Change

  • "Society is way slower than you think… the white pill to me is like, it's going to be 20 years. And that's not a bad thing."
    — Garry Tan ([40:29])

• On Civic Duty

  • "That's our covenant with our fellow man and our fellow citizen, you know, and if we don't do it, who's going to do it?... Even at personal peril, even at reputational cost, we should be willing to take that cost."
    — Garry Tan ([48:05])

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 02:31 — Garry reflects on missing the web boom by following trends
• 08:37 — The "Palantir regret" story and lesson in trusting instinct over consensus
• 11:04–12:38 — How YC changed access in Silicon Valley; true community vs. scenester culture
• 13:40–14:58 — Co-founders, solo founders, and the rise of agents
• 18:29–19:31 — How to build intuition and taste (learn by doing, not by waiting)
• 23:39–24:08 — On "markdown files as employees" and iterative business improvement
• 29:15–29:41 — Brex's unique use of agents in management
• 33:27–34:31 — Bureaucracy, management science, and how agents will rewire orgs
• 37:00 — AI as the eraser of the API line, process empowerment & Japanese manufacturing analogy
• 40:29 — The "white pill": Institutions evolve much slower than the tech cycle
• 41:35–42:54 — Speculating on the next computing paradigm (voice, context, memory)
• 44:39–48:55 — Technology, local politics, and making change in San Francisco

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Tone and Style

The conversation is frank, earnest, and often humorous. Garry is self-deprecating about career “misses” but deeply optimistic about the capacity for change—both technical and societal. Chris Dixon provides thoughtful challenges and syntheses, capturing both excitement and the sobering realities of inertia and human complexity.

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This episode is essential listening for founders, operators, or anyone curious about the cultural evolution of Silicon Valley, the impact of agents and AI, and how individual ambition and local action intersect in a historically shifting environment.

Transcript

[Gary Tan]

We may never achieve a utopia, but it is worthy and worth it to attempt everything that's awesome in my life is kind of a cult. We had to go over to the Windows team. They wouldn't reply to our emails, they wouldn't fix our bugs, and we had to go over there with a baseball bat. An org like Microsoft can't. Yes, but a startup can.

[Chris Dixon]

Yes.

[Gary Tan]

And every startup must.

[Podcast Host/Narrator]

The game has changed for founders. Gary Tan thinks their ambition should change with it. In this episode, Aneesh Acharya sits down with Y combination coordinator, president and CEO Gary Tan to explore what it means to build a company when one person can suddenly operate like hundreds. They discuss why Gary believes founders should stop chasing what's hot and follow what they uniquely know. How AI is changing everything from coding to company management, and why the startups of the future may look radically smaller, faster, and more ambitious than the companies that came before them. Gary also shares some of the biggest misses of his own career, including turning down an opportunity to join Palantir, and why those mistakes taught him to trust direct experience over consensus.

[Chris Dixon]

Gary, so good to have you, brother. Thank you so much for joining us today.

[Gary Tan]

Thanks for having me.

[Chris Dixon]

Amazing, dude. Well, we're going to cover a bunch of the basics, then we're going to get into the advanced topics to make sure that we kind of match the curiosity and ambition of our audience. That sounds great. Does that work? Awesome. Well, dude, maybe talk to me a bit about the beginning of your journey. 2003 feels like what's under discussed is founder psychology and then sort of Silicon Valley culture and how the two are connected. What did it feel like when you first got in the game back in 2003, coming out of Stanford?

[Gary Tan]

I guess I wanted to work at startups. But 2003 was funny in that Web 1.0 had just ended, the NASDAQ had just crashed, and actually there were no jobs that I could even find in the Bay Area other than working@gap it. And so the two job offers I had were Microsoft for Windows Mobile, which I was pretty excited about, or Expedia. Okay, yeah, I had student loans. And while I wanted to start a company, I just felt like I needed to get a job. And then actually there were no jobs in the Bay, so it was kind of hard to believe, actually. That moment was so bleak. And then right before web 2.0, it

[Chris Dixon]

felt like it might have been the end of tech, huh?

[Gary Tan]

Right? A little bit, yeah. That was the vibe. And then at the end of the day, that's the boom. That's the bust. These things sort of happen over and over again.

[Chris Dixon]

So at the time, did it feel high status to work in tech or on startups?

[Gary Tan]

Not at all. I mean, it's sort of lost to the sands of time. But I was still excited about tech, though. I had done a lot of web programming and then one of my regrets actually was I was sort of chasing what was hot instead of what was clearly the thing. I knew Mark Zuckerberg was probably doing face mash around then, around 2003, and then Facebook didn't even exist yet. And I was getting out of web programming at exactly the wrong time because

[Chris Dixon]

it felt like that was the smart thing to do.

[Gary Tan]

Yeah, it was smart. And I mean, this is true now in front of all these people at startup school, I sort of started this don't larp. Right.

[Chris Dixon]

I saw that.

[Gary Tan]

But I think that's embedded in this idea that you should just be earnest.

[Chris Dixon]

Yeah.

[Gary Tan]

And then you shouldn't follow what the crowd is saying. Right at that moment, people said the web was dead, but that was sort of the perfect time to work on web and social and things like that. And I didn't do it. I ran off and said, oh well, the next hot thing will be mobile. So I wanted to work at Windows Mobile. Which was true. But why give up the thing that could have been the next thing?

[Chris Dixon]

What I love about what you're saying though is often when we hear earnest, we think naive. But actually what it sounds like you're saying is there's earnestness is a sort of result of maturity and courage.

[Gary Tan]

Courage is actually, I think, the right thing.

[Chris Dixon]

Yes.

[Gary Tan]

If you know something, it's sort of. If someone just comes and contradicts you or even if like a blog post or someone on Twitter contradicts you, you're like, well, I don't agree with that because I believe my own direct experience.

[Chris Dixon]

Yes.

[Gary Tan]

I know that I'm not a time traveler because if I was a time traveler, I would have, I would have sent a message back to myself and said, just stay working on web stuff. You literally have five years of experience on top of everyone else. You could do an end run around everyone. Like you could have built any kind of social software.

[Chris Dixon]

Yes.

[Gary Tan]

But Instead I was 22, so I was like being whipped around by whatever I could read in the Wall Street Journal. And the classic question, I'm sure you get that all investors get all the time is what's hot and what should I work on?

[Chris Dixon]

Right.

[Gary Tan]

And that's the wrong question to ask. Like the Right. Question is, what are you interested in? What do you know uniquely? And so that's one of a great many mistakes I made in my career. I feel like I'm a little bit doomed to be the first principal storyteller of all the mistakes that I made.

[Chris Dixon]

I think that it's very inspiring for founders to hear your own journey and your own mistakes and then not feel so bad about the ones that we've all made along the way.

[Gary Tan]

Yeah.

[Chris Dixon]

I mean, maybe talk about the culture of Silicon Valley today. On one hand, maybe it was despondent 20 years ago. It's crazy to think that was just 23 years ago that you're talking about now. You think we would all be incredibly elated, yet there's this undercurrent. Maybe it's the LARPing thing that you mentioned. It's being outside of the light cone, the permanent underclass. Where does that come from? Do you think there's any truth in it? Talk through that.

[Gary Tan]

I mean, I get it. There's just more competition than ever. And then I think maybe it's just that we're spending too much time in distribution. I think Chris Dixon talks about this all the time where you're in the idea maze, but the cool parts of the idmas are like the weird fringe parts, actually. It's always what is a toy. And that's the pattern in Silicon Valley over and over again that bears repeating. Right.

[Chris Dixon]

Yes.

[Gary Tan]

The idea that you could have a computer on every desk in every home.

[Chris Dixon]

Yeah.

[Gary Tan]

Today is, of course, that's what's come to pass.

[Chris Dixon]

Yes.

[Gary Tan]

But the people who created that thing, they were fringe weirdo punks.

[Chris Dixon]

Totally. Yes. They were outsiders. I mean, Homebrew Computer Club was not where you were getting laid.

[Gary Tan]

Yeah, that's right. You just were, like, following this weird obsession that actually, I want my own computer.

[Chris Dixon]

And I think Chris has said this too. I think a good measure of how interesting the thing is, can you find the edge? And for the most interesting things, you typically can't. Even if you find the edge of the conversation, you can't find the intellectual edge, which I think is a very good sign. I mean, I had this growing up in the 80s. Maybe you had this, too. There was sort of one way to be cool in grade school and probably in high school, and maybe when you got to college, you kind of found your people. And now I think one of the miracles of being Internet native generation is that people find their people much sooner. You find your people on Reddit, you find your people on X or Insta. Or whatever your network is.

[Gary Tan]

Oh, yeah. I mean, that's the coolest thing today. There's probably a subreddit. There's probably a part of X, some part of Teapot that is this part of Twitter that is just your set of super weird, but really, really into that thing. And you can find your tribe more or less instantly.

[Chris Dixon]

Yeah, yeah. Can you talk a bit about the culture of Silicon Valley? I felt like 10 years ago it was sort of, you know, it was lower status to work on something like Palantir, either because people were nervous about doing things that were too much in the national interest or because it was sort of dismissed as a services business. Now it's clearly one of the most important companies in the world with one of the most compelling CEOs. You were early there. What did it feel like? Why did you do it?

[Gary Tan]

Yeah, I mean, I have a worse story than that. I have another mistake story where Joe Lonsdale and Stefan Cohen were my fraternity brothers at Stanford Fisci. And then I had a job and they were like, interns at Peter Thiel's hedge fund.

[Chris Dixon]

Okay.

[Gary Tan]

And Peter has this thing where you're supposed to, you know, when you start a thing, you write down on a piece of paper all the smartest people who you need to go and hire and get to join you. And so both of them were like, oh, let's go get Gary. He's up in Seattle. They flew me down to have dinner with him. And Peter said, I'm so sure this is the right thing for you. Here's a check for 70 grand. That was how much I made at Microsoft at the time. And I said, thank you very much, Mr. Thiel, but I might get promoted to level 60 this year, which I did. But I think it's. That was like a $2 billion, $2 to $4 billion mistake at this point. And I think about it all the time. Basically, I did the same thing again. It was like the same thing that got me to go work on Windows Mobile. Instead of just staying on the thing that I knew and loved, it happened again. I was like, well, I don't know. I was working backwards from the map. Instead of looking down at the territory and saying, oh, well, these are the smartest people I know. Joe and Stefan were among the smartest people I'd ever met. And if not them, who was I going to be a co founder with? The universe was saying, this is the thing you need to do. But all I cared about was what was cool, what was hot, what would a really good Investor say. And the thing is, they're like going off of a map. And you can see, you can look down, you can look around, you can have first principles knowledge of what's going on. And what they were doing is they were going to governments and three letter agencies, and it was clear that the things that really good computer scientists in Palo Alto could do and create.

[Chris Dixon]

Yes.

[Gary Tan]

DC did not have access to that. And it's funny how much that thing that they had identified, like Peter and Joe and Stefan and later Alex Karp identified, that runs through almost everything that we do in Silicon Valley. It's just the future is already here. It's not evenly distributed. And then that's where first principles knowledge, or just viewing the world as a scientist is actually very, very useful.

[Chris Dixon]

Yes.

[Gary Tan]

And what a scientist does is, sure, there's published papers, but you go and you examine all the truths and what you find is that once you go down into the experiment, or you go down and talk to the first party people who are experiencing a thing.

[Chris Dixon]

Yes.

[Gary Tan]

Then you learn secret knowledge, then you have gnosis. And so from Palantir, I definitely learned that everything that's awesome in my life is kind of a cult.

[Chris Dixon]

Yeah.

[Gary Tan]

That starts with some sort of truth or belief that flies in the face of an orthodoxy, which is very punk, actually.

[Chris Dixon]

Yes. Yes. Dude, that's very. Rick Rubin would approve. Yeah, yeah. Well, actually, what I love about you're saying is that there's a beautiful truth in the fact that you've talked through some of these maybe tragic misses, but, you know, the lessons are courage, the lessons are earnestness. Right. The lessons are when your instincts are pulling you to work with a set of people. So maybe talk a little bit about, you know, we talk a lot about how Silicon Valley and the magic is it takes outsiders and turns them into insiders. And I feel like YC is the ultimate distillation of that. You know, you go from being two founders, perhaps from a foreign country, to two people with YC on their LinkedIn. And everybody now knows what that means.

[Gary Tan]

Totally.

[Chris Dixon]

So talk about how that happens. Is it a process? Is it a mindset? And how has it changed over the years?

[Gary Tan]

I mean, I have to credit Paul Graham and Jessica Livingston and the original founders, including Trevor Blackwell and Robert Morris. I mean, what Paul and Jessica figured out was that there are lots and lots of really smart people who do not get access to Silicon Valley. I mean, I think in the past you had to, like, go to the right schools, you had to know the right people, sort of. And if you didn't. You'd come to Silicon Valley and you try to get invited to the right parties. There's like a social network that you had to crack. And then at yc, we have a pejorative for that whole scene, which it's like we call them scenesters, actually, which is, I mean, it's sort of a nod to like what you used to have to do. And some people still believe that's like how you do it. All they did was say, you know what, like, here's a, here's a website, here's 12 questions later we added like a one minute video, and people on the other end who are builders are going to try to give you a fair shake. And so today we have, you know, 16 equal partners, including myself and all of us, like, went through YC and had successful outcomes. And I think there's something valuable to that, that just, you know, welcome to, welcome to Silicon Valley. We just celebrated 7,000 people coming to San Francisco, the majority of them the very first time they came. It's, you know, our startup school every single year.

[Chris Dixon]

So incredible.

[Gary Tan]

We kind of call it like birthright, but for tech.

[Chris Dixon]

It looked like the Roman Coliseum, dude. Yeah, it was amazing. Yeah.

[Gary Tan]

So, you know, I think that that's the coolest thing about Silicon Valley. Like, you sort of. It sort of doesn't matter where you're from or who you are. It just actually matters what your ideas are and can you execute. The only other thing that I'd say, like YC people get that a lot of people don't get is a community of people who you can be super real with. It's like if you go to a TechCrunch event, you look to the left, you look to the right, and it's like, are you really going to be able to tell them anything? Like, you're gonna hold your cards pretty close and, you know, you're gonna say, how you doing? And they're gonna say, killing it. And then they're gonna ask back and like, oh, I'm also killing it. I mean, honestly, founders really need that. Like, it's very solitary. It's, you know, on the day that you lose your best customer, on the day that your best engineer quits, like, who you gonna call? And if you have no one, like

[Chris Dixon]

the day your co founder loses hope and you're not allowed to.

[Podcast Host/Narrator]

Right.

[Chris Dixon]

That's a tough day. Talk about the historical upside, sort of surprises of like founder types, business types, and the downside surprises. What have you learned through yc?

[Gary Tan]

I mean, what's cr. We're sort of in the middle of a big transformation now. I think for the longest time, we really, really believed that you needed co founders. And I think that everything else being equal, having co founders is net. Really, really good.

[Chris Dixon]

Totally.

[Gary Tan]

I think some of this is like the beginning of a culture.

[Chris Dixon]

Yeah.

[Gary Tan]

Like, you know, a cult where there's only one person and that person can't convince anyone else to join them is like, you know, worse than a cult is just like a crazy person, actually. Right, right, right. I think this is like an old Derek Sivers TED Talk. Right. Where it's like, yeah, one person dancing in a field is a crazy person.

[Chris Dixon]

Yes.

[Gary Tan]

But, you know, it's really the second person who, like, gets up.

[Chris Dixon]

That's right.

[Gary Tan]

And joins that person. Like, then what you find is, you know, suddenly 10 people or they're all dancing, then it's a party. Yeah. That's literally the TED Talk.

[Chris Dixon]

Love it.

[Gary Tan]

And I think there's something to that. But, you know, I think what's happening right now with vibe coding and agentic coding, literally any given person could be 400 of that person. Like, from two years, like, even like nine months ago, you can be on multiple of yourself. It's amazing. Yeah. And so do you think founders are

[Chris Dixon]

more ambitious than they've ever been?

[Gary Tan]

They should be.

[Chris Dixon]

Yes.

[Gary Tan]

If anything, like, that's the number one thing that people should do.

[Chris Dixon]

Yes.

[Gary Tan]

Is realize that, like, don't chase your success or my success. Like, that was, you know, when we were coming up.

[Chris Dixon]

Yeah, that's right.

[Gary Tan]

The game done changed, you know, like.

[Chris Dixon]

Yep.

[Gary Tan]

You actually. You can't just do a sass thing. Like, you know, I was just doing an analysis on, like, pure SaaS, and I was like, oh, shoot. Like, you know, a pure, like, per seat SaaS thing, like, not totally clear. It will exist in another five or 10 years. Like, it's perfectly fine as a wedge. But if you're doing that now in 2026, like, you better hope that that's like a leap to some sort of moat around data or network effects or something else.

[Chris Dixon]

Right? Yes, yes.

[Gary Tan]

And that's like, you know, if you. If we would time travel to like, even two years ago, it's like SaaS was God, you know, like the 10 20x like next 12 months revenue multiple was like, you know, iron law.

[Chris Dixon]

Yes.

[Gary Tan]

And like, it's hard to believe it was like, oh, yeah, no, that's not true at all now.

[Chris Dixon]

Well, you know, a related thing that I love is that code is no longer precious. My God, like the things that we had to go through to get something shipped. And that's why you had to have this, like, sense that what you were making was important with a capital I. Oh, yeah. And that actually flies against the kind of beautiful truth we were just talking about, because often earnestness isn't obviously important with a capital I. So you pursue things that seem important when most of the most important things actually start out seeming actually unimportant.

[Gary Tan]

Oh, yeah, I know you've been all

[Chris Dixon]

over this with GStack and GBrain, and, you know, when you started out to build those things with the intention to, like, contribute to the community or just explore your interests.

[Gary Tan]

Oh, I was just messing around. Like, you know, what was it? I think Boris Cherney came on Lightcone podcast, and I just felt, like, the urge to, you know, and a bunch of our mutual friends, like, all of them basically just started coding again. And I was like, oh, something's happening. I'd better start. And then initially, it was just messing around. It's like, oh, I mean, what would it be like to do? And, like, making office hours. Yeah. And then the craziest thing there was, like, we had just started, like, recording all of our office hours, actually, and then I could. I had, like, a few months of data, and there were, like, very clear things that the YC partners used as, like, rhetorical devices or ways to, like, draw out, like, a step function in your ambition. And then what's funny is I have this markdown file that is basically, like, the perfect script on how to advise founders to, like, increase their ambition. And then I actually had to go into Claude, and I said, reduce this by 90%. Reduce the strength and intensity of this prompt by 90%. And then I open source that, because some of it is, like, you gotta come and do YC to get the 100% first.

[Chris Dixon]

Well, we'll take your favorite five. Okay. Thank you.

[Gary Tan]

Yeah, we can't give away the crown jewels, like, for free. Just a taste. The first one's free, you know.

[Chris Dixon]

Well, dude, Kevin caught this. I think it was a GStack or GBrain, where deep in the open source, you had said, Please apply to YC.

[Gary Tan]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But only if you're a top 10% user of Claude code.

[Chris Dixon]

Incredible.

[Gary Tan]

Like, based on whether you're thinking about users, like, thoughtful about your product and your design. Like, it's not. Not everyone gets that message, actually.

[Chris Dixon]

Yes. Well, dude, I love that you're doing it. I love that you're doing it so publicly, because I think this comes Back to the earnestness point, which is the whole thing about building intuition at this moment is just using the technology.

[Gary Tan]

Oh, yeah.

[Chris Dixon]

You know, and I think that there's this feeling like, oh, how can I possibly catch up? Or there's so much seriousness around it. It's like, no, just use every model and build completely trivial things for no other reason. To have a chassis with which to learn the new technology.

[Gary Tan]

I think the most exciting thing is like, you can just have ideas. And then in the past it's like, oh, well, I had to be the pm, Let me write the spec. Let me make sure I have, you know, one or two engineers like, oh, how are we going to do qa? Like, there's just all this stuff that you used to have to worry about.

[Chris Dixon]

Yeah.

[Gary Tan]

And then now it's like, no slash qa. Like it's done, but, you know. Yeah, we tested it. It's good. Like we have unit tests, like 90% test coverage, you know, totally.

[Chris Dixon]

You know, it's like arranging your zen rock garden.

[Gary Tan]

Oh, yeah.

[Chris Dixon]

It's just fun to do it. And like the output doesn't matter that much. Which is why everybody talks about coding agents, but very few people are showing their work.

[Gary Tan]

Oh yeah.

[Chris Dixon]

Because a lot of it is sort of low stakes work. And I think that's beautiful and. Okay. Yeah.

[Podcast Host/Narrator]

You know.

[Gary Tan]

No, I mean, and then I think it's crazy. To what degree? Like suddenly agency and taste like off the charts important now.

[Chris Dixon]

Right.

[Gary Tan]

And then the hard part is like helping people realize, like just by the act of doing it and exercising it, like that's how you get better. It's. I don't actually think that like those things are in innate or inborn. Like some people have more of it coming out of the womb per se, but, you know, it's. You just pray. It's like a practice.

[Chris Dixon]

Well, let me challenge you on this because Nikita said this a couple, maybe a year ago and I thought it was interesting, which is, hey, we were told that the like, highest form of art in business was, you know, film and software. And now anyone can make films and anybody can make software. Yet the same 20% who are originally doing it are still the ones who are doing it. Is there kind of this, like, is agency something that you can, you know, embrace or are there just people that are naturally high agency and many that are not?

[Gary Tan]

I mean, if I look at my own career, like I would easily say that I'm a late bloomer and, you know, I had to make these like ridiculous mistakes, like saying no to Palantir or like leaving web programming to like learn. And so I feel like my life is somewhat like a testament to. No, no. Like I can make mistakes and then I can introspect. I can reason about them and then make different choices.

[Chris Dixon]

Amazing.

[Gary Tan]

That's the hope, anyway.

[Chris Dixon]

Yeah, that is the hope. Talk a little bit about loops. I think they're kind of coding loops which are well discussed. And now the graphs thing, which is sort of, you know, both funny and also real. But it feels like the most interesting loops are business loops.

[Gary Tan]

Oh yeah.

[Chris Dixon]

Like, how can you actually have a loop where the output is changing the way the business itself operates? I know that Tom gave this great talk about how to organize your company in that way. Talk about how YC is organizing around loops and how you're advising your companies to.

[Gary Tan]

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I mess around with openclaw. I created G Brain, which is kind of like soda retrieval. I basically distilled. Earlier this year I created Gary's list.org which is sort of like actually an agentic newsroom. And then I had to create like really, really good rag around like, you know, personal deep research just to be able to put together some of those articles. And then all I did was like I had openclaw look at that repo extract out like the agentic rag part, especially around like, like after the fact graph generation. And then it just ended up being soda, even against like Memory palace and a bunch of other open source.

[Chris Dixon]

Incredible.

[Gary Tan]

And then what I realized is that just allows the agent to know what million tokens to keep in its head for any given task. Yes. And so what's interesting is like, I think there are a couple of things at work right now, like the Frontier Model Labs that are, you know, letting you use ChatGPT or Claude. I think that they're still pretty constrained on cost and pretty constrained on amount of compute they want to give you. And so if you really want to token max, you actually have to use something like Hermes Agent or openclaw. And then you have to like tune it all the way up. Like you're just like, give me like, let me load a million tokens or 800,000 tokens in to any given request and have that be in your sold out md. But when you do that, I think that you basically get to live in 2028. It costs, I don't know, 50 or $100,000 a year to use the agents at full strength. Like full 150 for every request, for every request. But you'll feel it more or Less immediately. It just costs, like, a crazy amount. But for a CEO or for a founder, it actually makes a lot of sense to do that. And you have to give yourself permission to token max in that way. But, you know, and then what you get is, like, I get. You get live in 2028 today.

[Chris Dixon]

Amazing.

[Gary Tan]

But I think, like, going back to what founders can do, if you live that way, not only do you want to do that task, you want to, like, skillify it. Like, you do some, like, feet of strength, and then you turn it into a markdown file plus code, plus tests that can be reused and, like, put into a cron job.

[Chris Dixon]

Yes.

[Gary Tan]

And so I think we're just seeing, like, across the board, a markdown file is an employee. Yeah. And it's an employee that will do the job perfectly every single time. And it'll do it, like, as many times as you want. And then, you know, at that point, all you're doing is, like, take any business process that you need in your company and you just do it once perfectly. And the first time you try to do it, it's going to be bad.

[Chris Dixon]

Expensive.

[Gary Tan]

Yeah.

[Chris Dixon]

Yes. Many iterations.

[Gary Tan]

Yeah. But then at the end, you can. You. As long as you can tell very, very quickly and in very simple ways, like, hey, agent, fix this, fix that. Like, this was wrong. The actual trace and the actual history out of that agent working with you, it'll actually turn that into a skill file. That's perfect, actually. Right. And anytime it screws up in, like, a future case is just a bug fix, and then it's there forever.

[Chris Dixon]

And this loop you would apply to sales, to marketing, to customer support, to everything.

[Gary Tan]

Yeah, to everything.

[Chris Dixon]

Really interesting.

[Gary Tan]

I mean, Gstack was basically that for engineering.

[Chris Dixon]

Right.

[Gary Tan]

It's like there's a QA loop. I had to build something that works with browsers to go and. Cause that's what I found. Like, early with Gstack, I found myself, you know, automating how I thought about pm. And then, you know, I had an engineering skill that was like an ENG manager that made sure that there was unit test and end to end test coverage. But then in the end, I found myself, like, I automated all the other things so much that all I was doing at the end was black box testing to verify. And I was like, oh, no, no. Okay. Like, even that part, like, it's interesting, like, building these agentix systems today, I think that's all you're doing, is you're seeing where the bottlenecks are. And then, you know, almost every single Time. It's like how do I just instruct the agent to create a piece of software or a markdown file that blows away that roadblock.

[Podcast Host/Narrator]

Right.

[Gary Tan]

And then when you take a step back and you've done that for the whole task, it's like, I mean there are companies now today that you know, we were talking about earlier, it's like literally you can go from 0 to 15 mil ARR. In about four months with like two or three people and like hundreds of agents. Like you know, a few hundred skill files.

[Chris Dixon]

It's amazing. So there's this like recursive self improvement. There's this hill climbing that happens. Like at what point does it start to fall over? Is there like, do you need error correction? Does the errors compound? Does it get constrained by exception handling human relationships? Because otherwise these companies should just be able to grow and run forever.

[Gary Tan]

Yeah, I mean I guess my experience, once you get a lot of markdown files or anytime you have like some large amount of data, that's where like provenance matters. That's where conflict management sort of, you know, when you have two facts.

[Chris Dixon]

Yes.

[Gary Tan]

If you have provenance, then you're like, well this is the more recent one. Like this is the one that wins. You need a cron job that's sort of sweeping through that and making sure that things are accurate and from the right places. But these are things that I think as you use the systems, you just know that you need to build these things. Like anyone who's, I mean this is actually one of the interesting things I think is an advantage for founders in their 30s and 40s now. Yeah, like I mean I think that there are going to be as many Patrick Collisons as ever.

[Chris Dixon]

Yeah.

[Gary Tan]

But one mega trend that we're seeing is like 35, 40, 45 year old founder who've been around the block, built a lot of entities. I mean I think yeah, Peter Steinberger is like a perfect example of that where it's like he's been around the block, like he knows what to build. And then if you take that person, suddenly there's 400 of those people. Like you can outperform an entire department of like any mag seven.

[Chris Dixon]

I also think that if you've had some experience in the enterprise, there are these dynamics that you know, you can seek to kind of mirror and explore. So one of the things I'm really interested in is conflict. Right. Most people at an enterprise would say conflict is a bad thing, but actually think that there's this sort of productive, constructive conflict that at Its best is the search for truth.

[Gary Tan]

Yeah.

[Chris Dixon]

These systems allow us to do things like explore conflicting approaches and totally unbundle it from the human emotion. And I think that's actually very important because this is why the sort of the decentralization in an organization or an economy works well, because every idea gets tried.

[Gary Tan]

Yeah. Do you know Pedro from Brex is like the most aggressive person I've met who does this with his exact team.

[Chris Dixon]

No.

[Gary Tan]

So. Which is cool. Like, he uses, like. He actually was one of the people who, like, really got me into openclock because he just came in and, you know, he had lunch with us at yc.

[Chris Dixon]

Yeah.

[Gary Tan]

And he just walked us through. The vibe around openclaw was that it was too unsafe and dangerous and, like, delete your whole computer and stuff like that. What he ended up doing was like building an entire open source layer, which he actually has open source called crabtrap, that is like an agent that watches all the network traffic and all the things that openclaw does.

[Chris Dixon]

Nice.

[Gary Tan]

And then that's how he squares the circle. Like, Brexit is one of the most regulated, you know, fintech course. Of course. And then the upshot of what he got is that he has his agent look at the meeting transcripts from, like, all of his direct reports and he, like, can see that, like, two levels down.

[Chris Dixon]

Yeah.

[Gary Tan]

And then the thing that really jumped out at me is, like, he can use meetings that he's not in to figure out, like, what's broken, what's in conflict, like who's. Who's in conflict with who.

[Chris Dixon]

Yes.

[Gary Tan]

And then sometimes he can show up at a meeting. He has perfect context from, like, the last three weeks of, like, that one compliance team.

[Chris Dixon]

Yes.

[Gary Tan]

And then he can walk in and he's like, actually, you're right, we're doing it your way. And then he can leave.

[Chris Dixon]

That's so badass.

[Gary Tan]

Yeah. And it's like, can you imagine? Like, that is actually one of the defining reasons why startups or businesses fail.

[Chris Dixon]

Yes.

[Gary Tan]

It's like, it's actually like a management challenge. Like, the business becomes too big to fit in one person's head. And then this is like the most profound form of you. You have agents, you have memory, you have retrieval, you, like, zap the rocks more. The rocks give you, like, raw intelligence about, like, what's happening. And it can actually introspect, not just on the opinion of, like, someone two levels down in your organization.

[Chris Dixon]

Yes.

[Gary Tan]

But it can actually look at the ground truth from the data. Right. And it's like that you know that's clairvoyance, right? Like, yes, you, I mean if you once you have that in your brain, like actually every business in the world is available for you to take their business. Like the world is basically built on things that are built around human beings. And human beings can only keep seven plus or minus two things in their head at any given time. And guess what? You plus an agent can keep basically three Harry Potter books in your head. You can rifle shot.

[Chris Dixon]

More to come.

[Gary Tan]

Yeah. And more to come. Right. As this is as bad. There are so many crypto isms that like applied like 10 times more to AI, which is like this is the worst it will ever be actually.

[Chris Dixon]

Yes, yes.

[Gary Tan]

And so the whole world, like all business, all things that people rely on, government especially, is basically still built on a world that is predicated by human beings, limited human beings that can only keep seven plus or minus two things in their head.

[Chris Dixon]

Yes.

[Gary Tan]

And it's not ready like it's not ready for the world where agents can think at the speed of light. Like you have unlimited amounts of it, like unlimited amounts of data. And then, you know, my hope is that like basically products are going to be 10 or 100 times better. Like they should be a thousand times better.

[Chris Dixon]

Yes.

[Gary Tan]

Like services should be a thousand times better.

[Chris Dixon]

Right.

[Gary Tan]

Like, you know, the invisible hand of capitalism at that point. Like properly done, it's not about lowering the cost of something. Yes. It should actually be creating these like sort of magical things that I was like on Wall Street Journal podcast recently.

[Chris Dixon]

Yeah.

[Gary Tan]

And the reporter like kept trying to like gotcha me. He kept saying like, are you, you know, you guys in tech, are you trying to make a utopia? And I was like, this is a trap. Like I don't, I would not go so far to say, you know, but as I was went through like a bunch of examples from like a bunch of the startups that you and I have like worked on and funded and things like that. I was like actually like maybe. Right. Like, you know, we may never achieve a utopia, but it is worthy and worth it to attempt. Right. And that, you know, I would not say that Silicon Valley or tech will achieve a utopia. I will very earnestly say that we are trying to bring about a better world.

[Chris Dixon]

Maybe another way to say this is

[Gary Tan]

just, this is the least happy you'll ever be. Yeah.

[Chris Dixon]

You know, because I think like one of the other implications of what you're describing is just the ergonomics of the sort of white collar job today. You know, you think about ever you've worked at big companies. Like, you think of just the kind of morass that you had to get through. Torture. You think of how lossy the communication is. Like the entire management science sort of managerial class. Like Maybe that was 100 year distraction from what was founder mode, you know, in the Industrial revolution, all the way through Henry Ford, all the way through some of the early Silicon Valley founders. And then everybody just kind of hit this tidal wave of management.

[Gary Tan]

Oh yeah.

[Chris Dixon]

Now we have this new model that can lead to dramatic productivity improvements. Like three days a week of really intentional work, maybe one day. And the other days you're touching grass. And I think the time that you do spend is just so much less burdened by this stuff that you always felt like you had to wade through.

[Gary Tan]

Yeah, that's right. I mean, if you look at the typical Mag seven day to day, it's insane. Like, I remember when I was 22 working on Windows Mobile, we were working on, you know, these crazy devices that were like years before the iPhone.

[Chris Dixon]

Yeah.

[Gary Tan]

And we needed integration, for instance, from the Windows team, which, which was like, you know, on the other side of the highway in Redmond. And then I remember, you know, me and my sort of PM mentor, we had to go over to the Windows team and like, they wouldn't reply to our emails, they wouldn't fix our bugs, they wouldn't even like mark it as won't fix. They just ignored us. And we had to go over there with a baseball bat. Like, I don't know why he brought one. Like, it wasn't like he was going to like rough anyone up. It was just, just like this vague threat or something.

[Chris Dixon]

Incredible.

[Gary Tan]

It was actually hilarious. And I think about that all the time. It's like, what kind of like bureaucratic hell is it where like two perfectly smart people who are making like good tech money.

[Chris Dixon]

Yeah.

[Gary Tan]

You know, are put into a situation where like there's a fiefdom over here. Like literally there's like seven levels between us and that person.

[Chris Dixon]

Yes.

[Gary Tan]

And this person doesn't even know that we spent like four hours trying to get like a P3 bug fixed that was like a blocker for a thousand of our users or something. It's like.

[Chris Dixon]

And how much humanity is just wasted.

[Gary Tan]

Yeah.

[Chris Dixon]

How many 2:00am Sort of anxious wake ups were there?

[Gary Tan]

Yeah.

[Chris Dixon]

Because somebody wanted to not have a hard conversation. Like it's, you know, it's, it's a really, it's a waste of the way we should be spending our time and working.

[Gary Tan]

Yeah. And that's a profound Version of like the seven plus or minus two. Like, I don't think that like the, you know, product unit manager or whatever the heck their, you know, their title was. Like, I don't think that they wanted us to waste our time like that. Yes. I think it's just that, you know, your day, like you just don't have enough hours in the day.

[Chris Dixon]

Yes.

[Gary Tan]

And we're like incredibly limited human beings. But, you know. Yeah. It's funny, like, I think that, you know, I think about my time at Microsoft and it's like I remember getting an ipod and like doing competitive research for Windows Mobile versus the iPod. I could imagine today at Microsoft, you could imagine a markdown file and a skill.

[Chris Dixon]

Yeah.

[Gary Tan]

That is run on a cron.

[Chris Dixon]

Yes.

[Gary Tan]

And it's like, how are all the people working on this team, like, are they blocked? Who are they blocked by? What are the external dependencies? Like, suddenly there is a graph, there's a loop, and then suddenly, like, you know, the products can actually just move fast. Like you could release something in a day or two that would have taken like six months. It's incredible. And if you could like multiply that out across, like the thing is like probably an org. Like Microsoft can't.

[Chris Dixon]

Yes.

[Gary Tan]

But like a startup can.

[Chris Dixon]

Yes.

[Gary Tan]

And every startup must.

[Chris Dixon]

Yes. They must be organized this way. I also love what you said. It's almost like the mid level of bureaucracy should be agents.

[Gary Tan]

Yeah.

[Chris Dixon]

Because I actually think that, you know, being in charge is somewhat overstated. Like, I'd love to actually have at least the mid level organize the work, you know, resolve the conflicts that it can somewhat programmatically. Probabilistically programmatically. Of course, the executive team maybe sets direction. The individual sort of decides on execution, but just the whole organization layer, which a lot of product managers historically did, should not be humail.

[Gary Tan]

I mean, the great thing is it doesn't have to be. Do you know how Venkatesh Rao has this thing where it's like you need to be above the API line. Like, if Uber came out, like, if you're an Uber driver, you're below the API line. Like, you should be fighting to be above the API line. I actually think AI erases the API line. Like, one of the funniest things I saw recently is there's a API company that we funded called Clavisor and they released a. A bug report endpoint that is not for humans to use. It's for agents who use their software to use. And there's an LLM where it's like if there's a bug in the software, the bug report goes, but then it replies real time.

[Chris Dixon]

Yeah.

[Gary Tan]

And it's like, actually like, that's a good bug. We filed it, we're going to fix it next week. But also like, try this workaround.

[Chris Dixon]

Wow.

[Gary Tan]

And then like, I can't get that out of my head. Because you could imagine that could be how companies work. Right. Like instead of being below the API line and having to do what, like, I don't know, the API tells you to do, like this can be a back and forth, actually. And then I always think about, you know, the reason why cars in the 80s got so good in Japan was it was actually a management technique. Like they realized the Toyota production system.

[Chris Dixon]

That's right.

[Gary Tan]

Meant that like, if you are the person doing the work on the line, you should be allowed to change the line because you are the person with the most amount of context to be able to improve your own working situation. And that's why American cars really started sucking and why Japanese cars became absolutely incredible. It's like this very subtle, simple way that actually empowers the worker. And so there's this sort of like mix that I.

[Chris Dixon]

Which is so interesting because what's traditionally seen as a hierarchical society came up with this very bottoms up way of working, which led to like arguably a 40 year generational run because of process power. Yeah.

[Gary Tan]

Which is beautiful.

[Chris Dixon]

As you think about kind of our evolution towards this vision, how many of these problems do you think are intelligence bound? Like, we need smarter models versus there will be other attributes of models that will unlock success.

[Gary Tan]

I mean, honestly, it's all human. Humans are the ones who are going to slow this down. And then actually I'm realizing this might be a white pill. So if you look at like the tenor of what's going on just broadly in the discourse about AI, it's all like this sort of doom and gloom. Like all white collar jobs are going to go away, there's going to be a permanent underclass.

[Chris Dixon]

Yes.

[Gary Tan]

And then funny enough, what I think is all of the bureaucracy and the slowness and the seven plus or minus two of like every company, every institution, every organization, all the middle managers in the world.

[Chris Dixon]

Yeah.

[Gary Tan]

That is actually the white pill, 100%. So, you know, these things are gonna be slower than you think.

[Chris Dixon]

Yes.

[Gary Tan]

Right. I looked at, you know, we had 7,000 people. Most of them were 18 to 22 years old.

[Chris Dixon]

Amazing.

[Gary Tan]

And I looked in their faces and like they're all AI native. Like they were born more or less, like, you know, they became adults in the time of ChatGPT.

[Chris Dixon]

Yes.

[Gary Tan]

And it's gonna, you know, and for us, it's like now we, you know, run shit, which is nice.

[Chris Dixon]

That's great. Right.

[Gary Tan]

But, you know, imagine us like 20 ago. Like, you know, we were the ones who were native to the web. We were the ones who were native to mobile.

[Chris Dixon]

Yes.

[Gary Tan]

And then now we run. So then all of society runs on the things that we expected from when we were 18 to 22. So I think that, you know, the white pill to me is like, it's going to be 20 years. And that's not a bad thing. That's actually a good thing.

[Chris Dixon]

Yes.

[Gary Tan]

Like, society is way slower than you think. Government is way slower than you think. Every company in the world is way slower than you think.

[Chris Dixon]

Yeah.

[Gary Tan]

And there are real moats to these things. Like there are structural reasons why a Microsoft isn't going anywhere.

[Chris Dixon]

Yes.

[Gary Tan]

And then I guess this is sort of a little antithetical to what most, you know, most people in Silicon Valley would say, like, I want to start up to replace all of them. Yeah. And the reality is like, they won't. You know, they won't. I love it.

[Chris Dixon]

Okay, I have two more questions for you. You know, one on this kind of sort of trying to envision the near future. What do you think the next computer looks like? What does a new computer look like?

[Gary Tan]

Oh, man. I think in the short term it'll probably keep looking like the way it is, but it seems inconceivable that it'll stay that form factor. Like it's pretty clearly going to be voice.

[Chris Dixon]

Yes.

[Gary Tan]

I think there's a lot around memory. It's going to take a while. We're at this moment where everyone's sort of happy with ChatGPT or Cloud, cowork or whatever it is, but I don't think they will be in the long term. Like, I think you're going to want a lot more context and you're going to want like all watched over by machines of loving grace. Like, you're going to want this thing that is benevolent, knows about like your hopes, fears and desires and then is sort of like relentlessly searching to help you in that way. And that's actually going to be really exciting. And, you know, the path through that will probably be like computer use memory, like diarization, like ingestion, like. Yeah, I mean, I think there's going to be a lot there. And you know, the cool thing is it's actually going to take longer. Like, this isn't a Like, I don't think people are even talking about this now. My guess is like next year 2027 will be like the harness wars.

[Chris Dixon]

Yes.

[Gary Tan]

You know, and then. But it's really a cost thing. Like it's just too expensive right now, you know, but it won't be like there will be a war for a billion consumers. Right. When the Frontier model compute of today will be like maybe 50 or 100 bucks in like two or three years.

[Chris Dixon]

Yeah.

[Gary Tan]

And that will be when like the most viewed. The browser wars will be back on.

[Chris Dixon]

Yes, yes. Well, we're already seeing it like the price per token of Frontier is going to infinity. Like Mythos is infinity dollars a token. You can't have it. And the price per token of the model that was Frontier a week ago is collapsing to zero. And actually, I think to me that is a huge white pill for a lot of reasons. You know, one of the most important of which is just we need more consumer AI software. And in a world where most consumer products are free to try, you just can't do that when you have really high cost of incremental distribution. The magic of software is zero cost, incremental distribution. We have these magical primitives. Like we have computers that are emotive and have emotional texture for the first time in 40 or 50 years. What a tragedy that we haven't built more ambitious consumer products yet. Yeah. So I'm really excited for the sort of changing economics of models to unlock these new categories.

[Gary Tan]

Yeah. I mean, and we're so early. Like, I was convinced that like being becoming a convert to openclaw made me very, very convinced that it was going to happen right away. And then at this point I'm like, that's not correct at all.

[Chris Dixon]

Like, you know, well, you should try the. The new ChatGPT desktop app actually has got a voice mode and it's sort of. It's an operator or concierge that can see all your threads.

[Gary Tan]

Oh, cool.

[Chris Dixon]

And you can access it from your phone. It's very open claw. Ish. And I'm sure Peter had his hands all over it. To me, it's the closest thing we've seen yet to a true consumer assistant.

[Gary Tan]

Oh, I could see that. It's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. ChatGPT always had like basically the best memory.

[Chris Dixon]

So.

[Gary Tan]

Yeah, I gotta try it again.

[Chris Dixon]

They've done a great job.

[Gary Tan]

Yeah.

[Chris Dixon]

Okay, last question. You know, we talked a lot about kind of utopian visions for the world and problems that are maybe intelligence bound. You've also put a lot of energy into Sort of local politics and doing things, I think are very pro social. But it seems like more of those problems are human coordination bound.

[Gary Tan]

Oh, definitely.

[Chris Dixon]

How do you get energy to do that work? You know, is there a white pill for that aspect of our society? Maybe talk a bit about that.

[Gary Tan]

I mean, the white pill is just believing that America still has rules of law and that people in government are trying to help. And like, somewhat earnest. Like, it's not perfect. I think the white pill for me recently was even just doing jury duty in San Francisco and to see like this orderly process of really a cross section of San Francisco. One thing I realized was like, actually we are a big part of the city. Like, we're 10, 20% of the people are like directly working in tech. And so to see something that was. I mean, the judge was really good. I mean, it was a horrible case. But like, you know, government is not here to like, ruin people. Like.

[Chris Dixon]

Yeah.

[Gary Tan]

And so. And then at that point, we can vote.

[Chris Dixon]

Yes.

[Gary Tan]

Like, we actually have a say. And then I think everything is downstream of media at that point. Like, I think the San Francisco moment that got me very engaged was realizing, you know, Asian Americans are 25% of the voting populace, about 30% of the population. But during COVID like, we had a district attorney who was turning a blind eye to some of the most heinous crimes against our elders. And simultaneous to that, we had a school board that was openly hostile against Asian American kids who just wanted to learn algebra in public middle school. Which hit me because I was. Was that public school kid in Fremont in the East Bay. Like, if I couldn't have taken algebra in middle school, I couldn't take calculus. By senior year, I wouldn't have been able to study engineering at Stanford, and I wouldn't be here doing any of the things I get to do today. And I'm like, oh, okay, now. Now they've made it personal.

[Chris Dixon]

Yeah.

[Gary Tan]

And like, let me understand. And it turned out to be like, sort of all the same people. The same people who want to destroy all data centers. The same people who you don't want to build any housing anywhere in California or the world. Like, it's sort of NIMBYs who want a virtue signal, who sort of have these ideologies that, like, don't square with mine. I mean, as a builder, you're like, well, you know, words have meaning, like supply and demand exists, markets exist. Like, incentives exist. And then, you know, I think that government is when people like us don't speak up, when we don't pay attention and hold our media accountable, not just the government, then things get very deranged. And that's what San Francisco was, I think, around Covid and then just by sheer organization, I think that the Chinese of the west side organizing around algebra and, you know, the deaths of our elders, going to farmers markets and like, literally physically, like, telling each other they're killing us, they're killing us. Right. ABC News, you know, literally the meat, the mainstream media TV channel of San Francisco and the Bay Area would not cover anti Chinese and anti Asian crime.

[Chris Dixon]

Wow.

[Gary Tan]

And you know that it's like unconscionable.

[Chris Dixon]

Right.

[Gary Tan]

Like our institutions failed us. And the great thing is, like, when the system becomes so odious, you've got to put your body on it. I think that was Mario Savio. And it's kind of, I mean, it's ironic almost to like, say that. But on the other hand, like, that's what I believe. Like, they can't do this to us and we're going to stop it. And even at, like, personal peril, even at, you know, reputational cost, like, we should be willing to take that cost because that's our covenant with our fellow man and our fellow citizen, you know, and if we don't do it, who's going to do it? Like, nobody does it. And I'm super proud of what we're doing in San Francisco because we have beat back that ideological set of people who, like, created this mess. And, you know, it's not perfect in San Francisco, but it's getting better.

[Chris Dixon]

It's amazing right now. I mean, I think I saw that Lurie might be the most popular mayor or politician in the entire country. Things have gotten so much better. Everybody sees it, feels it in the vibe. Some people say, I wonder why. But I think for those of us who know, we see that your sort of stewardship, not just of the industry, of the startup community, of sort of technology, but also of the community is one of the big catalysts. So thank you for doing that work.

[Gary Tan]

Thank you so much. Yeah, so. And I think San Francisco should be the beacon for pushing this back in every blue city city in America. And, you know, that's what Garyslist.org is basically. How do we take the lessons that we learned here? And like, LA needs this, New York needs this, Minneapolis needs this, Seattle needs this.

[Chris Dixon]

Well, and also let's find, you know, to connect the two, the sort of, you know, culture, society and technology. Like, let's find very local ways for the ambition that this technology unlocks to show up. You know, I was in London last week and we were talking a little about what's possible. It's like, hey, you don't have to have an American vision for how AI impacts your society. If you want, want the NHS to be incredible, then, like, you could do that with this technology. So the kind of, the opportunity for ambition to be very localized in our communities, I think is something really interesting.

[Gary Tan]

Yeah. And so, yeah, act local, like, take care of the people right next to you. Like, you know, I, I think it's funny, so many people get very, very obsessed with national. I don't even want to look at national generally right now. It's like, you know what, Like, I care about San Francisco, I care about housing, I care about crime, I care about, you know, treatment and recovery.

[Chris Dixon]

Yeah.

[Gary Tan]

And if we do that, like, we can have the society we want to live in. And then, you know, if we fix local, like, state and national will fix itself because, like, on a five or ten year basis, like, the people who win up there, like, they, they will come up through a system that's functional and about saying no to things that don't make sense, about saying yes to the things that are awesome for the people.

[Chris Dixon]

I love it. All right, Gary, first of many. Thanks, brother.

[Gary Tan]

Thanks, bro.

[Chris Dixon]

This is great.

[Gary Tan]

Cool. Yeah.

[Podcast Host/Narrator]

Thanks for listening to this episode of the A16Z podcast. If you like this episode, be sure to, like, comment, subscribe, leave us a rating or review and share it with your friends and family. For more episodes go to YouTube, Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Follow us on X16Z and subscribe to our [e-mail] thanks again for listening and I'll see you in the next episode. As a reminder, the content here is for informational purposes only, should not be taken as legal, business, tax or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any A16Z fund. Please note that A16Z and its affiliates may also maintain investments in the companies discussed in this podcast. For more details, including a link to our investments, please see a16z.com disclosures.