Y Combinator CEO Shares How They Pick Winners, Advice For Founders + Lessons From Paul Graham

[Steal this] Grow your biz with AI 👉 clickhubspot.com/gnt

Episode 642: Sam Parr ( x.com/theSamParr ) and Shaan Puri ( x.com/ShaanVP ) talk to Garry Tan ( x.com/garrytan ), CEO of Y Combinator, about the sauce that makes YC outperform the rest of Silicon Valley plus lessons from Paul Graham, Peter Thiel and Garry’s first million.
—
Show Notes:
(0:00) Winning the game
(3:16) Being the Harvard of startups
(7:31) How YC outperforms most Silicon Valley investors
(9:36) Spotting extreme winners
(14:14) Capital-as-a-service
(16:34) How Garry hustled at 14 to get his into financial security
(23:04) Turning down Peter Thiel's offer to start Palantir
(32:20) Garry's first million
(44:57) Early days at YC
(51:31) The edge of startups with a 2-pizza team
(54:36) Advice for founders in AI
(1:05:57) The spoon-bending story

—
Links:
• YC - www.ycombinator.com/
• Founding Sales - www.foundingsales.com/

—
Check Out Shaan's Stuff:
• Shaan's weekly email - www.shaanpuri.com/
• Visit www.somewhere.com/mfm to hire global talent (like Shaan does) and get $500 off for being an MFM listener. Hire developers, assistants, marketing pros, sales teams and more for 80% less than their US equivalents.

—
Check Out Sam's Stuff:
• Hampton - www.joinhampton.com/
• Ideation Bootcamp - www.ideationbootcamp.co/
• Copy That - copythat.com/
• Hampton Wealth Survey - joinhampton.com/wealth
• Sam’s List - samslist.co/

My First Million is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by The HubSpot Podcast Network // Production by Arie Desormeaux // Editing by Ezra Bakker Trupian