Garry Tan on YC, First Principles Thinking, and Progress in the Age of AI Silicon Valley's advantage is that it gives weird, ambitious outsiders permission to try, find one another, and become insiders through building. Garry Tan learned this firsthand throughout his career at companies like Microsoft, Palantir, and YC. AI may now extend the power of Silicon Valley much further. Garry joins a16z’s Anish Acharya to cover the turns that shaped him, why founders should trust direct experience over consensus, how AI is allowing small teams to do more with less, and why he's deeply optimistic about AI-native companies and the future of SF: 00:00 Intro 00:26 Getting into tech 04:45 Silicon Valley culture & finding your people at the fringe 10:59 What makes YC great: a birthright for tech outsiders 13:54 Solo founders, vibe coding, and founders being 400x themselves 21:05 Business loops: skillifying every task into a markdown file 23:03 Tokenmaxxing: how to live in 2028 today 28:09 Using AI to make conflict constructive 33:10 The torture of the white-collar job & life above the API line 39:08 Why bureaucracy is a whitepill 41:33 What the next computer looks like: voice, memory & the harness wars 44:44 Local politics & making SF a beacon @garrytan @illscience