Garry Tan

When you go in and sort of astroturf a business idea with someone who is a suit and

not a builder.

You get an idea like that.

I think it was a men's magazine, some like 20 page PowerPoint about like all buzzwords.

It's basically like mediated from a new sphere of people who are just disconnected.

Like here's a bunch of abstractions.

And if it's hot, if it sounds hot, then I better get ahead of it.

But that's like

trying to navigate while you're blind.

And what a builder can do is they know how this stuff is built.

They got eyes, they can see.

So you can just see like, hey, there's this thing over here, I'm gonna go build that thing.

And then they build it and then it's awesome.

So would you say the best VCs today are the ones who are the builders?

I would say so.

I mean, that's just sort of necessary, especially early stage.

It just doesn't make sense that you could be that good an investor without being a builder first.

How different do the ideas change from an initial pitch until the thing that ends up being successful in the world?

There's some of a little bit of both.

Someone like Tony Hsu from DoorDash, that's what they were and that's what they were always.