Garry Tan

The only thing that matters is did we make a thing that people want?

Going hard.

must be much more palatable knowing in 13 weeks this is over.

Yeah, it is a process.

I mean, most of the companies, the median company raises $2 to $3 million.

On the high end, people raise $10 to $20 million after 13 weeks.

So there are real stakes to the competition.

And then just running people fast at a particular thing matters a lot.

I've never seen anything speed founders up in such a profound way.

I spent a couple of years sort of in my wilderness years.

I spent about, funny enough, it was seven years in the wilderness.

It sounds ridiculous to call it the wilderness.

I started my own VC fund that was very successful called Initialized.

And during that time away from YC, I would try to do pre-seed.

I'd meet teams that I really loved and I'd give them half a million dollars and I'd say, go.

Here's all the essays.

Yeah.

And I meet them every week, but they're in the coworking space in the WeWork and they're, you know, sitting there in the coffee room, like hanging out the way they used to when they worked at Microsoft or something.

You haven't changed anything yet.

I imagine it's the same deal with just any creative profession.