Garry Tan

It was insane to see, because I mean, this thing changed my life.

And then now we're rocking and rolling.

Like we're ready to meet this AI thing head on.

How important is it to know the history of the category that you're going into when you're starting a new company?

If I go by the Airbnb example, maybe not so important, but as you're in it, you have to learn everything about it.

In fact, there's an essay about it called Schlepp Blindness.

If the founders of Stripe knew how much work and how terrible it would be, they wouldn't have started.

And that's probably true for a lot of creative endeavor.

Almost anyone, if they knew that they had to go through the shit and you spent too much time thinking about the shit, you'd probably just choose to do something else.

Honestly, starting a company isn't for everyone.

maybe that's probably the biggest myth to dispel that should everyone start a company?

Honestly, like that's like asking, like, should everyone become a musician?

Should everyone become X, Y, or Z?

And the answer is no, there's no one size fits all profession for someone.

And then some of them are so hard, like Founder, that you better know that that's the only thing you could do.

Otherwise you'll go crazy because on every other day, you're going to say, you know what, this is too hard and I'm out.

How much has vibe coding changed things?

I think we're just starting to see it.

The wildest thing right now, though, is to what degree people have not changed their view.

Like, I'm taking a lot of attacks from really smart people, like really smart systems engineers who are really well-respected.