Garry Tan on company culture

About Garry Tan

Garry Tan, President and CEO of Y Combinator, has been speaking about the rise of "AI-native" companies, which he describes as organizations where small teams use AI agents to achieve output previously requiring hundreds of employees. In a March 2026 appearance, Tan stated that shifting from writing individual lines of code to managing AI agents has produced a roughly 400x increase in output. He has said that founders should treat AI not as an autocomplete tool but as a workforce, and that core organizational components such as skill files and resolver tables can be mapped to agent-based systems. Tan has also cited examples of companies reaching $6 million to $12 million in annual revenue within six to twelve months with teams of under a dozen people, a phenomenon he attributes to large language models. Tan has discussed Y Combinator's role in standardizing seed-stage funding through the SAFE document, which he described as a pivotal moment in Silicon Valley. He has argued that lines of code can be a valid productivity metric when paired with rigorous testing, and that "taste" — the human ability to judge what is good or bad — is a durable asset that cannot be delegated to AI. Tan has also commented on housing policy in San Francisco, stating that rents should be lower and that increasing supply, rather than subsidizing demand, is necessary. He noted that there were no new housing starts in San Francisco proper for the prior calendar year.

Profile compiled from Garry Tan's verified public interviews and appearances. See all quotes & transcripts →