Y Combinator CEO Shares How They Pick Winners, Advice For Founders + Lessons From Paul Graham | Garry Tan Interview

Episode 642: Sam Parr ( https://x.com/theSamParr ) and Shaan Puri ( https://x.com/ShaanVP ) talk to Garry Tan ( https://x.com/garrytan ), CEO of Y Combinator, about the sauce that makes YC outperform the rest of Silicon Valley plus lessons from Paul Graham, Peter Thiel and Garry’s first million. 
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Show Notes: 
(0:00) Winning the game
(3:16) Being the Harvard of startups
(7:31) How YC outperforms most Silicon Valley investors
(9:36) Spotting extreme winners
(14:14) Capital-as-a-service
(16:34) How Garry hustled at 14 to get his into financial security
(23:04) Turning down Peter Thiel's offer to start Palantir
(32:20) Garry's first million
(44:57) Early days at YC
(51:31) The edge of startups with a 2-pizza team
(54:36) Advice for founders in AI
(1:05:57) The spoon-bending story

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Links:
• YC - https://www.ycombinator.com/
• Founding Sales - https://www.foundingsales.com/

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Check Out Shaan's Stuff:
Need to hire? You should use the same service Shaan uses to hire developers, designers, & Virtual Assistants → it’s called Shepherd (tell ‘em Shaan sent you): https://bit.ly/SupportShepherd

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Check Out Sam's Stuff:
• Hampton - https://www.joinhampton.com/
• Ideation Bootcamp - https://www.ideationbootcamp.co/
• Copy That - https://copythat.com
• Hampton Wealth Survey - https://joinhampton.com/wealth
• Sam’s List - http://samslist.co/

My First Million is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by The HubSpot Podcast Network // Production by Arie Desormeaux // Editing by Ezra Bakker Trupiano