Garry Tan (; born 1981) is the founder of

Initialized Capital Initialized Capital is a venture capital fund founded in 2011 and headquartered in San Francisco. It was founded by Alexis Ohanian, Harjeet Taggar, and Garry Tan. As of 2021, it has raised more than $3.2 billion in assets. Initialized Capital ha ...

. He previously co-founded

Posterous Posterous was a simple blogging platform started in May 2008. It supported integrated and automatic posting to other social media tools such as Flickr, Twitter, and Facebook, a built-in Google Analytics package, and custom themes. It was based in ...

and Posthaven. He was also an early employee at

Palantir Technologies Palantir Technologies is a public American software company that specializes in big data analytics. Headquartered in Denver, Colorado, it was founded by Peter Thiel, Nathan Gettings, Joe Lonsdale, Stephen Cohen, and Alex Karp in 2003. The compa ...

, and a partner at

Y Combinator Y Combinator (YC) is an American technology startup accelerator launched in March 2005. It has been used to launch more than 3,000 companies, including Airbnb, Coinbase, Cruise, DoorDash, Dropbox, Instacart, Quora, PagerDuty, Reddit, Str ...

Early life and education

Tan was born in 1981. Tan's parents were Singaporean immigrants. Tan grew up in

Fremont, California Fremont is a city in Alameda County, California, United States. Located in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, Bay Area, Fremont has a population of 230,504 as of 2020, making it the fourth List of cities and towns in the San Fra ...

and graduated from American High School. He started programming at 14-years-old and found his first job by cold-calling the

Yellow Pages The yellow pages are telephone directories of businesses, organized by category rather than alphabetically by business name, in which advertising is sold. The directories were originally printed on yellow paper, as opposed to white pages for ...

. He attended

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

from 1999 to 2003, and graduated with a bachelor's degree in Computer Systems Engineering.

Career

Tan worked at Microsoft and then became the 10th employee at

. In 2008, Tan co-founded

, a blogging platform, which was acquired by Twitter in 2012 for $20 million. He co-founded Posthaven after the shutdown of

. He joined

in 2011 as a designer in residence and partner. At Y Combinator, Tan helped compile a directory of "the best and the brightest interaction designers and visual designers" and wrote

Coinbase Coinbase Global, Inc., branded Coinbase, is an American publicly traded company that operates a cryptocurrency exchange platform. Coinbase is a distributed company; all employees operate via remote work and the company lacks a physical headq ...

’s first seed round check in 2012. While at Y Combinator, Tan and fellow Y Combinator partners raised $7 million in venture capital funding to support Y Combinator alumni companies, including

Instacart Instacart is an American company that operates a grocery delivery and pick-up service in the United States and Canada. The company offers its services via a website and mobile app. The service allows customers to order groceries from participatin ...

and

. In 2012, Tan founded

, a venture capital fund. In 2012, Tan raised $7 million for Initialized Capital’s first funding round. In 2013, Tan, Harjeet Taggar, and

Alexis Ohanian Alexis Kerry Ohanian ( hy, Ալեքսիս Քերի Օհանյան; born April 24, 1983) is an American internet entrepreneur and investor. He is best known as the co-founder and executive chairman of the social media site Reddit along with Ste ...

raised $39 million for Initialized Capital. In 2016, Initialized Capital raised a $115 million third fund. The latest fund was closed in December 2021 for $700 million. As of 2021, Tan remains an active investor in Initialized Capital. Tan invested in

, and

Flexport Flexport Inc. is an American multinational corporation that focuses on supply chain management and logistics, including order management, trade financing, insurance, freight forwarding and customs brokerage. The company is headquartered in San ...

. Tan has been listed on the ''

Forbes ''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine owned by Integrated Whale Media Investments and the Forbes family. Published eight times a year, it features articles on finance, industry, investing, and marketing topics. ''Forbes'' also re ...

Midas List The ''Forbes'' Midas list is the annual ranking by ''Forbes'' magazine of the most influential and best-performing venture capital investors. Described by Kara Swisher as the "Oscars for venture capitalists in tech," the Midas List uses parameter ...

from 2018-2022. Tan has been selected as the next president of Y Combinator, starting January 2023. He will be replacing Geoff Ralston.

Politics

Tan donated to

YIMBY The YIMBY movement (short for "yes, in my back yard") is a pro-housing movement in contrast and opposition to the NIMBY ("''not'' in my back yard") phenomenon. The YIMBY position supports increasing the supply of housing within cities where hous ...

groups such as the San Francisco Bay Area Renters' Federation, YIMBY Action, and YIMBY Law. In 2020, Tan said in an interview that he followed San Francisco housing news, and supported housing of all kinds, including market-rate housing,

affordable housing Affordable housing is housing which is deemed affordable to those with a household income at or below the median as rated by the national government or a local government by a recognized housing affordability index. Most of the literature on affo ...

, and

homeless shelters Homeless shelters are a type of homeless service agency which provide temporary residence for homeless individuals and families. Shelters exist to provide residents with safety and protection from exposure to the weather while simultaneously re ...

. Tan donated at least $54,500 to GrowSF, a San Francisco pro-growth political group. In 2021-2022, Tan gave at least $188,451 to local political causes. In 2021-2022, Tan promoted and raised funds for the

recall Recall may refer to: * Recall (bugle call), a signal to stop * Recall (information retrieval), a statistical measure * ''ReCALL'' (journal), an academic journal about computer-assisted language learning * Recall (memory) * ''Recall'' (Overwatch ...

of members of the San Francisco School Board. Tan himself donated $20,000 to the campaign, and fundraised from friends like Cyan Banister. He promoted the recall and raised money from his

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

following. Tan supported the recall campaign of San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin. Tan donated at least $100,000 to the effort. Tan blamed Boudin for physical attacks on Asians. Tan alleged that Boudin failed to hold violent criminal offenders accountable and failed to protect the general public, particularly the least advantaged. After the recall campaign succeeded, Tan supported the next District Attorney,

Brooke Jenkins Brooke Jenkins (born 1981/1982) is an American lawyer serving as the 30th District Attorney of San Francisco. On July 8, 2022, Jenkins was appointed interim district attorney by Mayor London Breed following the successful recall of Chesa Boudin, ...

, and moderate politician

Matt Dorsey Matt Dorsey is an American politician and communications professional. Dorsey has served on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors representing District 6 since his appointment by Mayor London Breed on May 9, 2022. He previously served as the Hea ...

Personal

As of 2022, Tan lives in

Noe Valley, San Francisco Noe Valley ( ; originally spelt Noé) is a neighborhood in the central part of San Francisco, California. It is named for Don José de Jesús Noé, noted 19th-century Californio statesman and ranchero, who owned much of the area and served as may ...

References

External links