Garry Tan: 95% of YC W25 code is LLM-generated — vibe coding skeptics are 'coping'

all that it's just like it's cope it's like the world just changed we're just trying to help you and you live in that old world where you know you're sitting there uh you know writing your own manual tests and banging your head into the code or you can embrace the future and uh you know get that Alpha get that edge talk to us about how the bar has been raised from a metric standpoint you know YC has always been about you have three months to make a tremendous amount of progress It's really around you know preparing for for demo day the bars all you know anytime you take hundreds of super super talented people and put them under that pressure uh they're going to produce amazing results uh from a revenue standpoint from a traction standpoint you know it seems like the bar has jumped uh dramatically but would love some more color there yeah uh I guess like y see these like we've been really uh intentional about um trying to go back to Founders who are actually at right at the beginning so you know the these numbers fluctuate but pretty much every time 70 to 80% of the companies have uh no revenue and uh you know probably 70 to 80% generally are unlaunched so uh it's really during those 10 weeks like can you go from zero to say a 100,000 or several hundred, a year Revenue uh but even that is like you know sort of secondary like uh the funniest thing when you really think about it you think about a company that actually does make it to 100 million or a billion dollars a year in Revenue like are you really going to look at the first 10 weeks and say well you went to you know well that company went to 50K ARR and that other company went to 150k AR it's like if you like play it all the way out like it's all these other factors um so you know I I think basically if you can't get revenue or customers during the 10 weeks of YC like man that was the wrong idea or you don't got the skills um and even then like you can't count teams out like there are tons of teams that uh deferred demo day had nothing had had you know they took their money and basically NOS to the grindstone like stayed in the IDM Ma and then they went on to create things like retool and you know these are things that everyone uses now so oh man I remember day wild passed yeah my my my favorite joke on the show is that like the the way to outperform as an LP is to travel back in time and just give John as much money as possible to invest in in his early uh first and second YC B I remember yeah I remember being at you know demo day with retool and being like that company looks cool but I don't even know what I would say to them because I didn't realize you could just like yeah just invest uh anyway um we we've had this uh thesis obviously like you know YC anything successful attracts like haters uh we've had this thesis that YC is like entering like a Renaissance like with the AI stuff like this is the best time to be running like the YC business model but can you talk a little bit about um specifically like are do you think about yourself running YC in founder mode and can you talk about what that means and what you're doing and what's changing and how you want to take it to like the next level of course man I mean you know some of it is like I'm trying to do founder mode but you know shout out to the original goat Paul Graham like and Jessica Livingston and you know Robert Morris and Trevor Blackwell you know like I I'm I it turns out you know you don't have to be the founder to try to run the founder mode Playbook and Brian chesky himself is on my board and when I came back uh to YC the first thing he said was all right well if you were the founder uh what's zerob based accounting like what are you going to do and uh you know there shades of that in what elon's doing with the US government like you know I think uh I just stepped in it by bringing that up but hey like you know what this is actually how uh you should be a leader like you actually have to think about things uh from first principls from zerob based accounting like if knowing what we know now would we do that thing that we're doing and you know the enemy of every bureaucracy is uh you know thinking yeah so what are the biggest decision making do you know doing the right thing so uh I think YC was always the like Center the sort of like tree of prosperity uh you know I I left and spent seven years in my seven years in the wilderness uh running into initialized and uh I you know built an amazing team those guys are doing awesome um I realize that actually if I stayed at initialized and didn't come back and uh heed the call of Paul and Jessica to write the ship at YC uh I would be out of a business I you know I at initialized would have been out of business if uh YC itself was not going in the right direction and here we are like I think that we're doing it and we're going to keep doing it and the biggest thing that um you know it's it's just funny that founder mode was uh the meme that was born at the alumni uh conf top top alumni conference and you know um Brian chesky didn't even he wasn't even like scheduled to appear and I just kept texting him because he would always come to the YC batch and give his uh you know it's funny for him he's like yeah I'm going to tell the um the uh selling serial story and he's so generous with his time he does that every single time but um I remember seeing him extremely animated uh telling his not his zero to one story but his like save the company pre-ipo story where he had to nobody believed in him covid was happening you know and then he just buckled up he's like look I made a lot you know he admits like he made a bunch of different mistakes that um you the reason why at the top alum event that he spoke at that was such a like pivotal moment I think that uh we brought together about 200 of all of our top Founders uh you know there're about 60 or 70 unicorns uh represented and I think that we unlocked you know easily 10 to1 billion dollars in New Market Cap like that very night because um there's just people who you know there is a machine in silcon Valley uh and it's not unintentional it it's not um malicious like you know our our corporate governance and Delaware SE Corps are design boards are like designed to maximize shareholder value um but the there's a bunch of advice that people along the way tell you that like are self-serving that uh cause you to do the wrong things like you hire people who uh did it at a big company before and then you're supposed to do it that way and it's like no no like well maybe like you know there are some things like maybe Finance and Accounting that you shouldn't innovate on right you innovate a little bit too much there and you go to jail yeah but do podcasting and about you you know be founder mode yeah yeah uh what you what do you say to people that want to put YC in a box right you guys have had some high-profile hard tech deep Tech launches recently that seem like amazing companies and there's push back from people that that almost want say you know you guys are it's like obviously completely BS because there's a long history um and the guy who's running the plays was a paler like it's you shouldn't be surprised that there's defense Tech coming out of this thing once Gary takes over I I don't want five eyes yeah yeah so I mean we we have strong opinions here around why this is great because if you're a super bright you know engineer technologist and you want to build something YC can teach you how to build you know a company you have to build your product and sort of own your Market but yeah what do you say to people that want to put YC you know in a box and and say STI stick with SAS stick with software oh man I mean YC was never just sass you know I mean boom is uh has you know astris is right across the street they're like getting satellites up there albo Labs like I mean albo is super hardcore because uh they basically have made spy satellites but uh you know they're they're better than what the US government can do and you know they might just replace uh replace that market for that it's just nuts like you know this is a small team out of Colorado uh you know putting satellites up that are better than like the entire you know government waste machine it's like not I guess you know in some in some respects like it's not that surprising actually so ok go through they're a nuclear company yeah we got nuclear companies we got you know helon a fusion company um I get it you know what like I think that we're it's a weird uh thing to sort of deal with for me cuz I always think of myself as the little guy but you know I got to realize like hey I get it like we're going to take the arrows and it's fine we're just going to keep helping Founders um and the reality is like hey uh you know actually like it's I want to shout out the gundo Bros I want to be like you know what like you guys keep doing your thing like you're always weling at YC like y you know that I know there was like a little bit of X beef uh but there shouldn't be you know like you know don't see it as the challenge the challenge with YC is for every you know 200 Founders you let in you got to reject a bunch of people right because there's just not enough space and not everybody's sort of qualified or it's not the right sort of moment uh but the ultimate evidence of the value of YC is that you have highly highly successful Founders that go back for a second time right and so whenever I see drama on the timeline about YC uh it's never coming from people that have experienced the product right it's always coming from you know people that just really aren't Live players right like people that aren't really in the conversation so um yeah so yeah be a be a player character man and if you're a player character it's just like you don't got to be like that yeah uh can you talk a little bit about uh just long-term trends in making Hardware a viable startup at the 500k investment level I mean when I went through I see there was this whole like Hardware is hard it was always like oh it's going to be so Capital intensive and yet I think we're seeing people do the YC model and yeah you're probably not going to be shipping a million units of you know whatever boat you're building on demo day like you could serve a million customers if you're building a social networking app yeah but I mean the reason why hard tech at YC can happen is like I mean kind of even going back to what we were talking about earlier like it's not necessarily just about you know SAS did you grow 10% week on week like did you hit 100K AR like that's you know sort of weak like spreadsheet thinking and uh the hardtech companies that do super well they show up with like you know if you had a super crack team that was the team to do this what would they be able to get done in 10 weeks and sometimes it's a prototype sometimes it's a demo like uh the other thing is I have more than a billion dollars a year in Capital that's basically just like hard allocated to YC companies uh not from us from like you know hundreds of VCS who now uh are all coming back to demo day in droves and uh you know name me another place that has that actually like and they're not necessarily just like doing the plug and chug like you know they are actually meeting the founders they're actually making up their own minds they are um you know and they're funding hardtech you know I think about 90% Ai and uh you know the age of intelligence is here dude like the machines are you able to do all knowledge work like that's you know insane and then simultaneous to that like I'm really excited about our hard tech stuff because that's I mean that's that's the built world like how do we actually create prosperity and abundance for one another and uh you know God knows in America we need it you know like we don't even have we can't even make screws for ourselves it's nuts right you know I just saw bology in uh December in Singapore and he like super blackpilled me on you know American manufacturing we need you know a THX what we have right now and uh you know it's not it's not that we're missing Capital it's not even that we're missing uh you know intelligence or people right like it's the will like we have to have the will to do it and uh you know so my message to everyone watching is like if you're thinking about it like YC is a great place to be it's not the only place right but like we think we're trying to build you know one of the best places and um you know it is it is for AI it's for software it's for all kinds of Technology we are you know building abundance from here and we want to find the people who believe that stuff it's like let's leave all all the political crap on the side like that's not what's important what's important is we're at the dawn of just like un believable Innovation and you know all the world's like you know being Rewritten by by code and Adams and you know what what brush stroke what line of code you know what what will you bring what you know yeah what Hardware will you build uh talk to talk to us about happen stance you've I I've seen probably like 10 or 20 posts from you about the company it seems to be a a personal favorite it uh like I'd love to I'd love to hear the pitch uh you know uh from you directly yeah I mean I I just use it a lot personally I mean I get hit up for um you know I was thinking about how Sam mman when he h had my role here at YC uh he used to have like basically a team of EAS and his email wasn't uh I think it wasn't even Sama it was uh sa- router and it was sort of a a nod to basically what I feel like I am now like I get you know dozens of requests every day from all kinds of YY Founders and you know people I've run across and um that's pretty cool I you know I I relish the ability to be like a shelling point for people who believe in Tech and then um the best thing I can do is like oh yeah knowhow like Capital like you it's human capital all these things like people are recruiting they're trying to sell like um if I think they are legit um I can Bas it's it's the purest form of uh creating value from information right and so happen stance just happens to be that thing for me um you know the world is way too big like my world now is uh I think my I have like 11,000 contacts in my phone or something it's like I always hit the I always break Apple like apple my my iPhone cannot support 11,000 contracts you uh are you an inbox zero guy or do you just give up and try to make sure you give up it's a river that I waiting for an email for me right you know I don't know you might have to I'm sorry you might have to's on tvpn come come ask the question in the chat uh one more question for you you put out a uh you know YC's you know um famous for your request for startups list uh wanted to highlight one specifically that you had uh called out which was a secure AI app store we want a new kind of AI App Store an OS layer that sits on your computer or phone uh it should protect user data offer one shared memory help users find the best AI apps and help developers build and handle payments talk a little bit more about that are you seeing you know teams in that space yet that you're excited about or is this you know coming down the pipeline hopefully I think it's coming down the pipeline um yeah in full transparency I don't know if I found one that like really quite fit my you know uh on my end yet um it also might just be too early um the tricky thing is it's pretty clear that uh open AI anthropic and uh you know Windows Apple iOS Android like this is sort of how the OS almost inevitably will work assuming that people still make software um and it's just it it's more like a a thought exercise like I think it is possible for someone to do this right now and uh we'll see if it happens I'm I'm we're on the lookout fantastic uh well speaking of gundo Bros you wanted to give a shout out to the gundo we got Augustus joining next we want say it's a party on this show uh one person after another well thank you so much for joining Gary we'll have to have you back talk more soon it's always a pleasure chatting and uh hopefully we'll see you at YC demo day all right and look out for application tbn.

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