Founder of startup capital Gary Tan He will be the president and CEO Y Combinator next year, the two organizations announced today.
Tan takes over the role from Geoff Ralston, who has been with YC since 2011. Ralston did not say what was next for him, only writing: “I’m leaving YC, but I’m certainly not the type to retire and I’m looking forward to some classic adventures.” Tan, however, will continue to serve as a founder and partner at Initialized — a $3.2 billion fund — “with no changes to his current role” next year. After that, he’ll become a strategic advisor to the company — much like Sam Altman did when he took on the role.
Michael Seibel was the CEO of Y Combinator’s accelerator until 2020, when the accelerator went from a traditional partnership to one without many CEOs. Seibel then became an early stage managing director and team partner at Y Combinator. YC says its role at Accelerator has not changed in today’s executive shake-up.
Tan wears many hats. Beyond the co-founded startup, which raised $700 million in funding last year (its sixth largest) and has more than $1 billion in known assets under management; Tan was the founder of YC-backed blogging platform Poster, which was acquired by Twitter in 2012. He was also the tenth employee at Palantir, where he was a founding member of and designed the company’s financial product engineering team. Logo
So the entrepreneur is no stranger to early-stage investment — nor the famous accelerator he’ll be running into soon. Tan in 2010 He was a founder of YC in the summer of 2008 and served as a partner from December 2010 to November 2015. During his partnership, YC said, he has mentored and funded 700 companies and more than a thousand founders.
In fact, Y Combinator’s Ralston gave his title Blog Announcing the change: “Welcome home, Gary Tan.
Ralston continued. “My goal was to cement YC as an institution that would last for decades – not just that Organizational changes But by leading a team that has grown in size Society We bring together, the Products And Capital We offer it for beginners. Software We will build. Gary, a visionary hacker, designer and builder who has described how YC is ‘carved into his heart’, believes in this future and is exactly the right person to take over as CEO of YC.
YC itself He says he was founded in 2005 as “the antidote to the typical venture capital firm.”
In anticipation of the change, it says that it has Initialized. Appointed Jane Wolf and Brett Gibson as managing partners. Wolff, previously president and partner, will continue to invest and lead all Initialized operations. Gibson, who previously served as a general partner (focused on crypto, web2, SaaS and devops), will lead the firm’s early stage investment strategy.
“Since its inception, my goal has always been to surpass the founders. In particular, over the past five years, we have grown our company through the evolution of leadership, investing in talent and adding infrastructure. All the while, we have remained true to our founding principles and delivered strong benchmarks,” Tan wrote in a blog post. Another co-founder of First Capital was Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian in 2015. Months after he left the company in 2020 to launch his own primary operation, 776. Tan Ohanian says he is not leaving the company entirely, but instead exiting. Stepping into the Board Partner role at Initialized. After this article was published, Initialized said Ohanian was no longer a board member of the firm.
“Initialized and YC are very compatible – YC created me, and I created Initialized,” Tan continued.
