Garry TanPresident of Y Combinator
The importance of earnestness in successful founders
Shane Parrish00:38:05 - 00:38:29

Road, would you say? In terms of personal characteristics, it sounded like determination was definitely one of the most important outside of the company or venture. What are the other personal sort of skills or behaviors or characteristics that people have that you say you would think correlates to not only the successful first time, but second, third, fourth.

Garry Tan00:38:29 - 00:41:40

Yeah, I mean, the number one thing that I want that comes to mind for me is, I mean, maybe it's even surprising because that's not a word that you might associate with Silicon Valley founders. I think of the word earnest. So what does enest mean? Like, incredibly sincere. I think basically what you see is what you get. Like you're not trying to be something else. It's like authentic, but like, you know, even humble in that respect. Right. Like I'm trying to do this thing the opposite. I mean, and it's surprising because, you know, I don't know if people associate that with Silicon Valley startups, but I see that in the founders that are the most successful and most durable. I see it in Brian Armstrong at Coinbase. Like, and which is fascinating because that's definitely not the trait that you would apply to most crypto founders. And, you know, I would use Sam Bankman Free as sort of the opposite of that. Like, you know, Brian Armstrong is an incredibly earnest founder who literally read the Satoshi Nakamoto white paper and said, this is going to be the future. And let me work backwards from that future. You know, when you talk to him, like, the reason why he wanted these things, like comes directly out of his own experience. I mean, at Airbnb they were dealing with the financial systems of myriad countries and it's like international. Just sending money from one country to another was totally fraught and totally not something that was accessible to normal people, like remittance is this crazy scam. It's insane, like how many fees that people have to pay just to like send money home or do cross border commerce. Right. So this is something that was incredibly earnest of Brian Armstrong to do. He said, here's a thing that is broken in the world that, you know, he saw personally, I think he spent time and Buenos Aires in Argentina and he saw hyperinflation. And he said, this is a technology that solves real problems that I have seen hurt people and I know that this technology can solve it. And then after that he's just like nose to the grindstone, working backwards from that thing that he wants to create in the world. And you know, it's no surprise to me. I mean, there were many years in there that I think our whole community were at. We were looking at someone like Sam Bankman fried and just wondering like, what's going on over there. He speed ran this sort of money power fame game to an extreme degree. So much so that he stole customer funds to do it. And like, that was the answer. Like, that's anti earnest. Like, that is the definition of he was a crook, he's in jail now. And you know, my hope is that people who look, if you just look at Brian Armstrong versus sbs, I'm hoping that you young people listening to this right now take that to heart. It's like the things that actually win. I mean. And going back to Buffett, I went to their sort of conclave in Omaha.

Shane Parrish00:41:40 - 00:41:42

Oh, you went to the Woodstock for Capital? Yeah.

The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish cover

The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish

#226 Garry Tan: Billion-Dollar Misfits — Inside Y Combinator’s Startup Formula

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