If you don’t know who Garry Tan is yet, you will soon—the investor was just name dropped on Forbes’ 2018 Midas Brink List of Venture Capital’s biggest up-and-comers. He’s making big waves in the investment world and we’re thrilled to have him lined up to speak at our PreMoney Investor Conference on October 2nd.
Tan was previously a partner at Y-Combinator and is now the cofounder of Initialized Capital, an early-stage seed fund he started with Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian. Initialized Capital was the earliest investor in trailblazers like Coinbase and Instacart, so Tan knows a thing or two about spotting the “it factor” in young companies.
Not Your Average VC
While many big investors come from a more buttoned-up business world, Tan boasts an impressive technical background, including a degree from Stanford in computer systems engineering.
He spent two years at Microsoft before leaving to become the 10th employee at a little data company called Palantir. There, he co-founded the financial analysis platform that led Palantir to become the $20 billion empire we know today.
Tan later went on to co-found two blogging platforms—Posterous, which raised $10 million and was acquired by Twitter, and Posthaven.
A Road Paved in (Reddit) Gold
Tan spent 2010-2015 at Y-Combinator; starting as a designer creating their internal portal, Bookface, and getting promoted to partner shortly after. While there, he helped over 700 early-stage startups build world-changing companies.
In 2013, he joined forces with fellow YC partner and Reddit cofounder, Alexis Ohanian, to raise $39 million for a founder-focused fund; and thus Initialized Capital was born. Tan is now the managing partner, overseeing the $250 million fund and a portfolio of over 200 companies including Coinbase, Instacart, Opendoor, Patreon, Reddit, and PlanGrid. They call themselves the “honey badgers of venture capitalism” and pride themselves on being a VC firm started by founders, for founders.
Garry Tan and Alexis Ohanian
Garry Tan is just one of the amazing speakers that will be at PreMoney this October, so don’t miss your chance to learn from some of the biggest movers and shakers in the industry.
