Orange Crush

Y Combinator was designed to be a supercondensed version of Silicon Valley. Now that it's at full potency, can it maintain its outsider pose while being the ultimate insiders' network?

- By Ainsley Harris

WITH ONE WEEK UNTIL THE JANUARY KICKOFF OF Y COMBINATOR'S WINTER 2024 STARTUP BATCH, THERE'S A HUSH IN THE PRESTIGIOUS ACCELERATOR PROGRAM'S CAVERNOUS NEW SAN FRANCISCO HEADQUARTERS.

THE ONLY SOUND, ASIDE FROM STEADY RAIN STREAKING THE WINDOWS, is the muffled labor of two YC partners in a makeshift subterranean kitchen, where they are practicing a chicken and dumplings recipe to serve to a group of incoming founders. Like thousands of hopefuls before them, these founders will have 12 weeks to sprint toward product-market fit and notch the kind of growth metrics that wow investors on Demo Day, laying the foundation for unicorn status and possible Silicon Valley glory-no pressure. The gentle aroma of garlic drifts upward.

Garry Tan, a YC alum (summer 2008) who was named president and CEO just over a year ago, enters a glass-enclosed meeting room at one end of the banquet hall-size space, a former shipyard powerhouse. On X, formerly known as Twitter, Tan is known for his swaggering techno-optimism and sharpelbowed politics (San Francisco's lefty establishment is a frequent target). But in person, his voice invokes ASMR vibes. Only the latent energy in his posture, as he sits forward in his seat, hints at the intensity of his online persona.

Tan traveled to Taiwan over the holidays, but he didn't exactly escape the YC community. "It turns out everyone was in Taipei," he says, mentioning that he ran into Coinbase cofounder and CEO Brian Armstrong "in a $5 noodle shop." (Tan's $300,000 investment in Coinbase, a 2012 YC participant that he personally backed through his venture firm, Initialized, was worth $2.4 billion at the time of Coinbase's public listing in 2021, an estimated 6,000 times return.) Look around San Francisco these days, and YC's community of startup founders, now 10,000 strong, is just as ubiquitous.