The a16z Show · Wednesday, August 12, 2026
Gary Tan highlighted the importance of Y Combinator's community for founders, describing it as a place where they can be 'super real' and find support during difficult times. He contrasted this with the performative nature of some industry events.
“The only other thing that I'd say, like YC people get that a lot of people don't get, is, um, a community of people who you can be super real with.”
“Like if you go to a tech crunch event, you look to the left, you look to the right, and it's like, are you really going to be able to tell anything real?”
“Honestly, founders really need that. Like it's very solitary. It's, um, you know, on the day that you lose your best customer, on the day that your best engineer quits, like who are you going to call?”