In 2008 I showed up to Y Combinator Startup School to take photos of speakers and learn how to start a startup.
I was an engineer and designer and had never started a company before.
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Garry Tan 陈嘉兴 
@garrytan
President & CEO —Founder —PM/designer/engineer who helps founders—YouTuber—San Franciscan
Garry Tan 陈嘉兴 🛡️’s Tweets
If you are building a company, especially an AI company, San Francisco is the place to be.
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A memo I sent to the team last month about changing my mind on remote, and moving the team to SF:
flocrivello.com/changing-my-mi
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This is 100% true. Dealers took over my corner and made it impossible for my business to survive. #ThatsFentalife
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Small businesses can’t survive when open-air drug markets move into the neighborhood. #ThatsFentalife
Support local business. Send a letter to ensure effective programs to end the drug crisis are funded in the next budget.
tsfact.org/3VXx39o
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there's a kind of person on here who really really wants ozempic to not be an efficient impulse-control drug, because that would mean we could solve social problems via technological advancement instead of moral reform, and their worldview is libidinally opposed to that
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Peskin and Preston hate legitimate airing of San Francisco’s real community problems: telling the real story on fentanyl exposes both their grift & failed ideology
This is why we will vote out Peskin Preston Ronen Walton Chan and all their friends cronies & endorsements in 2024
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Why are SF progressives so upset over an ad campaign targeting drug dealers? bit.ly/43myMb7 @Twolfrecovery @TSFAction #ThatsFentalife
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“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”
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In SF beauty and madness can be so close together it’s hard to reconcile at times.
One thing is clear though. In 2024 we must vote out the ideologues and poseur politicians who are destroying our city and letting people die on the streets.
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Social media isn’t social - it’s performative.
Where’s the chitchat, the banter, the easy laughter?
We made something new.
Push-to-talk, whenever you want.
With perfect transcripts and AI art.
A dinner party in your pocket.
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Never feel alone again.
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There are so many bomb dropping truths in this article by that I don't know where to begin. But I'll try. 🧵
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People desire to exercise power. Exercising it through others is just as good, so if you have power other people find ways to attempt to direct your use of that power.
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*Taps sign*
“Outsourcing government functions to nonprofits is a form of privatization”
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The silliness of La Sombrita prompted me to write a giant rant about how excessive reliance on nonprofits is hurting the progressive project.
noahpinion.blog/p/nonprofits-a
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I have invented a more efficient solar-powered carbon-neutral shade device than La Sombrita, which achieves far greater coverage throughout all hours of the day!
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Next time someone tells you in your org something can’t be simplified or reformed you can tell them even IBM can do it, why can’t we?
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Over the last 9 months we’ve deleted close to 80% of the marketing footprint off ibm.com.
Tens of thousands of pages.
The result is that traffic, conversion and all our experience and NPS metrics are up.
It was a gross project but I’ll tell you about it.
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Heard from a VC LP this week:
“If you just had liquidity on Byte and Stripe, it would release an incredible amount of cash back into the system - I think most people don’t realize how many LPs’ overallocation issues could be solved by one or two companies”
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A man who was found guilty of lighting UC Berkeley students on fire at a boba shop near Cal in 2020 has been released from custody without prison time or probation after agreeing to participate in a diversion program for veterans, court records show.
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most depressing thing about trying to reform a process that hamstrings government is that we keep coming up with bizarre workarounds, like hiring staff to navigate the process, designating some projects as having priority in the process, etc instead of just…reducing the process
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1) Notice people around you who bug the shit out of you
2) Notice that they remind you of aspects of yourself that you've rejected
3) Figure out how to enfold those aspects into your plans
4) Watch everything in your life get better
5) Still be annoyed by those people but less so
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I don’t know what DA thinks deserves jail time, but apparently lighting Asian students on fire doesn’t cut it.
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For policy wonks: this Stanford study recommends a deeper analysis of the effects of rampant drug use in housing first settings
It also directly questions whether it’s worth it to spend all that money for housing first when it diverts money from shelters
siepr.stanford.edu/publications/p
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To do something about this in SF, support and
Harm reduction and recovery need to work hand in hand.
Harm reduction with no recovery at all is paying people to do drugs until they die
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I'm also proud to announce that I'm leading west coast initiatives for @GoodDrugPolicy. If you believe we need need a pragmatic bi-partisan voice in drug policy, you can support me here. Just indicate your tax deductible donation is for my efforts.
paypal.com/donate/?hosted
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Portugal actually mandates treatment and it is a fix for this public health crisis.
It’s not humane to let the most vulnerable people in our communities get paid to do drugs until they die.
Recovery is necessary.
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Portugal is a model for drug recovery—how are they so successful at getting people treatment, when #SanFrancisco struggles so much? Join us May 17 to see what SF can learn from Portugal, and how City Hall can *actually* end the drug crisis.
tsfaction.org/virtual-event-
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Harm reduction is necessary, but the new West Coast iteration of it means minimal or no treatment.
It means sober facilities explicitly will never be funded with public dollars.
This is a big change that may be causing the problem to balloon, as open air drug markets blossom.
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“Of that nearly half a billion spent last year in San Francisco on permanent housing, none of it came with sobriety requirements.
Of the 515 residents the city tracked in permanent housing since 2016, 25% died, while 21% returned to the streets.”
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“San Francisco also leads the nation highest in overdose deaths — nearly 80 per 100,000 residents, almost three times the number in New York, according to the CDC.”
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“SF allocated $268M to nonprofits in the name of ‘homelessness prevention’ in 2022, all of which must follow a harm reduction approach in order to receive funding.
This number—the highest in the nation—is nearly 50 percent more than in NY, a city eight times larger than SF.”
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In 2021 the city spent $1.1B on homelessness, up 500% since 2016.
The result? Homelessness increased 64%
Where does all this money go?
Much of it is permanent housing, where people are paid to do drugs until they die (no or minimal detox and treatment offered or required)
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My new piece for the @nypost about the radical transformation of Harm Reduction, the Homeless Industrial Complex, and Gavin Newsom calling in the national guard to SF:
nypost.com/2023/05/20/har
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Precepts like this are behind so many policy failures in L.A.
We have to stop taking bad rules for granted. If the rules produce terrible outcomes, CHANGE THE RULES.
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read image description
ALT
#DidYouKnow traditional bus shelters can’t be installed at all bus stop locations due to limited sidewalk space? La Sombrita responds to community needs and moves the needle on shade and light at bus stops today while we simultaneously work on more systemic solutions.
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We saw plenty of discussion about our “La Sombrita” pilot: the new shade and lighting structure design we’ve debuted at four bus stops. Here’s how a small structure can make a big difference for riders who depend on public transit. spectrumnews1.com/ca/la-east/tra
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This “I dare you to try and do better” from an actual planning bureaucrat from LA County is gross and unhelpful.
You should be embarrassed that this is the best out regional can produce.
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Replying to @LADOTofficial and @cd1losangeles
But here we are, the City is trying to bring more people at least some kind of interim amenity and everyone acts like an expert. The City is hiring, I dare you Twitter advocates to apply and do better.
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Still use ⛓️Chain-of-Thought (CoT) for all your prompting? May be underutilizing LLM capabilities🤠
Introducing 🌲Tree-of-Thought (ToT), a framework to unleash complex & general problem solving with LLMs, through a deliberate ‘System 2’ tree search.
arxiv.org/abs/2305.10601
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Saturday morning truth: EVERY problem in San Francisco can be solved. We can - and will - reverse this image.
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Beat LA
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Ozempic doesn't just suppress your appetite.
I talked to patients who took the drug to lose weight— only to also effortlessly stop biting their nails, compulsively shopping, drinking alcohol, and so on.
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There's a type of progressivism that is incredibly concerned with "which groups had voices heard" and "Have we done lots of process and planning" and "did we equitably include all stakeholders", but gives absolutely zero fucks about whether anything gets accomplished.
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Overheard:
“People who know nothing about machine learning are now paradoxically advantaged in LLMs because they don’t immediately reach for overly sophisticated ideas and spend a lot more time hacking prompts”
When hacking prompts feels below your dignity but it works :’|
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San Francisco’s problem with wrong priorities:
We spend more on out-of-state homeless camping in tents than a teacher’s salary. Meanwhile, our youth is falling behind on basic competency for reading&math.
Are you ok with $1M/unit permanent-housing-first, and neglect our kids?
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SF spends $668M / yr to “house” 7.7k homeless people, without accounting for health, police, DPW and other costs.
That’s $86k / homeless. $2k in tax per SF household. The average annual rent in SF is $38k. Raise your hand if you’re wondering where this $$ is going 
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“There are so many subtle things about life that can be better if you slow down and you pay attention. And I think one of the challenges of Silicon Valley is that we’re very focused on growth…
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The Bay Area is the most economically productive region in the world. It’s been where you can be born in the bottom fifth income quintile and be the most likely to get to the top fifth.
Let’s build an ocean of housing and infrastructure here, throwing the door open to the world.
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The Bay Area has almost 7x as much VC investment as the second biggest US startup hub, NYC.
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