Best of Panic: Garry Tan of Initialized Capital on Crazy Cap Tables, Crypto, Finding Balance in a World of Endless Opportunities and Much More (EP.215)

I’m taking a few weeks off to go climb some mountains on my bike. In the meantime, I’ll be doing reruns of some of my Panic with Friends favorites, like this one with Garry Tan. This episode aired back in September of 21. If you missed it when it first came out, now is a good time to catch up. I think you’ll really enjoy it. 

Garry is a unique individual I’ve only met a couple of times. He says he’s a fan of the show, so he knows how to sell. His resume is bananas – something we love on Panic with Friends; they may not be famous to everyone, but they’re famous to me! Garry is a Stanford Graduate, was at Y Combinator in the heyday, and was partners with Alexis Ohanian (founder of Reddit). If that weren’t enough, Garry was a seed investor in Coinbase. Oh, and Garry’s now part of my go-to list on the crypto space along with Fred Wilson and Chris Dixon. 

Guest - Garry Tan, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Initialized Capital 

howardlindzon.com, initialized.com, youtube.com/garrytan 

Twitter: @howardlindzon, @garrytan, @PanicwFriends, @knutjensen 

youtube.com/garrytan 

linkedin.com/in/garrytan 

#fintech #invest #investment #venturecapital #stockmarket #finance 

Show Notes:

• Introduction (00:56)
• Welcome Garry (04:28)
• Best place to start a company (04:53)
• Early life in the Bay area (07:01)
• First ‘business’ (08:00)
• Achieving the American Dream (09:07)
• Garry’s first startup (10:58)
• Balance in a world of endless opportunity (17:30)
• Launching Initialized (18:42)
• Panic about Y Cominator (19:58)
• Work on hard, valuable and fun stuff (20:45)
• VC at $1 trillion in a decade (24:42)
• Lean startup / Fat startup (27:35)
• Crypto ups and downs (28:36)
• Seed round investing (31:28)
• Software runs the world (33:58)
• Transitioning the non-digital natives (35:18)
• Obscure industries drive the economy (35:56)
• Building a media platform (39:52)
• How Garry stays up to date (42:52)
• Sky NIMBy’s (44:26)
• Closing thoughts (49:25)
• Wrapping up (54:18)