Everything awesome is kind of a cult—it starts with a truth or belief that flies in the face of orthodoxy.
Reflecting on Palantir's early days, Garry Tan concludes that transformative companies are like cults, built on 'punk' beliefs that challenge established orthodoxies. ✦ AI generated
Garry Tan · a16z Podcast · 2026-08-12 · original ↗
starts at this moment · 10:44
“What did it feel like? Why did you do it?”
From Palantir I definitely learned that everything that's awesome in my life is kind of a cult. That starts with some sort of truth or belief that flies in the face of an orthodoxy, which is very punk actually.
verbatim transcript · starts at 10:44
10:44>> Yes. Yes. Totally dude, that's very Rick Rubin would approve. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. >> Yeah, well, actually what I love about you're saying is that there's a beautiful truth in the fact that you've talked through some of these maybe tragic misses, but you know, the lessons are courage, the lessons are earnestness, right? The lessons are when your instincts are pulling you to work with a set of people. So so maybe talk a
11:04little bit about, you know, we talk a lot about how Silicon Valley and the magic is it takes outsiders and turns them into insiders. And I feel like YC is the ultimate distillation of that. You know, you go from being two founders perhaps from a foreign country to two people with YC on their LinkedIn and everybody now knows what that means. >> Totally. >> So talk about how that happens. Is it a
11:23process? Is it a mindset? And how has it changed over the years? >> Um I mean, I have to credit Paul Graham and Jessica Livingston and the original founders including Trevor Blackwell and Robert Morris. I mean, uh what Paul and Jessica figured out was that there are lots and lots of really smart people who do not get access um to Silicon Valley. I mean, I think in the