Garry Tan

"We're incredibly flattered! Thanks for choosing Posterous -- sweetcron is a design inspiration." - Garry Tan

Posted via web from garry's subposterous - Garry Tan from Posterous

Posted via web from garry's subposterous - Garry Tan from Posterous

"Glad you like it! It was a lot of work ;-)" - Garry Tan

"That's a fair assessment. YC is a bit of a venture hack recognizing how cheap a useful website can be created.   ---Sent from my iPhone" - Garry Tan

"Michael, ease up on the YC hate man. Not cool.  ---Sent from my iPhone" - Garry Tan

"Heh we just used build-a-sign.com -- it was like $60. It's this thick metal one. Maybe we should just print up a ton of stickers and send em out!" - Garry Tan

"Heh we just used build-a-sign.com -- it was like $60. It's this thick metal one. Maybe we should just print up a ton of stickers and send em out!" - Garry Tan

"Very cool -- if you want to email me garry@posterous.com I can update the code and provide a link to you / your blog / whatever." - Garry Tan

"@Joshua — Reposting from Hacker News, but I think this goes a little deeper into what I mean around being a) uncompromising, and b) rudeness/disrespect can be an unfortunate outcome of being direct. – In the glory days of Microsoft (circa Windows 95), the company culture was very different than in the Ballmer Administration. There used to be a class called ‘Precision Questioning’ that was specifically about being very efficient at asking very pointed, very direct questions. To the uninitiated, it came across as incredibly rude and disrespectful. But it was effective. Things got done fast, and BS was caught immediately, because the questions that got asked were rude, disrespectful, but vitally needed to make the right decisions. It cut through to the truth as quickly as possible. I think there’s something happening here — being direct and truthful hurts, but to create great things, you have to set aside feelings. Since Ballmer took over the reigns, Microsoft no longer teaches this..." - Garry Tan

"In the glory days of Microsoft (circa Windows 95), the company culture was very different than in the Ballmer Administration. There used to be a class called 'Precision Questioning' that was specifically about being very efficient at asking very pointed, very direct questions. To the uninitiated, it came across as incredibly rude and disrespectful. But it was effective. Things got done fast, and BS was caught immediately, because the questions that got asked were rude, disrespectful, but vitally needed to make the right decisions. It cut through to the truth as quickly as possible. I think there's something happening here -- being direct and truthful hurts, but to create great things, you have to set aside feelings. Since Ballmer took over the reigns, Microsoft no longer teaches this course to its managers. Kinder and gentler, he said -- but there's a very real cost to kinder and gentler." - Garry Tan

"Michael -- check out http://www.paulgraham.com/equity... -- it's a very good way of doing a gut check on whether its worth it to do really anything in a startup related to equity. The truth is we gave up ~6% but got an absolutely staggering ROI on it. Network, connections, peer group, advice, you name it. You ask any YC company whether it was worth it and almost all will say yes. Us included." - Garry Tan

"You're right that these things happen in cycles -- just like that "The Office is like the office" quote -- things get big and degenerate. But something about accepting it as unchangeable fact does not sit well with me." - Garry Tan

"I actually agree with you there -- the people in charge don't care about taste. But I think one aspect is that experience is the product. And the people in charge should care. They should care a lot, and it's why Virgin and Jetblue and Southwest eat AA's lunch. The website is only one aspect of a panoply of experiential factors that the management of AA should care about. It is their product. It's their reason for being. But they don't care. And I think for Dustin, that is the problem he's calling attention to." - Garry Tan

"Joshua -- I think its mostly about being uncompromising. I have seen compromise inside large organizations, and it is not pretty. It smothers great products and great ideas. And as much as I hate to say it, most organizations don't listen unless you really a) put your foot down and b) are kind of an asshole about it." - Garry Tan

Posted via web from hiphop-o-posterous, my lyrics are bottomless - Garry Tan from Posterous

"Fair enough -- look, the counter point to this is that films constantly get absolutely destroyed by producers. And those are the decisions that matter -- how the movie ends, what gets cut and what stays, etc. I think again you're getting hung up on the little things -- I'm not talking about how you need great grips and cinematographers and editors, and I'm not talking about how you need pixel perfect comps by 10 visual designers. All of that is micro. An auteur has final cut, and if even one of those 100 people screw up, then the auteur says fix it or its not ready." - Garry Tan