{"id":173495,"date":"2026-02-11T14:25:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-11T14:25:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/173495\/"},"modified":"2026-02-11T14:25:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-11T14:25:10","slug":"garry-tan-isnt-leaving-california-hes-launching-a-policy-nonprofit-instead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/173495\/","title":{"rendered":"Garry Tan isn\u2019t leaving California. He\u2019s launching a policy nonprofit instead"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Dork Knight (opens in new tab)<\/a> rises \u2014 once again. <\/p>\n

While many of Garry Tan\u2019s tech friends are fleeing California for red states with no billionaire taxes on the horizon, the longtime tech investor and executive is staying put and fighting back.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, the Y Combinator CEO will launch Garry\u2019s List, a statewide nonprofit aimed at voter education and support for what he calls commonsense, pro-growth policies and candidates. Tan described the organization as a \u201cRotary Club for radical centrism.\u201d <\/p>\n

Garry\u2019s List \u2014 a riff on Emily\u2019s List, the national organization that supports Democratic women candidates \u2014 will publish voter guides and policy research and a blog authored by Tan and contributors. It will host Commonwealth Club-style events across the state, including at Tan\u2019s church-turned-townhouse (opens in new tab)<\/a> in the Mission.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The organization may also offer training and preparation for moderate candidates, though those efforts are still in the early stages. \u201cWe\u2019re trying to build political infrastructure for the next 20 years,\u201d Tan said.<\/p>\n

Tan is funding the organization and has raised money from friends and supporters. He declined to say how much the group is starting with.\u00a0<\/p>\n

By day, Tan runs the startup incubator that has minted companies like Airbnb, DoorDash, and Stripe. But for years he has been actively involved in local civic issues. Last year, Tan even served as an ersatz batman to San Francisco\u2019s tech community<\/a>, fielding complaints and lamentations about public safety from founders.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In 2022, he contributed more than $50,000 to the campaign that recalled District Attorney Chesa Boudin and helped bankroll the successful effort to remove three school board members.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"ASource: Noah Berger for The Standard<\/p>\n

Tan hopes Garry\u2019s List can build upon those local efforts to address statewide issues. \u201cWhat we\u2019ve done in San Francisco, a lot of people said couldn\u2019t be done,\u201d Tan said. \u201cI want to get back to the energy that I felt when we were first working on the recall of Chesa Boudin and the school board, and deliver that same success to all of California.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

In another sign that Tan is looking beyond local politics, the centimillionaire last month donated nearly $40,000 to San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan\u2019s campaign for governor, according to campaign finance filings.<\/p>\n

Tan denied that the proposed billionaire tax<\/a> was the impetus for launching Garry\u2019s List. He said it\u2019s something he\u2019s wanted to start for a while but was sidelined by the demands of running Y Combinator and raising two children in San Francisco. <\/p>\n

Instead, Tan said, the spark came from Anthropic\u2019s AI-powered coding tool Claude Code. Tan began vibe-coding the Garry\u2019s List website a few weeks ago and has published blog posts on topics including San Francisco Unified School District\u2019s enrollment lottery (opens in new tab)<\/a> and ongoing teachers strike (opens in new tab)<\/a>. Think of the blog posts as extended versions of Tan\u2019s tweets, which he blasts to more than 600,000 followers daily.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Tan did, however, reiterate his opposition to the billionaire tax, suggesting that YC will have to open offices outside California if the measure makes it to the ballot and passes in November. Garry\u2019s List will seek to educate voters on the perils of the proposed tax, he said, as well as other local and statewide proposals.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cCalifornia should be focused on keeping entrepreneurs and investors here,\u201d Tan said. \u201cDriving entrepreneurs, capital, and investors out of the state will hurt innovation and ultimately make it harder to support healthcare, police, public works, public safety, education, and essential services.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tan has no plans to leave California himself. \u201cI\u2019m ride or die,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Dork Knight (opens in new tab) rises \u2014 once again. While many of Garry Tan\u2019s tech friends…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":173496,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[9329,7,204,29332,101,103,102,104,106,105,8170,29331],"class_list":{"0":"post-173495","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco","8":"tag-billionaires","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-election","11":"tag-garry-tan","12":"tag-san-francisco","13":"tag-san-francisco-headlines","14":"tag-san-francisco-news","15":"tag-sf","16":"tag-sf-headlines","17":"tag-sf-news","18":"tag-startups","19":"tag-y-combinator"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173495\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/173496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}