Software is Eating the World (and still needs your help)

Software is eating the world. Thousands of stranded travelers is just one obvious indicator that there is more to solve. And you can play a role in solving it.

00:00 Without good software, you’re going to fail
00:55 Software’s importance
2:23 What is the role of software?
3:47 Are we too late?
5:30 Frontiers

I'm Garry Tan, President & CEO at Y Combinator. We want these videos to be about helping people build world-class teams and startups that touch a billion people.

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[MrGuitarguru]

Congratulations on becoming YC’s new president & CEO! 🎉

[MotivationInvest]

Great video Garry, I believe the internet offers major potential for learning. However, now the challenge is staying focused away from distraction when we have access to free entertainment. The winners are those who can literally sit in a room and execute. This is a classic "Warren Buffett" style trait, which is now more important than ever!

[NilsWestgardh]

My uncle worked for a company building airline scheduling software since the mid 90s. Last year he quit to join a startup tackling the same problem. Hopefully they can bring some change to a antiquated system.

[romanrodriguez]

Software changed my entire career path. I’m not a developer but I saw a need for my community in my industry and took the leap of faith to one day help millions of people in my community leveraging software.

Software changed my life and I plan on using it to help other people who were like me.

Thanks for this video 👏🏽

[Tassadar]

this brings me back to my JetBlue days... the software they had was 80's era and thus required like.2 or 3 weeks of extra training for *each* batch of new employees.

they finally invested in half decent software though.

[rraphphi]

Welcome back Garry with a start video of 2023. Looking forward to see the video on Gen AI and whats your perspective on it. Especially vs Google Search and other major significant implications. Hope Im not the only one curious about this topic.

[rickhmason]

Gary,

Excellent timing posting this video today. The FAA's notification system called NOTAM went down today. The backup phone notification system quickly crashed as well. The backup system's builders never anticipated the level of today's traffic when it was built. So all airlines were grounded and the inactivity in the sky is being compared to 9-11. There is still plenty to be built.

[makeaniiimpactYT]

As a consultant and business owner, I'm noticing (more than usual) that a large number of companies are making poor decisions regarding the quality of their software development teams. Whether the motivation is to cut costs for actual budgetary reasons, to show 'profit margins' to private equity firms for a potential buyout (so bogus profit margins versus the team that actually built the software), etc., executive management makes decisions based solely on the bottom line on a spreadsheet. They are outsourcing to low-cost, off-shore teams that will cause more problems in the long run due to tech debt, other teams having to spend time fixing problems, and poor code quality/performance. The problem is that they either do not care or have actually managed good and bad teams. Uber, Facebook, and Google pay engineers competitive salaries because they recognize the importance of skilled software developers. Due to poor decision making for short-term gains/results, we will continue to observe an increase in software failures.

[tim_oneil]

Fantastic insights, Garry! As far as we've all come, it's refreshing perspective to zoom out and understand that we're still all just getting started.

[aafrancom]

Awesome video Garry! Autonomous robots (Cars, Cooks, marketing, etc) will see their way through in the upcoming years!

[DL-gxcr]

This on a day when FAA software issue grounds all flights...indeed, true! Garry - such an optimistic POV on the world and congrats on the new role as head of YC! My next line of code will be written in conjunction with ChatGPT, guaranteed.

[racheldweissman]

Thanks for this video, Gary! Ever since reading Superminds by Thomas Malone, I’ve been fascinated with the opportunities in group decision making. Do you know of any startups building in the space? I couldn’t find much in my search. Appreciate the time!

[mikeshafer]

I like how you posted this video the same morning that the FAA grounded flights due to a computer system outage.

[TevvvB]

Hey Gary, your content has taught me plenty & kept me motivated on some long nights over the past few years. What advice would you give a founder with no connections that’s has taken a MVP to market, achieved market & product validation. But doesn’t have the ability to code. (Everything has been boot strapped).

[Liskov]

Love the humility in your videos. Thank you for all the great info and inspiration

[sltho]

I’m finishing up my studies to become a programmer. Gonna combine my biz experience and hard skill sets to start an empire. Would love to meet you in person in 2024. Cheers Garry

[Angelus]

Thank you for all the videos you made. You are my role model.

[earlj.d.]

So I that 30 years, Southwest never had an BDR reach out and speak with these possible issues? I think the airline didn’t want to spend money and figured they’d cross that bridge when they get to it

3:10 our ability to amplify us via tools goes back to stone age. The arrowhead amplified multiple aspects of a human. Our nails, our teeth and our digestive system. We didn’t need the sharpest nails or teeth to take down and dismember the animal. And even though our digestive system has a PH balance close to scavengers (we were scavengers), the sharp edges began the process of breaking down the animal pre-mastication and intestinal breakdown

[abdullahaliyuw]

That's why I never regret learning programming, even though, self thought (out of curiosity and passion).

[qusek]

Thanks Gary.

"Software changed my life and I want it to change yours." Truyly inspiring.