A Startup Leader Joined San Francisco Politics After Attacks on Asian Elders and a Fight Over Algebra

At farmers markets on the West Side of San Francisco, Garry Tan remembers Chinese American neighbors stopping each other to share warnings in person. In his account, they told each other, "they're killing us," meaning the people attacking Asian elders.

Tan is the president of Y Combinator, the startup group that backs very young companies. He says what got him engaged in city politics was what happened during the pandemic around attacks on elders and around algebra in middle school.

Tan noted that Asian Americans are about 30 percent of the city's population and 25 percent of its voting populace.

During the pandemic, he said, the district attorney was "turning a blind eye to some of the most heinous crimes against our elders." At the same time, he said, the school board was hostile to Asian American children who wanted algebra classes in city middle schools.

The algebra fight made it personal. Tan was a public school student in Fremont, in the East Bay, and he traces his own path directly through that class. If he had not taken algebra in middle school, he said, he could not have taken calculus by senior year, could not have studied engineering at Stanford, and would not be doing what he does today.

He came to see the same outlook behind those failures and behind other fights over housing and data centers. In plain terms, Tan, as a builder, says the people who did not want to build housing anywhere in California and who wanted to destroy data centers ignore that supply and demand, markets, and incentives are real.

He also blamed silence for letting the situation worsen. When people like us do not pay attention and hold the media and government to account, he said, things get very deranged. As an example, Tan said the local ABC News station would not cover anti-Asian crime.

He said institutions failed us, and he thinks citizens should be willing to take personal and reputational cost. Citing Mario Savio, Tan said, "you've got to put your body on it," because citizens owe that effort to each other.

Tan says San Francisco has since beaten back the people who created the housing and data center fights, though the city is not perfect. Things have gotten better, he said. He points to San Francisco's Mayor Lurie, who he said "might be the most popular mayor or politician in the entire country."