Harjeet Taggar

Managing Partner at Y Combinator

Harjeet "Harj" Taggar is a Managing Partner at Y Combinator. His YC profile says he has advised more than 1,000 companies across 17 batches, that five of them have gone public and that he has worked with more than 20 YC unicorns, naming Coinbase, Benchling, Instacart, PagerDuty, Amplitude and Gusto.^[1]

He also appears in YC's Lightcone and Group Partner Lounge videos and posts on X and the YC blog, covering AI startups, hiring and launch timing, according to his profile.^[1]

Education and Auctomatic

YC says Taggar studied jurisprudence at Oxford, graduating in 2006. Wikipedia says he left the law program that year to move to Silicon Valley and pursue the idea that became Auctomatic, which it describes as a platform for online sellers to manage auctions and marketplace listings.^[1][3]

Wikipedia reports that he co-founded Auctomatic in 2007 with his brother Kulveer and with Patrick and John Collison, later founders of Stripe. YC required one of the non-technical founders to learn programming, and Taggar was the one who did. Auctomatic went through YC's Winter 2007 batch and was acquired by Live Current Media in 2008.^[1][2][3]

First stint at YC and Initialized Capital

Taggar joined YC as a partner in 2010. YC's 2020 announcement calls him one of its first non-founding partners, brought in to help scale the program beyond 25 companies per batch. Wikipedia adds that he became an angel investor in 2011 through Initialized Capital, which he co-founded with Garry Tan and Alexis Ohanian, and that the firm pooled $39 million in 2013.^[2][3]

In December 2015 he told YC's Startup School Radio about what he called second-time founder syndrome: founders with a prior success may feel pressure to choose ideas that impress other founders, even though the strongest ideas rarely look that way. He pointed to Zenefits and Instacart as companies that did not look like standouts early on.^[4]

Triplebyte

Taggar left YC in 2014 and co-founded Triplebyte in 2015 with Ammon Bartram and Guillaume Luccisano, serving as chief executive. The company, part of YC's Summer 2015 batch, built a technical-skills assessment used by employers including Apple and American Express to hire software engineers. YC says it raised more than $50 million across three rounds.^[2][3]

Wikipedia reports a $10 million Series A led by Initialized Capital in 2018. Taggar moved to an advisory role at the end of 2019. In March 2023 Karat announced it was acquiring Triplebyte's assessment product and team, while Triplebyte's Magnet sourcing business and talent network were wound down effective March 31.^[2][3][5]

Return to YC

YC announced on April 7, 2020 that Taggar was rejoining as a partner. Wikipedia records the role as Group Partner from 2020, and his profile now lists Managing Partner.^[1][2][3]

Why he matters

Taggar is one of the few people who has sat on both sides of YC's table, as a YC-funded founder, as a partner and as the CEO of a second venture-backed company. That experience informs the practical advice he gives about idea selection, hiring and how early-stage companies approach customers.^[1][2][4]

On The Executive List

Harjeet Taggar is ranked No. 66 on The Executive List (October 2026) in the Chief Financial Officers discipline. The list row shows Taggar as Partner and Triplebyte co-founder; he is now Managing Partner at Y Combinator, and Triplebyte is his earlier company. The ranking reflects The Executive Review's own editorial Trending Score; it is not an outside award, and placement on the list is never sold. View the October 2026 edition.