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Garry Tan, CEO of Y Combinator Seb Daly/Web Summi

WASHINGTON — In San Francisco, Y Combinator’s firebrand chief executive Garry Tan is one of the startup economy’s most recognizable figures. Well before he became the leader of the coveted startup accelerator that bred global brands like Airbnb, Stripe and OpenAI, Tan was a self-made founder who sold his own company to Twitter.

But here in the nation’s political capital, Tan is far less known. He’s hoping to grow his influence here, offering up his vast network of founders as a source of expertise for regulators struggling to wrap their heads around new technologies like artificial intelligence and how best to rein it in.

“We’re happy to be a phone-a-friend for people who are trying to understand tech,” he told the Economic Club of Washington recently when asked how he’d measure success during Y Combinator’s first-ever policy-focused visit. “‘Little tech’ represents competition, and consumer choice,” he said later at a separate event in a dimly lit Senate room filled with a few dozen Congressional staffers.

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