Harj Taggar
Harj Taggar | |
|---|---|
| Occupation(s) | Entrepreneur, founder, investor |
| Years active | 2007–present |
| Known for | Co-founder of Auctomatic, Triplebyte, Initialized Capital; Partner at Y Combinator |
Harj Taggar (born ) is an entrepreneur, founder, and investor. In 2007, he launched Auctomatic, a service aimed at online sellers, and later, in 2015, he co-established Triplebyte, a platform focused on evaluating software engineering talent without emphasis on traditional qualifications.
Taggar became the first Partner at startup accelerator Y Combinator who was not a founder, joining the team in 2010. After several years leading Triplebyte, he rejoined Y Combinator as a Group Partner in 2020. Additionally, he is an angel investor and co-founded Initialized Capital alongside Garry Tan and Alexis Ohanian.
Education
Taggar began his studies at the University of Oxford's law school but left in 2006 to relocate to Silicon Valley to develop the business concept that evolved into Auctomatic.
Career
In 2007, Taggar co-launched Auctomatic, a platform designed for managing auctions and marketplaces for online vendors, partnering with his brother Kulveer as well as Patrick Collison and John Collison. The company participated in Y Combinator that same year; since the founding team lacked technical expertise, Y Combinator required someone to acquire programming skills—Taggar assumed this responsibility. Auctomatic was acquired by Live Current Media in 2008.
Taggar became one of the earliest non-founder Partners at Y Combinator in 2010 and emerged as a key commentator on startup accelerators, factors influencing success, and strategies for pitching investors through interviews with publications such as TechCrunch and Business Insider. In 2015, he introduced the term "second-time founder syndrome" to describe how founders often favor impressive concepts over those with higher chances of success.
In 2011, Taggar partnered with Garry Tan and Alexis Ohanian to establish Initialized Capital, an angel investment fund that raised $39 million by 2013 to support technology startups.
Together with Ammon Bartram and Guillaume Luccisano, Taggar co-founded Triplebyte in 2015. The company evaluates software engineers’ technical abilities beyond standard credentials to enhance hiring practices. Leveraging his experience at Y Combinator—where he created interviewing tools later adopted by the accelerator—Taggar influenced Triplebyte’s innovative recruitment model. Triplebyte also joined Y Combinator during its founding year.
By 2018, Triplebyte secured $10 million in Series A funding led by Initialized Capital. Subsequent financing rounds increased total capital raised to $35 million with backing from YC Continuity and other investors. More than 500 companies—including Adobe, Box, Instacart, Uber, Dropbox, and American Express—have recruited over a thousand engineers through Triplebyte’s platform.
In 2020, Taggar resumed his role at Y Combinator as a Group Partner.