Sam Altman is today widely regarded as one of the top entrepreneurs around, and through OpenAI, kickstarting the AI revolution, but his potential was visible even when he was just 19 years old.
Jessica Livingston, a founding partner of Y Combinator, has offers a fascinating glimpse into Altman’s personality and drive at a young age. Livingston’s account, highlighting Altman’s relentless pursuit of his goals, is a testament to the traits that have propelled him to the forefront of the tech world. It’s particularly interesting considering the context of OpenAI’s recent successes and Altman’s own rising profile.
“Sam Altman was impressive at age 19,” Livingston recalls. “I tell the story a lot, but it really was indicative of his personality.” She recounts the story of Altman applying to the very first batch of Y Combinator. “He said, ‘Well, I’m pitching at a Stanford pitch contest, so I can only interview on Saturday, not Sunday.'” A young Altman was seemingly already juggling multiple high-stakes opportunities, prioritizing and strategizing his time effectively.
Livingston continues, “He was emailing Paul [Graham, another Y Combinator founder] about when he was invited to come interview…and Paul said, ‘Oh gosh, you know, Sam, you’re only a freshman. This is not your only chance. Why don’t you come next year?’ And Sam wrote back literally like one sentence: ‘I’m a sophomore and I’m coming.'”
“And that’s Sam,” Livingston emphasizes. “He was coming.” Even at the interview stage, Altman’s acceptance seemed like a foregone conclusion. “And then we funded him and even in the interview were like, ‘Oh yeah, no-brainer. We did not even have to talk about him.'” Altman’s ideas, even then, were ahead of the curve. “Because he had two interesting ideas…geolocation, sort of a few years too early, but he had an interesting idea. He was super technical, but he was impressive at 19.” Altman was at that time pitching his first startup, Loopt, which he later sold.
Livingston then shared another anecdote that perfectly encapsulates Altman’s audacious spirit. “He arranged to meet with a carrier company CEO in the middle of America and he was too young to even rent a car. And that was the…that was the barrier for him,” Livingston explains. “Like, ‘How do I rent a car to get there?’ Not like, ‘How do I get a meeting with this person?'”
“And that was just so different than anyone I had known at that point,” she concludes.
Jessica Livingston wasn’t the only person who’d seen Altman’s potential early. Fellow Y Combinator partner Paul Graham was so impressed with Altman that even in 2009, he’d included him in a list of the best 5 founders of the past 30 years which included Steve Jobs and Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.
Sam Altman, now 39, seems to have lived up to the high expectations. After his startup Loopt was acquired, he became the President of Y Combinator, and helped fund and mentor hundreds of startups. In 2015, he got some of the best minds in AI together, including Ilya Sutskever and Greg Brockman, and got Elon Musk to fund the initiative which became OpenAI. OpenAI worked largely in the shadows for several years, until it released ChatGPT in November 2022, which immediately went viral, and helped set off the AI revolution that’s currently underway. OpenAI is now valued at $300 billion, and as its CEO, Altman now not only meets tech leaders, but also sets up meetings with Prime Ministers and Presidents around the world. And he presumably doesn’t have to worry about renting cars to get there.