Sam Altman
| Sam Altman | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born | Samuel H. Altman April 22, 1985 |
| Residence | San Francisco, California[1] |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | Stanford University (dropped out) |
| Occupation | Venture capitalist |
| Known for | Loopt, Y Combinator |
| Title | President of Y Combinator |
| Website | Sam Altman's blog |
Samuel H. "Sam" Altman (born April 22, 1985) is an entrepreneur, programmer, venture capitalist and blogger.[2] He is the President of Y Combinator and co-chairman of OpenAI.
Contents
Early life and education
Altman grew up in the Midwest, received his first computer aged 8,[3] and studied computer science at Stanford University until dropping out in 2005.[4]
Career
Loopt
At age 19,[5] Altman was a co-founder and CEO of Loopt,[6] a location-based social networking mobile application. Loopt was acquired in 2012 by Green Dot Corporation for $43.4 million.[7]
Y Combinator
In 2014, Altman was named president of Y Combinator[8] the most commercially successful seed-stage accelerator.[9]
Altman announced in a 2014 blog post that the total valuation of all Y Combinator companies had surpassed $65 billion, including well-known companies like Airbnb, Dropbox, Zenefits and Stripe.[10]
Altman has stated that he hopes to grow Y Combinator so that it eventually funds 1,000 new companies per year. He has also increased the types of companies funded by YC, especially on so-called "hard technology" companies.[11]
In July 2015, Altman announced the YC Fellowship, a new program to give grants of $12,000 and advice to very early-stage startups.[12]
In October 2015, Altman announced YC Continuity, a $700 million growth-stage equity fund that invests in YC companies.[13][14]
Also in October 2015, Altman announced YC Research, a non-profit research lab, and donated $10 million to the group.[15]
Altman was named the top investor under 30 by Forbes in 2015,[16] one of the "Best Young Entrepreneurs in Technology" by BusinessWeek in 2008[17] and listed as one of the five most interesting startup founders between 1979 and 2009 by his colleague Paul Graham.[18]
Pre-YC angel investing
He is an investor in many companies, including Stripe, Shoptiques, Teespring, Zenefits, reddit, FarmLogs, Instacart, Pinterest, Optimizely, Airbnb, Verbling, Soylent, Vicarious, Clever, Notable PDF[19][20] and Change.org.
He was the CEO of reddit for 8 days in 2014 after the then-CEO Yishan Wong resigned.[21] As part of his investment, he developed a new way for the community to own part of the company. He announced the return of Steve Huffman as CEO on July 10, 2015.[22]
Nuclear energy
He is Chairman of the Board for Helion and uPower, two nuclear energy companies. He has stated a belief that nuclear energy is one of the most important technological developments for the future.[23]
OpenAI
Altman and Elon Musk are the co-chairmen of OpenAI. The goal of OpenAI is to advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return.[24]
Teaching
In the Fall of 2015, he taught a class at Stanford University called "How To Start a Startup" that was widely distributed online.
Guest lectures included Paul Graham, Peter Thiel, Adora Cheung, Alex Schultz, Marc Andreessen, Ron Conway, Carolynn Levy, Kirsty Nathoo, Ben Horowitz, Brian Chesky, Alfred Lin, Aaron Levie, Reid Hoffman, Kevin Hale, Ben Silbermann, and Emmett Shear.
Writing
Altman occasionally posts to his blog, mostly about startups and technology.
He also wrote "Startup Playbook", a distillation of advice that Y Combinator gives to its startups.
References
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- Inc.: Top 30 Entrepreneurs Under 30 - Sam Altman, Loopt
- Sam Altman - Founder of Loopt (The Unofficial Stanford Blog)
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