Genius Makers: The Mavericks Who Brought A.I. to Google, Facebook, and the World

by Cade Metz

Sam Altman was a Silicon Valley archetype: In 2005, he founded a social networking company as a twenty-year-old college sophomore.15 The company was called Loopt, and it eventually raised $30 million in venture capital, including one of the first investments made by Y Combinator and its founder Paul Graham. Seven years later, Loopt’s social networking service was shut down after being sold at a loss for its investors. But this was a successful exit for Altman, a trim, compact man with sharp green eyes and a particular talent for raising money. Graham soon announced that he was stepping down as president of Y Combinator, and he named Altman as his replacement, an appointment that surprised many across the family of Y Combinator companies. This made Altman an advisor to an endless stream of start-ups. In exchange for advice and capital, Y Combinator received a stake in each company, and Altman personally invested in some companies, too, becoming very wealthy, very quickly. He felt that any monkey could run YC, but he also felt that in running it, he developed an usually sharp talent for evaluating people, not to mention the skill and opportunity needed to raise large amounts of capital. During his rapid ascent, he was motivated first by money, then by the power over the people and the companies in his orbit, and then by the satisfaction that came from building companies that had a real impact on the larger world.