Sam Altman's rise in Silicon Valley is a story of ambition, innovation and leadership. Altman learned to program when he was 8 years old. As a child, when he and his brother played board games, he told his brother, "I have to win, I dominate."
From his teenage years into his thirties, Altman, the college dropout, trading wizard, and investment genius behind ChatGPT, seemed to be jumping on the road to success. He's garnered the attention and investment of Silicon Valley's elite, who are excited about the future of the ambitious and well-traveled Stanford sophomore. At the age of 20, he dropped out of school to start a business and became a CEO. At the age of 26, he served as the head of YC. At the age of 30, he became the CEO of OpenAI. His extraordinary energy and willpower have always inspired others to be creative, even if he personally May lack the focus or complex technical skills to create products like Steve Jobs.
But his success and current position in Silicon Valley are the result of his early entrepreneurial acumen and bold vision of the future. And in recent weeks, in the wake of internal drama at OpenAI, friends say Altman's remarkable ability to withstand intense pressure appears to be wavering. But fortunately, Altman returns as the king in the end.
As 2023 is about to pass, let us look back at how 38-year-old Sam Altman dominated Silicon Valley step by step at the end of the year.
Learned programming at the age of 8, came out as gay at the age of 16, and has been the "King of Kids" since childhood.
Altman grew up in suburban St. Louis and learned to program and disassemble Macintosh computers at age 8.
As a child, when he and his brother played board games, he told his brother, "I have to win, I dominate."
Altman's father is a real estate developer and his mother is a dermatologist. When Altman came out to his parents when he was sixteen years old, his mother was surprised: "Sam has always impressed me as a monosexual and a straight tech guy."
After a Christian group boycotted a sexual assembly at Altman's school, Altman came out as gay to the entire community.
His college counselor said: "What Altman did changed the school. It felt like someone opened up a big box full of all kinds of kids and let them into the outside world."
Dropped out of Stanford as a sophomore to start a business and become CEO
During his sophomore year, Altman and then-boyfriend Nick Sivo dropped out of Stanford University to start a business to develop the application Loopt - which allowed smartphone users to discover and meet people nearby, and later gave birth to a booming market for using mobile phone location data.
Loopt is one of the first eight companies to be funded by technology startup incubator Y Combinator, with each company receiving $6,000. Also selected together with Loopt at that time was the later well-known social networking site Reddit.
Legend: In 2009, Altman, then CEO of Loopt
Loopt eventually reached a $175 million valuation, but it didn't generate enough interest from investors, so Altman sold Loopt in 2012 for $43 million.
Nick Sivo, one of Loopt's co-founders, dated Altman for nine years, but the two broke up after selling the company.
From entrepreneur to investor, he was promoted to Y Combinator president at the speed of light
YC founder Paul Graham decided within less than three minutes of meeting Altman that "this is what Bill Gates looked like when he was 19 years old." Altman's "tenacity, adaptability, and determination are all factors that lead to success." valuable qualities required. "
Caption: Paul Graham
Graham said the 19-year-old Altman "looked like he had a 40-year-old adult living inside him. Others his age might be 12 years old inside." When challenged by older people, he said, Altman never acted like " I'm just a kid" defense; instead, he would look the person in the eye and respond, "That's a stupid idea" by saying, "Really? Why do you think that?"
"You could land him on an island full of cannibals and five years later he would be king," Graham wrote in 2008.
Altman later became a part-time partner at Y Combinator and was promoted to president in 2014, a promotion that shocked his peers.
Note: In 2016, Sam Altman, then president of Y Combinator
In addition to Paul Graham, Altman's other most important person is the famous VC investor Peter Thiel, the most high-profile gay man in Silicon Valley, who is also Altman's advisor and good friend.
Caption: Peter Thiel
Altman has become increasingly close to Peter Thiel, whose investing style appears to have shaped Altman. Altman, for example, has been criticized for running OpenAI like a monopoly, undermining open source technology and pushing smaller companies to launch products through its platform — a strategy Peter Thiel outlined in his book Zero to One.
Do things yourself and be ambitious until you are "kicked out" of YC
During his time at YC, Altman became one of the most recognizable figures in Silicon Valley overnight. "When Altman took over Y Combinator, he felt like he could meet with anyone," a colleague said.
Altman immediately started doing things his own way. Less than a month after Graham named him his successor, Altman began looking for ambitious founders building startups around breakthrough technologies, citing Musk's SpaceX and Tesla as examples, listing energy, Areas of interest include AI, transportation and housing, internet infrastructure, and education. "Small startups are now able to do things that only national resources could do in the past," Altman wrote enthusiastically on his personal blog.
Since Altman became president, the companies accepted by YC have changed dramatically. He used YC as a platform to achieve his goals, and it also paved the way for his subsequent departure. "
An example of Altman's ambition is when an AI company might say, let's try to raise $10 billion. But Altman would say, let's raise $100 billion, in a very easy-going way, and his way of thinking and his ambitions had almost no boundaries.
Interestingly, as of now, OpenAI’s valuation has reached US$100 billion.
Altman, who made investments by selecting the most promising winners and giving them significant latitude so that he could focus on other interests, was seen by some as cold and absent-minded.
This style led to Altman being asked to resign as YC president. Colleagues believe that Altman was simultaneously doing his own thing at OpenAI and investing in YC companies with his personal fund Hydrazine. Some complained that he made huge personal profits without doing anything to build the companies.
That sentiment led the semi-retired Graham to fly from the UK to San Francisco in 2019, where he held a brief meeting with company leadership before Altman was asked to leave the room. Graham said Altman would no longer Serve as president of YC.
Five years after Altman took over YC, Graham said he had no idea Altman spent so little time cultivating startups at YC and so much energy on his own projects.
Join Musk to create OpenAI
In 2015, Altman and Musk founded the nonprofit OpenAI to warn and protect the world from technologies that Musk believes could accidentally wipe out humanity.
Altman and Musk founded OpenAI in part because they were worried that Google's acquisition of DeepMind would create a monopoly in the AI field. OpenAI has recruited some of DeepMind's talent, setting up the company as a nonprofit and saying it will be for the benefit of humanity rather than for financial reward.
Musk and Altman spoke at a summit in 2015
Altman later took control of OpenAI after a dramatic power grab triggered by Musk. Musk was frustrated with OpenAI's lack of progress and proposed cutting half the staff, but Altman refused. In contrast, Altman believes that OpenAI urgently needs more funding to increase its computing power and compete with technology giants for talent. Altman's solution was to convert the company into a for-profit enterprise but still governed by a nonprofit board of directors. This shift helped Altman secure a $1 billion investment from Microsoft.
Caption: Altman and Microsoft CEO Nadella
With the popularity of ChatGPT this year, Altman spent most of 2023 lobbying Congress and the technology media in an effort to demonstrate OpenAI's cautious attitude in preventing AI risks.
Altman told them that he holds almost no shares in OpenAI and hopes to democratize the AI regulatory process and how OpenAI uses a unique organizational structure to ensure that AI systems are controlled by directors of non-profit organizations. But now he is in the Middle East, reaching out to investors with ties to authoritarian regimes to advance an ambitious deal that fits the paradoxical nature of Altman's career.
Note: Altman attended the meeting and was interviewed by reporters.
Behind ChatGPT, a founder who “can bend reality”
According to some of Altman's friends and critics, when he released ChatGPT, he triggered the very corporate arms race that OpenAI was founded to prevent.
However, the OpenAI battle that led to Altman's firing and rehiring last month was not about the potential dangers of artificial intelligence, but about who will control the future direction of the world's leading AI company - a battle that has been going on for years. Divisive fights within startups.
A person familiar with the board's dealings said Altman played a central role in selecting board members. “Either they were his friends or they were people who could never stand up to Altman.
OpenAI’s shift toward for-profit belies internal tensions. Executives complained to each other and publicly about Altman's management style, calling it manipulative. "He'll figure out what you want to hear, which can solve the problem, but it's not a long-term solution."
Similar concerns led to the board's decision to fire Altman, but ultimately, Altman's reputation was bolstered by his temporary downfall as he returned to glory.
"He's the kind of founder who can bend reality," said Altman's friend Hemant Taneja, a managing director at venture capital firm General Catalyst. He added that Altman invited him to invest in OpenAI, but he declined because he couldn't understand the company's complex structure. .
By creating the fastest and most popular generative AI consumer application, ChatGPT, Altman is showing us the art of endless possibilities, the first to have CEOs of every company in every industry now thinking about how to leverage their Integrating AI technology into business is also a technology that truly changes the world.
In fact, a few weeks before OpenAI released ChatGPT in November last year, the executive team held a meeting to discuss whether ChatGPT should be released. It was not 100% sure that releasing ChatGPT was the right thing to do. OpenAI has limited GPUs and is mainly positioned for developers and A company that builds tools for enterprises, but Sam Altman strongly urged to "give it a try". Altman's argument is that we need to interact with large language models based on "somewhat important and personalized" text.
As the world can see, the release of ChatGPT has been a huge success - there are 1 million users only 5 days after it went online, hundreds of millions of users after two months after it went online, and people can't live without ChatGPT a year after it went online...
And it's Altman that makes this possible.
Altman's first 38 years have ended, and his next 38 years have just begun~
Note: This article by The Washington Post is based on more than two dozen interviews with Altman’s current and former colleagues, competitors, friends and others in the industry, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity.
