In 2005, Sam Altman was a Stanford sophomore in YC’s first batch, building a startup in a little Cambridge office while Paul Graham cooked the founders dinner.
Twenty years later, as co-founder & CEO of OpenAI, he closed Startup School 2026 in conversation with YC’s Garry Tan — on agents, ambition, and why the ceiling for what a startup can take on has never been higher.
Transcript: https://www.ycrootaccess.com/p/sam-altman-never-a-better-time-to
Apply to Y Combinator: https://www.ycombinator.com/apply
Work at a startup: https://www.ycombinator.com/jobs
Chapters:
00:07 — From YC’s First Batch to Today
03:04 — What Paul Graham Taught Sam Altman
04:17 — Why Startups Matter More Than Ever
06:57 — The Coming Golden Age of Ambitious Startups
09:30 — Why Startups Win During Technology Shifts
11:46 — Building OpenAI When Nobody Believed in AGI
14:45 — Finding People Who Share Your Conviction
18:05 — Help People Before You Know Why
19:43 — Earnestness, Ambition, and Ignoring the Haters
24:04 — The AI Safety Incident That Changed the Stakes
26:58 — Preventing AI From Concentrating Power
30:41 — How Fast AI Models Will Improve
36:06 — The Best Version of an AI Future
37:47 — “It’s All Going to Work Out”
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