In January 2009, the BTC network went online, and the blockchain entered our lives for the first time.
After more than ten years of development, blockchain technology has been continuously improved and developed, showing huge development potential. Traditional industries, institutions, and investors began to make great strides into the blockchain and encryption fields, such as Tesla CEO Musk, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, Morgan Creek founder Anthony Pompliano, famous Wall Street investor Paul Tudor Jones, etc. .
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Aspiring at a young age, entering the power center of Silicon Valley
In 2014, Paul Graham chose Sam Altman, who was only 31 years old, as his successor, the new president of Y Combinator. At this time, Paul Graham already had huge media attention and influence, and Y Combinator was already the new center of power in Silicon Valley and the golden sign of the startup incubator.
It is such a well-known business incubator and investment institution in the United States. Why did it choose the young Sam Altman as its successor?
Sam was named the most outstanding young entrepreneur by Business Weekly. At the age of 19, he founded Loopt, a location service provider, and served as CEO. Loopt is also the first batch of start-ups incubated by Y Combinator.
Y Combinator founder Paul Graham admires Sam Altman very much. He once mentioned in "Entrepreneurship Guide for Students": Sam Altman is a very unique person. I remember seeing him within the third minute and thinking, "Ah, that's about it for 19-year-old Bill Gates!"
Paul Graham once said: "When I give advice to start-up companies, I mention at most two people: Steve Jobs and Sam Altman. When I encounter design problems, I will ask myself: What would Steve Jobs do? When it comes to strategy and ambition, I think: What would Sam Altman do?"
It can be seen that in the eyes of Paul Graham, Sam Altman is a person with a long-term strategic vision and development vision, a very suitable leader, and a bold pioneer. Facts have also proved that Paul Graham's vision was correct.
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Turned to industry, unexpected and reasonable
In March 2019, Sam Altman announced his resignation as president of Y Combinator. The 33-year-old CEO will shift his focus to OpenAI, a non-profit artificial intelligence research institution, and decides to serve as CEO of OpenAI.
OpenAI, headquartered in San Francisco, USA, was co-founded by Sam Altman, Elon Musk and others in 2015.
When Sam Altman announced his resignation as president of Y Combinator, many people were surprised. After all, under Sam's leadership, Y Combinator has become one of the best investment institutions in the world.
In fact, Sam's resignation is puzzling, but reasonable.
As early as 2015, Sam Altman set up the YC Global Research Institute, a non-profit innovation laboratory, with $10 million out of his own pocket. He once stated in public: Although it may sound clichéd, YC Global Research Institute looks forward to making the world a better place, and all research results of YC Global Research Institute will be open sourced to the public free of charge.
Sam Altman believes that venture capital institutions have limitations. For those projects that require long-term research and cannot quickly make a profit, the support is indeed very limited; some technologies and innovations that are related to the well-being of all mankind should belong to all mankind, not to specific organizations or companies.
The YC Global Institute once launched a crazy-sounding project in the United States-the basic income plan. In this plan, participants can get a fixed salary without any additional conditions, so that they can freely choose their favorite careers and no longer be trapped by food and clothing.
The support of this future ideal world plan is the prosperity and progress of technology. The technological boom will lead to higher productivity and lower costs, and Sam Altman predicts that within 10 years AI will create enough wealth to pay every adult $13,500 a year.
Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Netscape and a famous venture capitalist in Silicon Valley, once said: I think Sam Altman's goal is to create the entire future. From the YC Global Institute, we can see Sam Altman's ambition to create an ideal new world.
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In the ideal world of the future, bet on the blockchain
For the research and exploration of the future world, Sam Altman has never stopped. This time, he bet on the blockchain.
In March 2021, Sam Altman spoke out for the encryption field, admiring the token mechanism, and believed that tokens could be used as a way of universal basic income to provide fair financial infrastructure for low-income people.
On June 29, 2021, Sam Altman founded a new company, Worldcoin, and completed a financing of US$25 million. A16z, Coinbase Ventures, LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, Kenetic Capital, and Day One Ventures participated in the investment. Worldcoin plans to issue tokens belonging to everyone in the world and provide everyone with a certain share.
Sam Altman is a man with a mission. He once said: Each of us has a responsibility to behave as if we shoulder the fate of the world. We must live for the future, not for our own comfort or success.
Sam describes his ideal future world like this: Every citizen will enjoy more and more freedom, power, autonomy and opportunity brought about by economic self-determination, poverty will be greatly reduced, and more people will have the opportunity to live the life they want. want life.
Sam believes that the encryption system will be a brand-new economic and monetary system, and the decentralized trust mechanism of blockchain technology will make this system feasible, so the encryption field is a part of his future ideal world plan - the basic income plan. important part.
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Geniuses are different
Sam Altman's childhood was happy, but not happy.
Sam grew up in Missouri in the Midwest of the United States. His mother is a doctor and the family conditions are good, which also gave him the opportunity to get in touch with computers earlier. The precocious Sam has shown his genius since he was a child. At the age of 8, he could already learn to program and disassemble Apple Macintosh computers independently. At 18, Sam was accepted into Stanford University as a computer science major.
Talent did not bring joy to his childhood. Because Sam Altman likes gays, which is not acceptable in conservative Missouri. Sam once said, "As a gay, I didn't have a good time as a kid."
But Sam Altman was also brave. Regarding the fact that he is gay, in the face of discrimination, Sam dared to fight boldly. In pre-college, a Christian group organized a anti-gay rally at Sam's school. Sam wrote an open letter to the community, coming out as gay, speaking out in solidarity with the group and prompting a change in the school's attitudes towards people of different orientations. Sam's counselor Madelyn Gray once said: Sam's approach changed us, it was like someone opened a door, so that all different children could finally enter the world.
It's hard to imagine that brave Sam Altman is actually a pessimistic idealist. He always felt like things were going to go terribly wrong and that there was nowhere in the world where he could feel like he belonged. Sam often worries about the end of the world and creates a physical training plan for himself, including a 100-mile long bike ride once a week, 50 consecutive pull-ups, and so on. When he gets a headache from stress, Sam always Googles and double-checks if he has meningitis or lymphoma.
Dropping out of school may be a standard for American entrepreneurs. Like Jobs, Bill Gates, Zuckerberg, and Jack Dorsey, Sam Altman dropped out of school at the age of 19 and founded the location-based social App Loopt in his sophomore year. . Loopt has received investment from many well-known companies and institutions including Sequoia, Google, Yahoo, PayPal, etc. Although Loopt failed in the end, Sam never stopped his pursuit of the ideal world, so he joined YC later, switched to OpenAI, and bet on the blockchain today.
Regardless of the eyes and evaluation of the world, Sam Altman is a warrior who follows his heart. He wants an ideal bright future, makes plans for it, and puts it into action. Silicon Valley has no shortage of talent, but Sam is certainly one of the younger generations who stands out.
