Sam Altman and finding success in failure

How Sam Altman's failure with Loopt launched his future path to success.

Transcript

00:00 It's okay if you fail, and if you do fail, you'll not be in much different of a place

00:03 than you are today and you can go try the next thing.

00:06 You've probably heard of Sam Altman, the billionaire CEO of OpenAI.

00:10 OpenAI is the parent company of Chats GPT, which has quickly become one of the most known

00:14 names in artificial intelligence.

00:15 But there's a lot more to Altman than AI chatbots.

00:18 Altman has been making waves in big tech since he was a teenager.

00:21 At 19, he launched Looped, a social media site that pioneered real-time location sharing.

00:26 It allowed users to update their friends back in 2005.

00:29 Looped would go on to partner with most major phone carriers, including Verizon, Sprint,

00:33 and AT&T, but it never built the massive user base that Twitter and Facebook had.

00:37 It may have been simply ahead of its time.

00:39 The failure was just really the beginning of Altman.

00:41 After Looped was acquired by Green Dot Capital in 2012, Altman used some of his profits to

00:46 essentially become the leader of the modern internet.

00:48 His work at Startup Accelerator, Y Combinator, Bankworld, Reddit, Stripe, and Airbnb, all

00:53 companies that redefined how we interact, pay, and travel.

00:57 While OpenAI initially struggled with funding, organization, and its central purpose, it

01:02 ultimately went on to launch ChachiBT.

01:04 In the AI arms race, it now dominates big tech.

01:08 Altman was catapulted into the public spotlight for the good and the bad.

01:11 Some, including Elon Musk, have claimed Altman abandoned the principle of openness that founded

01:17 OpenAI in favor of chasing profits.

01:20 Altman made headlines in 2023 when OpenAI's board voted to fire him for a lack of candor

01:25 and hindering the company's governance.

01:28 He denied the claim.

01:29 OpenAI's staff threatened to quit, and Altman was ultimately reinstated as CEO.

01:33 So calling Altman a hero or a villain may be a matter of perspective, but there's no

01:37 denying his status as a disruptor.

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