Sam Altman: "Never a Better Time to Do a Startup"

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-al... 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”