How did he become so rich? His Wikipedia page does not have much details on this.
"Sam Altman, the co-founder of Loopt, had just finished his sophomore year when we funded them, and Loopt is probably the most promising of all the startups we've funded so far. But Sam Altman is a very unusual guy. Within about three minutes of meeting him, I remember thinking 'Ah, so this is what Bill Gates must have been like when he was 19.'"
"Honestly, Sam is, along with Steve Jobs, the founder I refer to most when I'm advising startups. On questions of design, I ask "What would Steve do?" but on questions of strategy or ambition I ask "What would Sama do?"
What I learned from meeting Sama is that the doctrine of the elect applies to startups. It applies way less than most people think: startup investing does not consist of trying to pick winners the way you might in a horse race. But there are a few people with such force of will that they're going to get whatever they want."
The Microsoft investment in OpenAI came out of a chance meeting between Altman and Nadella at some conference they were both attending - Altman pitched him on the idea, and was evidentially very persuasive to get that level of investment!
What do you mean by this?
From there he became a VC and ultimately president of YC.
I guess he was ahead of his time, in a way? Still, I've never forgotten that this silly "success" was the first big exit of the most touted YC founder, ever.
It's as if his success was predestined. Loopt should have been a failure, but instead it ended up being a successful exit, made him rich(er), and became a stepping stone to greater things.
He's always been rich.