“OpenAI CEO Sam Altman Once Said the Only Time He Ever ‘Froze’ Was When He Met His Childhood Idol Steve Jobs”, 2023-11 (; backlinks):
Sam Altman once became deeply starstruck after meeting his idol, Steve Jobs.
In a resurfaced interview clip from December 2015, which was recently published on CNN’s website, a fresh-faced Altman said meeting the Apple cofounder left him nervous to the point that he couldn’t move.
Altman called Jobs his “childhood idol” and said auditioning in front of him in his early 20s was the only time he’d ever “frozen out of nervousness in any business context.”
…Those who know Altman have described him as someone who makes prescient bets and has even been called “a startup Yoda” or the “Kevin Bacon of Silicon Valley”, having worked with seemingly everyone in the industry. Aaron Levie, the CEO of enterprise cloud company Box and a longtime friend of Altman who came up with him in the startup world, told CNN that Altman is “introspective” and wants to debate ideas, get different points of view and endlessly encourages feedback on whatever he’s working on.
“I’ve always found him to be incredibly self-critical on ideas and willing to take any kind of feedback on any topic that he’s been involved with over the years”, Levie said.