9 Lessons I Learned From Sam Altman About Startups, Artificial Intelligence, and Leading With Vision

In the late summer of 2015, a group of young founders gathered in a cramped room at Y Combinator's Mountain View office. They were nervous, clutching pitch decks and half-finished prototypes, but the man they were about to meet didn't seem interested in their slides.

Sam Altman, barely in his thirties at the time, leaned forward and asked questions that cut through the noise: Why this? Why now? Why you?

What struck those founders was not just the rigor of his questioning, but the way he see...