Jessica Livingston

Jessica Livingston, born 1971, is an American author and a founding partner of the seed stage venture firm Y Combinator.[1][2] [3] She also organized Startup School.[4] Previously, she was the VP of marketing at Adams Harkness Financial Group.[5] She has a B.A. in English from Bucknell University.[6] She is a 1989 graduate of Phillips Academy, Andover.[7]

Jessica Livingston in 2007

In early 2007, Livingston released Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days (published by Apress), a collection of interviews with famous startup founders, including Steve Wozniak, Mitch Kapor, Ray Ozzie, and Max Levchin.[8]

In 2008, she married fellow Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham.[9][10]

In December 2015, it was announced that Livingston is one of the financial backers of OpenAI, a for-profit company aimed at the safe development of artificial general intelligence.[11]

In his blog post of 2021, Sam Altman credits Livingston with being essential to the building of Y Combinator into a startup ecosystem saying, "The entire secret to YC (Y Combinator) getting going was PG (Paul Graham) and Jessica—there was no other magic trick. A few times a year, I end up in a conversation at a party where someone tells a story about how much PG changed their life—people speak with more gratitude than they do towards pretty much anyone else. Then everyone else agrees, YC founders and otherwise (non-YC founders might talk about an impactful essay or getting hired at a YC company). Jessica still sadly doesn’t get nearly the same degree of public credit, but the people who were around the early days of YC know the real story."[12]

References
  1. "How Y Combinator Schools Tech Startups". Fast Company. 2009-04-01. Retrieved 2012-07-05.
  2. "The Start-up Guru: Y Combinator's Paul Graham, Page 2". Inc.com. 2009-06-01. Retrieved 2012-07-05.
  3. "Grow the Puzzle Around You". 2018-06-30. Retrieved 2022-11-30.
  4. "2011 Startup School". Startupschool.org. Retrieved 2012-07-05.
  5. "Jessica Livingston: Executive Profile". Bloomberg Businessweek. Retrieved 18 March 2014.
  6. "People". Y Combinator.
  7. "Jessica Livingston". Jessica Livingston.
  8. Taulli, Tom (30 May 2007). "Foolish Book Review: "Founders at Work"". The Motley Fool.
  9. "Where are we going?". arclanguage.org. 2008-10-26. Retrieved 2008-11-14.
  10. "Congrats to PG on getting hitched". news.ycombinator.com. 2008-06-02. Retrieved 2008-11-14.
  11. Priestly, Theo (December 11, 2015). "Elon Musk And Peter Thiel Launch OpenAI, A Non-Profit Artificial Intelligence Research Company". Forbes. Retrieved December 11, 2015.
  12. "PG and Jessica". Retrieved 2023-05-17.


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