Sam Altman says he’s ‘jealous’ of 20-year-old dropouts; calls this best era to build startups

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman believes today’s young entrepreneurs are living in a golden age of innovation, one even he envies. Speaking at OpenAI’s DevDay conference, Altman said he’s “envious of the current generation of 20-year-old dropouts,” citing the extraordinary opportunities created by artificial intelligence and lower barriers to building products.

“The amount of stuff you can build, the opportunity in this space is so incredibly wide,” Altman told Rowan Cheung, as reported by Business Insider.

Altman, who dropped out of Stanford University in 2005 to found the location-sharing app Loopt, reflected on how much the startup landscape has evolved since his own early days. “I haven’t had a real chunk of free mental space in years to think hard about what I would build,” he said, “but I know there would be a lot of cool stuff to build.”

The OpenAI chief’s comments capture a growing shift in Silicon Valley, one where young founders and college dropouts are again being celebrated as the next wave of disruptors, reminiscent of tech’s early 2000s boom.

As per the reports, two forces are driving this revival. Firstly, soaring education costs, with some U.S. degrees now exceeding $500,000, making traditional academic routes less appealing. Secondly, the rise of AI-powered development tools like Replit, Cursor and ChatGPT, that let creators and coders build apps and businesses without formal technical backgrounds.

Venture capital firms are echoing Altman’s optimism. A recent Andreessen Horowitz report declared that “the playing field has leveled for younger founders,” calling this the best moment in a decade for college dropouts to launch startups.

Similarly, Y Combinator partner Jared Friedman revealed that 30% of YC’s latest cohort are students or recent graduates, a sharp rise from 10% two years ago.

Reflecting on OpenAI’s own path, Altman admitted that startups rarely recognize their core strengths early on. “If you had asked me when we started ChatGPT what our enduring advantages were going to be, I would have said, ‘I have no idea,’” he said. “Features like ChatGPT’s memory came later — the real magic often emerges along the way.”

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