Jessica Livingston

Early life and education

Livingston was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and later relocated to the Boston area, raised in large part by her father and grandmother. In 1989, she graduated from Phillips Academy. Later, she received a Bachelor of Arts with a major in English from Bucknell University.

Career

After college, Livingston pursued an array of jobs, including work at Fidelity, the Food & Wine magazine, an automotive consulting firm, and a wedding planning service.

Livingston met Paul Graham, Robert Morris and Trevor Blackwell (the co-founders of dot-com company Viaweb) at a party in Cambridge. They discussed creating a startup incubator, and in 2005 the four co-founded Y Combinator (YC). In the early days of YC, Livingston and Graham hosted weekly meals for their founders at their home near Cambridge. Sam Altman (a former YC partner) credits Livingston with being essential to the transformation of Y Combinator into a startup ecosystem. When Graham stepped down from his leading role, handing over to Altman, Livingston increased her day-to-day involvement, including responsibility for the organization's Startup School.

In early 2007, Livingston published Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days, a collection of interviews with famous startup founders, including Steve Wozniak.

In 2013, Livingston launched the Female Founders conference with the aim of inspiring more women to found startup companies.

In 2016, she took a year-long sabbatical from the incubator to spend time with her family and consider projects and other things she wanted to pursue.

Livingston is one of the financial backers of OpenAI, a for-profit company aiming to develop artificial general intelligence.

In 2023, she started co-hosting The Social Radars podcast alongside fellow YC partner Carolynn Levy.

Personal life

Livingston married Paul Graham in 2008. Since late 2016, she and her family have resided in the United Kingdom.

References

References

1. (April 4, 2009). "How Y Combinator Schools Tech Startups".
2. (June 1, 2009). "The Start-up Guru: Y Combinator's Paul Graham, Page 2".
3. (June 30, 2018). "Grow the Puzzle Around You".
4. "VC Corner: Jessica Livingston of Y Combinator (Stripe, Reddit, Weebly, Dropbox, OpenAI)".
5. "Jessica Livingston".
6. "People".
7. "Jessica Livingston: Executive Profile & Biography".
8. (Mar 23, 2018). "YC co-founder recalls rejecting Drew Houston's first idea and Dropbox's early days".
9. (September 25, 2020). "PG and Jessica".
10. (August 21, 2014). "Y Combinator's Jessica Livingston: We're as relevant as ever".
11. Taulli, Tom. (May 30, 2007). "Foolish Book Review: "Founders at Work"". The Motley Fool.
12. (April 5, 2016). "Y Combinator cofounder Jessica Livingston to take year-long sabbatical".
13. (December 11, 2015). "Elon Musk And Peter Thiel Launch OpenAI, A Non-Profit Artificial Intelligence Research Company".
14. (2024-01-29). "The Social Radars on Apple Podcasts".
15. (June 2, 2008). "Congrats to PG on getting hitched". news.ycombinator.com.