Jessica Livingston

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.^[5] Later, she served as vice president of marketing at Adams Harkness Financial Group, an investment bank.^[7]

Livingston met Paul Graham, Robert Morris and Trevor Blackwell (the co-founders of dot-com company Viaweb) at a party in Cambridge.^[4] 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.^[8] Sam Altman (a former YC partner) credits Livingston with being essential to the transformation of Y Combinator into a startup ecosystem.^[9] 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.^[10]

In early 2007, Livingston published Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days, a collection of interviews with famous startup founders, including Steve Wozniak.^[11]

In 2013, Livingston launched the Female Founders conference with the aim of inspiring more women to found startup companies.^[12]

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.^[12]

Livingston is one of the financial backers of OpenAI, a for-profit company aiming to develop artificial general intelligence.^[13]

In 2023, she started co-hosting The Social Radars podcast alongside fellow YC partner Carolynn Levy.^[14]

Livingston married Paul Graham in 2008.^[15] They have two children.^[16] Since late 2016, the family has resided in the United Kingdom.^[8][16]