👢 Taylor Swift wore boots, so now you do, too

OpenAI has had a pretty good year. ChatGPT is a household name, and oh yeah, the company has added ~$10B in valuation — so far.

As a result, its 38-year-old co-founder and CEO, Sam Altman, is ascendant in business royalty.

So, what’s his deal?

A St. Louis native and Stanford dropout, Altman’s first startup was Loopt, a phone location-sharing service.

Altman then moved into venture capital. That went quite well for him.

At 28, he led Y Combinator, the famed startup accelerator behind companies like Airbnb, Instacart, Stripe, and Reddit. (He served as Reddit’s CEO for eight days in 2014.)

OpenAI launched in 2015, and it’s been Altman’s full-time focus since 2019, per Insider. Though his portfolio has continued to grow beyond AI:

• His investments include nuclear fusion developer Helion Energy; Elon Musk’s brain-implant startup Neuralink; sports card trading platform Alt; supersonic jet maker Hermeus; and multiple biotech companies.

Altman’s estimated net worth today is ~$500m.

What else?

• Altman learned to program and disassemble computers at 8 years old, and credited his Mac — and AOL chatrooms — for helping him survive “growing up gay in the Midwest,” per The New Yorker.
• His mom is a dermatologist. His brother, Jack, is also CEO of a multibillion-dollar company (people management platform Lattice).
• Altman is ready for the End Times: “I have guns, gold, potassium iodide, antibiotics, batteries, water, [and] gas masks,” he told The New Yorker in 2016.

But if he has his way, Altman — and everyone else, for that matter — will be around a long time: He has invested $180m in lifespan-extension startup Retro Biosciences.

His goal, per Insider, isn’t immortality but “to give people another 10 years of healthy, vigorous life.”

Taylor Swift’s impact on pop culture is so unstoppable, she’s got some fans dressing, as Glen Campbell would sing, “like a rhinestone cowboy.”

Throughout Swift’s Eras Tour, she’s been donning flashy sequin dresses, sparkly boots, and cowboy hats, leading to a surge in similar items among retailers, per CNN.

• Hazel & Olive claims to have received “hundreds” of calls and messages about its $129 “Eras Sequin Fringe Dress.”
• Francesca’s reports a 30% bump in sales of certain dress styles when Swift tours near one of its 454 locations.
• Some retailers, including Altar’d State and Bipty, have cleverly curated Swift collections.

Swift isn’t alone…

… in shifting fashion among fans. Retailers say other artists, including Harry Styles and Beyonce, can also create demand for certain pieces when they tour.

And historically, musicians have long dictated fashion trends, with the savviest of brands adapting quickly to embrace them:

• Run-DMC’s hit “My Adidas” boosted sales so much that the company gave them a $1m endorsement deal in 1986, making them the first musicians to partner with an athletic brand.
• In 1985, Macy’s in NYC opened “Madonnaland,” a department catering to those who wanted to copy the pop star’s iconic looks.
• Even those who rejected fashion inadvertently influenced it. In the early ‘90s, Marc Jacobs developed a grunge show for Perry Ellis, inspired by Seattle’s flannel-heavy alt-rock scene.

But you know what we’re really curious about? Weird Al’s impact on the Hawaiian-shirt industry.