Jessica Livingston (born 1971) is an American investor, writer, and podcaster. She is best known for being a founding partner of the seed stage venture firm Y Combinator. She is the wife of founding partner Paul Graham.

Early life and education

Livingston grew up in the Boston area, raised in large part by her father and grandmother. In 1989, she graduated from Phillips Academy, a high school in Massachusetts. 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. Later, Livingston was vice president of marketing at Adams Harkness Financial Group, an investment bank. 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. 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 role leading Y Combinator, handing over to Altman, Livingston increased her day to day involvement, including having responsibility for the organisation's Startup School. 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. 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. 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.