Inc Magazine:

“As venture capital deals go, it doesn’t seem like much–just $6,000. But that was all Sam Altman needed to get his new business, a cell phone software maker called Loopt, off the ground.

Altman, now 22, founded the business in 2005 while he was a sophomore at Stanford. He was looking for a way to keep in touch with his friends on campus and got the idea to write software that would allow all of his friends with GPS-equipped cell phones to find one another. Altman heard about Y Combinator’s newly launched program from a classmate and got in touch. Later that year, he got $6,000 from Y Combinator and left school. He spent the summer in Cambridge developing his product, listening to guest speakers, and learning the nuts and bolts of running a business. In return, he gave his investors an undisclosed amount of common stock in his company, which is based in Palo Alto.

For Altman, the trade has been more than worth it. Last September, Loopt launched its cell phone software exclusively with Boost Mobile, a subsidiary of Sprint Nextel (NYSE:S) with 3.8 million subscribers. Boost has since invested several million dollars in a TV advertising campaign to support the launch. Altman also plans to partner with several major cell phone carriers, which will roll out the service in 2007. The company is adding staff and recently raised $5 million in Series A financing from powerhouse VC firms like Sequoia Capital, which helped launch Google (NASDAQ:GOOG), Yahoo, and PayPal (NASDAQ:EBAY). ‘We have five people on our team, none of whom is over 23 and none of whom has any business experience,’ says Altman.”