Founders Podcast

"There's a great documentary that you can watch on YouTube. It is about Demis and DeepMind and some of their accomplishments. It's called the Thinking Game"

"You should read one of his favorite novels, which is Ender's Game to understand him"

"The publisher was nice to send me an advanced copy, and by the time you hear this episode, this book will be available to buy"

"A few weeks ago, I just did this episode called How SpaceX Works. Huge chunks of that episode is about this idea. If you haven't listened to it, I'd highly recommend going back and listening to it after this."

"I'd recommend buying the book and watching the video. I literally have personally used ideas that I discovered in this talk to build this podcast."

"I actually did an episode on Danny's fantastic autobiography like probably 9 years ago. It's episode 20."

"I read Bob Dylan's autobiography, which is excellent. I did an episode on it. It's episode 259 if you ever want to listen to it."

"And before I get into this incredible book that I read about Roger Federer, which is called The Master, the Long Run and the Beautiful Game of Roger Federer, written by Christopher Clarey"

"There is like a 20-page afterward that I highly recommend you read. It's in Ed Catmull's autobiography called Creativity Inc. It's called The Steve Jobs We Knew."

"This is the book that over the years has been the most requested book for me to cover on the podcast. I had a hard time putting it down. It turns out it is as good as everybody told me that it was."

"He was reading Isaac Asimov's Foundation series and Ian Banks Culture series. Ian Banks gave him this applied utopian vision of what AI's realization could mean"

"At the same time, Demis was inhaling science fiction. He was reading Isaac Asimov's Foundation series"

"He actually has one of my all-time favorite quotes. It's in his book Zero to One. It says, 'The single most powerful pattern I have noticed is that successful people find value in unexpected places'"

"The book is called Gödel, Escher, and Bach. It was a fire hose of a book that inspired a remarkable number of future AI scientists"

"I'm reading an early copy of this book called The Book of Elon. It's written by my friend Eric Jorgenson. It'll be out in a few weeks. It's about 200 pages of just Elon in his own words."

"Sam read Moneyball in two days. He loved everything about it. He could not stop thinking about it."

"I randomly discovered this talk on YouTube. I think it's one of the best talks on YouTube."

"At Stanford Graduate School of Business, Sam was able to take a sports management class for the first time."

"The name 87 Capital is from Means of Ascent: The Years of Lyndon Johnson by Robert Caro."

"A few years ago, Sam was interviewed by my friend Patrick on his podcast, Invest Like the Best."

"I think about one of my favorite quotes comes from Brad Jacobs. Brad Jacobs wrote in his book, How to Make a Few Billion Dollars. So much of success in business and life is keeping your head in a good place."

"Kobe Bryant said the exact same thing in that book that he wrote called Mamba Mentality. He talks about the importance of studying the greats."

"Federer also invested in On which is a Swiss running shoe company that's based in Zurich. I actually just spent time with David one of the founders of On. I spent a few days with him. I found him wildly impressive."

"And then this part reminds me of this idea that's in Rick Rubin's book. The book is called The Creative Act. I just did an episode on it a few weeks ago."

"Brad Jacobs has this great line in the book that he wrote, which is called How to Make a Few Billion. It's episode 335 of Founders."

"His friend says, 'Hey, why don't you check out this guy? He's just written a book about tennis. It's called Winning Ugly.' Brad's book contains the kind of practical wisdom I need."

"So whether you're a fast growing startup like Cursor or an enterprise company like Snowflake, Vanta fits easily into your existing workflows"

"Many of the top founders and CEOs that I know run their business on Ramp. I run my business on Ramp and you should too"

"Axon is the most powerful advertising platform in a generation. Axon allows you to capture undivided attention"

"Vanta helps your company prove you're secure so more customers will use your product or service. You can think of Vanta as your always on AI powered security expert"

"Collateral transforms your complex ideas into compelling narratives. Collateral crafts institutional grade marketing collateral and they do this for private equity, private credit, real estate, venture capital, family offices, hedge funds."