Demis Hassabis

Considering how important AI is becoming in our world, I would highly recommend reading the book.

There is a lot of fascinating stories about how they actually built the technology that are in the book that I think you should read.

And then Demis is constantly interacting with and his stories, you know, weaving in and out of all these other phenomenal entrepreneurs and well-known investors.

The first one is Peter Thiel.

Demis needs money for DeepMind, so he finds a way to pitch Peter Thiel.

They're at this party at a conference that says instead of pitching Peter Thiel with yet another startup story and doing so in the middle of a crowded party, Demis hooked Thiel with chess.

So he starts talking about chess with Peter because he knew that Peter was obsessed with chess.

Thiel then invites Demis and his co-founder over to his house the next day to explain their ambitious venture.

When they do so, says Thiel began to think this project was an A-plus on the science and maybe an F on the business model.

But he had also had a further thought.

Demis was an extreme case of an authentic entrepreneur, not a mercenary who starts with a desire to get rich from a startup, then casts around for a plausible idea, but rather a missionary who feels compelled to work on a particular challenge, then starts a company as a way of tackling it.

The good thing about missionaries is that they never quit.

Even if they have to work around the clock and pay themselves nothing, they will keep obsessing about the problem.

I always say that people aren't really entrepreneurs in the abstract, but there's maybe one great company that somebody has in them, Peter said.

It was Demis' destiny to build this one.

And so he's raising money from Peter Thiel.

They build this business plan, this deck of DeepMind.

There's just a couple of things I want to pull out from this business plan, from this deck that I thought was interesting.

In the deck, it has a quote from Bill Gates.

Remember the idea for an AI company is ridiculous at this time.