Book · recommended on 6 episodes
Snow Crash
Neal Stephenson ISBN 9788493066352
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Neal Stephenson ISBN 9788493066352
Find it on AmazonAffiliate link — we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.
This book by Neal Stephenson has come up 6 times across 2 different shows: Lex Fridman, Tim Ferriss. 5 of those mentions were genuine on-air recommendations, not just passing references. The people who brought it up: Bill Gurley, Brad Feld, George Hotz, Lex Fridman, Max Levchin, Tim Ferriss. The earliest mention we indexed is from 2020-07-27 and the most recent from 2026-06-10. Every occurrence below links to the episode page and to the exact second it was said on YouTube.
Within the Metaverse, Hiro is offered a datafile named Snow Crash by a man named Raven who hints that it is a form of narcotic. Hiro's friend and fellow hacker Da5id views a bitmap image contained in the file which causes his computer to crash and Da5id to suffer brain damage in the real world. This is the future we now live where all can be brought to life in the metaverse and now all can be taken away. Follow on an adventure with Hiro and YT as they work with the mob to uncover a plot of biblical proportions.
“My college life was shaped by Snow Crash, probably the thing that really put him on the map”— Max Levchin
The guest here is Max Levchin: Cofounder of PayPal and founder/CEO of Affirm; Soviet-Ukraine-born engineer-turned-CEO, cryptography enthusiast, obsessive cyclist, and prolific tech investor (sci-fi.vc). Affirm and PayPal cofounder Max Levchin on marriage, cycling, fighting socialism, building buy-now-pay-later, and his obsessive coffee philosophy.
“years ago, I read Snow Crash when it came out. ... Thought it was the best thing that I had ever consumed. And I was in hook, line, and sinker.”— Bill Gurley
The guest here is Bill Gurley: General partner at Benchmark for 20+ years (eBay, Uber, OpenTable, GrubHub, Stitch Fix, Zillow); former top-ranked Wall Street sell-side analyst at Credit Suisse First Boston; trustee at the Santa Fe Institute. Legendary VC Bill Gurley on mental models, network effects, the brutal valuation reset, open source as corporate strategy, and regulatory capture.
“exploring ideas in mathematics science cryptography money linguistics philosophy and virtual reality from his early book snow crash to his new one”— Lex Fridman
The guest here is Neal Stephenson: Legendary science fiction author of Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon, The Diamond Age, Seveneves and Termination Shock. He was Blue Origin's first employee and served as Chief Futurist at the AR company Magic Leap. Sci-fi legend Neal Stephenson on space, aliens, AI, VR, crypto, climate geoengineering, and why a good yarn is an evolutionary survival tool.
“go read snow crash and appreciate how prescient that book was uh and it's an enjoyable read neil stephenson incredible book but go check that out”— Tim Ferriss
The guest here is Chris Dixon and Naval Ravikant: Chris Dixon is a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) leading its crypto investments, and a serial founder of startups acquired by McAfee and eBay. Naval Ravikant is co-founder and chairman of AngelList, a prolific angel investor (Twitter, Uber, Notion), and a widely followed thinker on wealth and happiness. Chris Dixon and Naval Ravikant explain Web3, NFTs, tokens, and DAOs as a user-owned internet revolution with Tim Ferriss.
“everyone should read snow crash if you haven't read those like start there”— George Hotz
The guest here is George Hotz: Hacker known as geohot, famous for jailbreaking the iPhone and PlayStation 3. Founder of comma ai, which sells the $1,000 comma two device and open-source openpilot software for semi-autonomous driving. George Hotz riffs on hacking the simulation, crypto, immortality, and why end-to-end neural nets beat Tesla's task-by-task approach to self-driving.
“snow crash is written in 1992 ... i think the technology part of snow crash is brilliant but even more powerful is the geopolitical part”— Brad Feld
The guest here is Brad Feld: Early-stage investor and entrepreneur since 1987, co-founder of Foundry Group and Techstars, and author of multiple books in the Startup Revolution series. He is also an OCD/depression mental-health advocate, art collector, and 50-state marathon runner based in Boulder, Colorado. VC Brad Feld tells Tim Ferriss how unplugging rituals, therapy, and openness about depression sustained him through entrepreneurial chaos.
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