“We wrote the book to say the things nobody says out loud. Now we’ve built a conversational tool to augment the original experience,” said Zalman. “Read our story, then turn it into your own.”
The idea for the chatbot came after Founder vs Investor was featured in multiple episodes of the Apple TV+ show, Stick, starring Owen Wilson and Marc Maron. The book is used as a visual shorthand for communicating how serious the character Elena is in becoming an investor. Jerry Neumann, the book’s co-author, thought, “If Elena is serious about learning to invest, she needs to both read the book and be able to ask us questions.”
While most AI tools are generically based on internet content, this one isn’t. Trained on the full text of the book and tuned with the voice of both Zalman (a repeat founder) and Neumann (a veteran VC), the chatbot is designed to give straight talk to founders and investors navigating the minefields of what it’s like to start, run, govern, and invest in a company without needing to call in favors or pretend they’re not freaked out. It’s unafraid to say “This is a red flag” or “You’re being played.”
“The chatbot reflects our broader view that AI should be trained on expert knowledge and experience, and not just the Library of Babel that is the internet,” said Neumann.
As publishers and authors grapple with how to keep books relevant in an AI era, this might be the first example of nonfiction turned into an always-on, queryable resource. “It’s a thought experiment on how knowledge is shared, packaged in a form that’s immediately useful to the founder community,” said Zalman. Sandgarden’s approach offers a glimpse of a future path: books that talk back, books with which you can converse, and knowledge that presents as dynamic conversation.
The Founder vs. Investor chatbot is available now at https://www.foundervsinvestor.com. It’s free, unfiltered, and probably more honest than your investor.
About Sandgarden
Sandgarden’s end-to-end automations eliminate drudge work for technical teams. Founded in 2024, the company is focused on how AI can surface hard-earned insight in the moments it matters most.
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Media Contact
Marty McCall, Sandgarden, 1 (616) 202-6608, [email protected], https://www.sandgarden.com/
SOURCE Sandgarden
