Pong
product on 14 shows · 10 statements across 3 episodes · said 76 times in 25 episodes since 2016
How I Built This 34 
Acquired 10 
the Knowledge Project 6 
Latent Space 5 
the Y Combinator Startup Podcast 4 
TBPN 4 
My First Million 3 
the a16z Podcast 3 
Capital Allocators 2 
Innovators & Investors 1 
American Optimist 1 
WTF is with Nikhil Kamath 1 
the MAD Podcast 1 
20VC 1
Mentions by year, every show
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How I Built This 34Acquired 10the Knowledge Project 6Latent Space 5the Y Combinator Startup Podcast 4TBPN 4the a16z Podcast 3My First Million 36 more shows
2026 6 mentions in 4 episodes 2 per episode
2025 10 mentions in 4 episodes 3 per episode
- Steve Wozniak: The Engineer Who Built Apple [Outliers]
- Weekly Recap: Tesla Robotaxi, Mr. Beast's AI Tool, Yacine, The Social Network 2, Neuralink Update
- Elon Musk: A Different Conversation w/ Nikhil Kamath | Full Episode | People by WTF Ep. 16 · Nikhil Kamath
- Mark Zuckerberg, James Cameron, Andrew Yang and More - TBPN Top 5
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2024 16 mentions in 6 episodes 3 per episode
- IKEA (Audio) · Acquired
- This World Does Not Exist — Joscha Bach, Karan Malhotra, Rob Haisfield (WorldSim, WebSim, Liquid AI)
- Marc Andreessen & Andrew Chen Talk Creative Computers
- Agents @ Work: Dust.tt — with Stanislas Polu
- Microsoft Volume I: The Complete History and Strategy of founding through Windows 95 (Audio) · Acquired
- MGA Entertainment: Isaac Larian
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2023 1 mention in 1 episode
2022 3 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
2019 2 mentions in 2 episodes 1 per episode
2018 18 mentions in 2 episodes 9 per episode
2017 19 mentions in 3 episodes 6 per episode
- Atari & Chuck E. Cheese's: Nolan Bushnell
- 20VC: YC's Daniel Gross on How YC Can Democratise AI & Reduce Incumbency Advantages, Why ML Enabled Software Will Eat The Software That Ate The World & Whether AI Will Produce Independent Companies or Be Technology within Incumbents
- Ex Machina's Scientific Advisor - Murray Shanahan · Y Combinator
- every mention in 2017, scene by scene →
every mention on every show, scene by scene, with the transcript →
10 statements about Pong, every show
Parrish: Wozniak built a 28-chip home Pong a year before Atari
“To be the only person in the world with their own version of Pong at home, and he'd do it his way with just 28 chips. He completed this a year before Atari released their home version.”
Bushnell: Bally rejected Pong because coin-op norms required single-player games
“And I show it to them and they don't like it because it's a two player game and the coin operated world doesn't allow for a two player game. If there's not a one player game at that time, that was sort of written in stone somewhere in the annals of coin op wor…”
Bushnell: Initial Pong machines earned nearly $300 weekly on $300 cost
“I mean, the game was earning almost 300 dollars a week. And the total cost that we had was about 300 dollars.”
Bushnell: Atari initially only had enough cash to build 12 Pong units
“I looked at all the cash we had, and we had enough cash to build like 12 units.”
Bushnell: Pong's success was driven by empowering women in bars
“And one of the reasons that I think Pong was such a massive success is that it fed into the narrative of what was going on at the time. You know, just after the Summer of Love, the hippie movement women's liberation was starting to rear its head, and Pong, by …”
Bushnell: Atari financed early manufacturing through 60-day supplier terms and cash sales
“And how we financed the company was we would sell for cash the machines. We had 30 day terms. Most of our parts we had 60 day terms. So we'd get the cash literally 60 days before we had to pay for the parts for that.”
Bushnell: Atari produced only 35,000 of the 150,000 Pong machines deployed
“About a 150,000. Only of which, Atari only did about 35,000 of them. We got massively copied.”
Bushnell: Pong arcade units earned $300 weekly on a $300 manufacturing cost
“The game was earning almost 300 dollars a week. And the total cost that we had was about 300 dollars.”
Atari financed early production by securing 60-day terms from parts suppliers
“How we financed the company was we would sell for cash the machines. We had 30 day terms. Most of our parts we had 60 day terms. So we'd get the cash literally 60 days before we had to pay for the parts for that.”