Whether it’s his two NFL teams during his playing career, the New England Patriots or the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, or his numerous ventures off the field (we’ll ignore FTX for now), it seems like every organization Tom Brady has been a part of achieves massive success. The latest entrant to this list is Colossal Biosciences, the company that recently made a historic achievement by resurrecting the dire wolf — a species extinct for over 10,000 years.
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The seven-time Super Bowl winner, who is an investor in the company, revealed in this week’s 199 newsletter that his association with Colossal stemmed from his relentless pursuit of innovation to enhance his longevity and peak performance.
From developing the TB12 way of life or avoiding nightshades to escape inflammation, the Patriots legend hasn’t shied away from trying out new ideas to stay in top shape. So from this lens, Brady helping out a company interested in de-extinction was pretty much an easy decision for him.
“When I think back through all the innovative things I was a part of during my playing career… what led me to those places was a very simple question: how can I play at a high level for a long time?” penned the former Patriot.
This introspection led him to Colossal’s co-founder, Ben Lamm, with whom he ultimately built a friendship. Interestingly enough, one of the first things Brady recalled asking Lamm was if he could clone his dog, Lua. “I asked him, half-jokingly, whether they could clone my sweet old dog Lua. He indulged me and said that’s not really what they’re trying to do, but yeah, technically they could clone her.”
Impressed by Lamm’s vision and his plans to broaden the scope of biological sciences, Brady quickly became both an investor and a member of Colossal’s cultural advisory board. “As soon as I knew what Ben Lamm was doing and how out of the box his thinking was, I had to be involved.”
And it turns out the GOAT bet on the right horse, as Colossal has been all over the news recently for successfully extracting DNA from ancient dire wolf remains and editing gray wolf genomes to produce pups with dire wolf traits. These pups — named Romulus, Remus, and Khaleesi — now reside in a U.S. nature preserve.
On paper, this advancement seems like a massive money maker for Tom Brady. But beyond the financial upside, the former NFL quarterback’s biggest takeaway from his association with Colossal is that big ideas don’t need to come from complex questions.
Just like creativity is the simplest way to communicate a complex thought, Brady realized that the key to the biggest ideas lies in asking simple questions.
“Big ideas start with simple questions. And it’s the hard work of trying to answer those questions that produces life-changing innovations,” he wrote.
As things stand, Brady, through his partnership with Colossal, will continue to champion groundbreaking endeavors that push the boundaries of science and possibility, adding yet another highlight-worthy point to his already incredible resume.
