Co-founder Sam helped design and implement an “organic growth initiative” funded by the parent company at what was then their publishing division, Simon & Schuster. With his co-founder, Sam designed and operationalized an approach for how Simon & Schuster would discover, vet, acquire, and support the development and publication of books in new, research-informed ways. This included imagining a new “cultural intelligence” function in the organization, implementing a range of those intelligence services to benefit editorial and marketing teams, creating new infrastructure with editorial and marketing teams, piloting new data science initiatives to assist publishing decision-making, and helping recruit a 20+-person team that helped iterate this approach. As part of this endeavor, Sam and his colleagues launched a new imprint (Tiller Press) that tested these patterns and models before being implemented for other parts of the company. Tiller Press grossed more than $1 million in sales in 2019, around $4 million in sales in 2020, and netted more than a half-million units sold before reaching its second anniversary. In all, in 2.5 years, the pilot imprint published more than 120 books and created a cultural intelligence function that now helps serve across Simon & Schuster (now under private equity ownership).