Founders

#274 Jim Clark (Silicon Graphics, Netscape)

What I learned from rereading The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story by Michael Lewis ---- Founders Notes gives you the superpower to learn from history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. You can search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast. Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- [1:23] Maybe somewhere in a footnote, it would be mentioned that he came from nothing, grew up poor, dropped out of high school, and made himself three or four billion dollars. [7:41] She explained that the shares in Netscape that Clark had given them had made them rich. "And you have to understand," she said, “that when this happened, we were poor. I was ready to cook the cat." I assumed this was a joke, and laughed. I assumed wrong. [12:48] He was expelled from school and left town.  One time he came home talking about nothing but computers. No one in Plainview had even seen a computer except in the movies. [13:21] I remember him telling me when he came back from the Navy, ‘Mama, I’m going to show Plainview.’ [14:42] In under eight years this person, considered unfit to graduate from high school, had earned himself a Ph.D. in Computer Science. [15:05] I grew up in black and white. I thought the whole world was shit, and I was sitting in the middle of it. [17:17] If you want to understand the entrepreneur, study the juvenile delinquent. The delinquent is saying with his actions, “This sucks. I’m going to do my own thing. — Yvon Chouinard [17:56] The most powerful paragraph in the book: One day I was sitting at home and, I remember having the thought ‘You can did this hole as deep as you want to dig it.’ I remember thinking ‘My God, I’m going to spend the rest of my life in this fucking hole.’ You can reach these points in life when you say, ‘Fuck, I’ve reached some sort of dead-end here. And you descend into chaos. All those years you thought you were achieving something. And you achieved nothing. I was thirty-eight years old. I’d just been fired. My second wife had just left me. I had somehow fucked up. I developed this maniacal passion for wanting to achieve something. [19:00] Two part series on Vannevar Bush Pieces of the Action by Vannevar Bush. (Founders #270) and Endless Frontier: Vannevar Bush, Engineer of the American Century by G. Pascal Zachary. (Founders #271)  [21:38] New Growth Theory argued that wealth came from the human imagination. Wealth wasn’t chiefly having more of old things; it was having entirely new things. [22:54] On creating new wealth/companies: A certain tolerance for nonconformism is really critical to the process. [24:31] The internet has massively broadened the possible space of careers, and most people haven't figured this out yet. —The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness by Naval Ravikant and Eric Jorgenson. (Founders #191) [25:06] A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both. [27:36] George Lucas: A Life by Brian Jay Jones. (Founders #35) and Steven Spielberg: A Biography by Joseph McBride. (Founders #209) [33:10] The independence and the control is worth a lot more than the money. [33:32] These people could never build the machines of the future, but they could sell the machines of the present. [35:02] Clark on how to avoid being disrupted: For a technology company to succeed, he argued, it needed always to be looking to destroy itself. If it didn’t, someone else would. “It’s the hardest thing in business to do,” he would say. “Even creating a lower-cost product runs against the grain, because the low-cost products undercut the high-cost, more profitable products.” Everyone in a successful company, from the CEO on down, has a stake in whatever the company is currently selling. It does not naturally occur to anyone to find a way to undermine that product. [40:41] The young were forever eating the old. In this drama technology played a very clear role. It was the murder weapon. [40:55] The art of storytelling is critically important. Most of the entrepreneurs who come to us can't tell a story. Learning to tell a story is incredibly important because that's how the money works. The money flows as a function of the stories. —Don Valentine [42:53] The Pmarca Blog Archive Ebook by Marc Andreessen (Founders #50) [45:48] What is the role I want to play in my company? I need to make sure to design my environment so I am always playing that role. Make sure you design the job you want. What is the point of being an entreprenuer if you don’t do that? [47:45] John Doerr had cleared $500 million in 18 months. 30 times his original investment. [49:13] You must find extraordinary people. I noticed that the dynamic range between what an average person could accomplish and what the best person could accomplish was 50 or 100 to 1. Given that, you're well advised to go after the cream of the cream. That's what we've done. A small team of A+ players can run  circles around a giant team of B and C players. — In the Company of Giants: Candid Conversations With the Visionaries of the Digital World by Rama Dev Jager and Rafael Ortiz. (Founders #208) [52:03] Clark liked to say that human beings when they took risks, fell into one of two types, pigs or chickens. “The difference between these two kinds of people is the difference between the pig and the chicken in the ham-and-eggs breakfast. The chicken is interested, the pig is committed. If you are going to do anything worth doing, you need a lot of pigs.” [53:14] In our 10 days at sea the value of his holdings had nearly tripled. This is fantasy land he said. [53:54] There are vastly more conceivable possibilities than realized outcomes. ---- Founders Notes gives you the superpower to learn from history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. You can search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast. Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#273 Kobe Bryant (Mamba Mentality)

What I learned from rereading The Mamba Mentality: How I Play by Kobe Bryant.  ---- Founders Notes gives you the superpower to learn from history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. You can search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast. Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- Episode outline:  If you really want to be great at something, you have to truly care about it. If you want to be great in a particular area, you have to obsess over it. A lot of people say they want to be great, but they're not willing to make the sacrifices necessary to achieve greatness. They have other concerns and they spread themselves out. That's totally fine. After all, greatness is not for everybody. Greatness isn't easy to achieve. It requires a lot of time. You can't achieve greatness by walking a straight line. Respect to those who do achieve greatness and respect to those who are chasing that elusive feeling. May you find the power in understanding the journey of others to help create your own. He dedicates a lot of time in this book to the importance of learning from and studying the great people that came before you. Showboat: The Life of Kobe Bryant by Roland Lazenby (Founders #272) His dissection of the game was at another level. In my entire career, I’ve never seen a player as dedicated to being the best. His determination is unparalleled. He unquestionably worked harder than anyone else I have ever played with. Kobe knew that to be the best you need a different approach from everyone else. If I wanted to implement something new into my game, I'd see it and try incorporating it immediately. I wasn't scared of looking bad or being embarrassed. I had a constant craving, a yearning, to improve and be the best. I never needed any external forces to motivate me. If something has worked for other greats before you, and if something is working for you, why change it up and embrace some new fad? Stick with what works, even if it's unpopular. Kobe mentions reading: Jackie Robinson’s autobiography Reading is forced meditation. I never thought about my daily preparation. It wasn't a matter of whether it was an option or not. It was, if I want to play, this is what I have to do, so l'd just show up and do it. I always found that short 15 minute cat naps gave me all the energy I would need for peak performance. Your routine can change but your obsession can not. You can find an edge by doing things your competitors are not doing. I revere the players who made the game what it is, and cherish the chances I had to pick their brains. Anything that I was seeing or going to see, any type of defense or offense or player or team—they had already encountered years before. I talked with them to learn how to deal with those challenges. I devoured Bill Russel’s autobiography. There were a lot of valuable lessons in there.  If you wanna win championships, you have to let people focus on what they do best, while you focus on what you do best. You train an animal. You teach a person —Sol Price: Retail Revolutionary & Social Innovator by Robert E. Price (Founders #107) In our first year together, he (Tex Winter) and I would rewatch every single game together. Preseason, regular season, playoffs. That's a lot of basketball. As I learned time and again, success in business often rests on a minute reading of the regulations that  impact your business. —Becoming Trader Joe: How I Did Business My Way and Still Beat the Big Guys by Joe Coulombe. (Founders #188) Coach K is really intense. He and I approach winning and losing the same way in that winning is the goal, and losing is, well, losing isn't even on the table. Coach K in The Redeem Team documentary: Understand the responsibility. I know I’m not going to fucking lose. I am not going to fucking lose. Not when I’m wearing this (team USA jersey) and not at this time in my career. You’re going to have to fucking shoot me. That’s how I want you to play. These greats won't hang around you if you don't display the same passion as they do. They won't share their time and memories with you if you don't display the same effort and drive for excellence that they did. I was accepted so quickly because everyone saw how hard I worked. They saw how badly I wanted to fulfill my destiny. The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America's Banana King by Rich Cohen. (Founders #255) It is to the point where if you know the basics, you have an advantage on the majority of players. “There are two things in business that matter, and you can learn this in two minutes- you don’t have to go to business school for two years: high gross margins and cash flow. All companies that go out of business do so for the same reason – they run out of money.” —Don Valentine I felt that my destiny was already written. I felt I knew that my future was undeniable and no one, not a person or a play, could derail it. This is the goal. This is my goal: For almost a decade he did nothing but address weaknesses and add to his game. Now his skill set is completely fleshed out. His game has no weaknesses. He's a nightmare to go up against, and he's worked to achieve that status. That's the money right there: That thirst and quest for information and improvement. Driven From Within by Michael Jordan and Mark Vancil. (Founders #213) ---- Founders Notes gives you the superpower to learn from history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. You can search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast. Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#272 Kobe Bryant (The Life)

What I learned from reading Showboat: The Life of Kobe Bryant by Roland Lazenby.   ---- Founders Notes gives you the superpower to learn from history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. You can search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast. Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- [9:15] Notes from The Redeem Team documentary: 30 seconds into the first practice Kobe is diving for loose balls. That set the tone. Players go clubbing. Come back at 5:30am and see Kobe working out. "This motherfucker Kobe was already drenched in sweat. Yeah he’s different"— LeBron James. By the end of the week the whole team was on Kobe’s schedule. Understand the responsibility. I know I’m not going to fucking lose. I am not going to fucking lose. Not when I’m wearing this (team USA jersey) and not at this time in my career. You’re going to have to fucking shoot me. That’s how I want you to play. — Coach K At one point you will have a grandkid on your lap and they will ask you weren’t you in the Olympics ? What did you do? You wanna say: Well son, we lost to that fucking Greek team? —Coach K When you’re in the Olympic village you're around people who are the best in the world at what they do. That is more special that celebrities in LA because this is athlete to athlete — I understand what they put their body through to get here. There’s so much respect and mutual admiration. —Kobe What Kobe told team USA going into the 4th quarter: Just think about the play in front of you. [12:07] At every turn his declarations of future greatness have been met with head shaking and raised eyebrows. [14:33]  It's almost like Kobe's insane level of dedication was like compensation for the bad decision making of his father. [15:15] 4 parts to Kobe’s blueprint: Master the fundamentals Improve your weaknesses Study the greats Concentrate [15:12] Listening to Founders is like watching game tape of history's greatest entrepreneurs. [15:40] I used to watch their moves and then I'd add them to my game. It was the beginning of a career-long focus on studying game recordings. [15:48] He would invest long hours each day in breaking down his own performances and those of opponents— far more than what any other NBA player would ever contemplate undertaking. [17:08] Jay Z’ autobiography: Decoded by Jay Z.  (Founders #238) [21:22] If you’re not good, Jeff will chew you up and spit you out. And if you’re good, he will jump on your back and ride you into the ground. —The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon by Brad Stone. (Founders #179) [21:58] If you're breaking down tape of Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan and so many other greats, you come to consider them your teachers. [22:39] Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike by Phil Knight. (Founders #186) [23:00] Jordan and Knight certainly shared a competitive nature that bordered on insanity, Moore added. "If you think Jordan and Kobe are competitive, go meet Phil Knight. He's a no bullshit competitor. It's, 'You play for me or I can't stand you, I will kill you.' That's Phil Knight, full stop. And he's not shy about it.” [29:30]  He studied the game harder than anyone else has ever studied the game. [30:00] One day just before practice, the team was informed that it couldn't have the gym due to flooding. “This is bullshit!” he screamed, slamming a ball off the floor. “This is bullshit! We got practice, I want to practice. This is ridiculous!" (He was in high school) [31:10] Kobe had a closet at home filled with critical research. It held all these VHS tapes of Michael's games.  [32:00] Kobe on Michael Jordan: What you get from me— is from him. I don't get five championships without him because he guided me so much and gave me so much great advice. [32:22] Sol Price: Retail Revolutionary & Social Innovator by Robert E. Price. (Founders #107) [35:22] Bryant's workout had been so impressive that for Jerry West, it had revealed his heart. It was there in the skill set alone, in some ways, just the amount of work that a player would have to have done to possess such immaculate moves, the footwork and fakes and execution, the hours that must have been put into that kind of perfection. [37:55] Part of his strategy for keeping his disappointment at bay was to focus on others who had faced far more difficult circumstances. "I read the autobiography of Jackie Robinson," Bryant said. “I was thinking about all the hard times I'd go through this year, and that it'd never compare to what he went through. That just kind of helped put things in perspective." [38:50] Kobe’s favorite book was Enders Game by Orson Scott Card.  [39:00] The only way he could keep the whole dream going was to work harder and harder and harder, to spin his fantasies around and around until they wrapped him tight in a new reality. [39:45] Estée Lauder: A Success Storyby Estée Lauder. (Founders #217) [41:00] I think that game was vital to how good he became. That level of embarrassment to happen to somebody like him? The next year he came out like a fucking maniac. [41:15] Leading By Design: The Ikea Story by Bertil Torekull. (Founders #104) [46:03] Michael Jordan: The Life by Roland Lazenby. (Founders #212) [47:00] The best book on the emotional toll entrepreneurs experience:  Against The Odds: An Autobiography by James Dyson (Founders #200) [54:15] Highly competitive personalities like Jordan and Bryant could absolutely kill a team atmosphere with displays of ruthlessness or selfishness. [55:22] He stands up, points around the room and says, You motherfuckers don't belong in the same court with me.You're all shit. And he walked out of the locker room. [56:07] 4 ideas from Kobe: Search for your limits Extreme personal practice Resourcefullness—find a way. Study the greats [57:39] He was one of the rare few who simply cared far more about the game than anyone else. [1:02:24] The Mamba Mentality: How I Play by Kobe Bryant  ---- Founders Notes gives you the superpower to learn from history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. You can search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast. Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#271 Vannevar Bush (Engineer of the American Century)

What I learned from reading Endless Frontier: Vannevar Bush, Engineer of the American Century by G. Pascal Zachary. ---- Founders Notes gives you the superpower to learn from history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. You can search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast. Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- [7:31] Acts of importance were the measure of his life and they are the reason that his life deserves study today. [8:10] Suspicious of big institutions Bush objected to the pernicious effects of an increasingly bureaucratic society and the potential for mass mediocrity. [8:20] He believed the individual was still of paramount importance. "The individual to me is everything," he wrote  "I would restrict him just as little as possible." He never lost his faith in the power of one. [8:57] Pieces of the Action by Vannevar Bush (Founders #270) [9:32] Dee Hock — founder of VISA episodes: One from Many: VISA and the Rise of Chaordic Organization by Dee Hock (Founders #260) Autobiography of a Restless Mind: Reflections on the Human Condition Volume 1and Autobiography of a Restless Mind: Reflections on the Human Condition Volume 2 by Dee Hock. (Founders #261) [9:55] Edwin Land episodes: Instant: The Story of Polaroid by Christopher Bonanos. (Founders #264) Land's Polaroid: A Company and the Man Who Invented It by Peter C. Wensberg (Founders #263)A Triumph of Genius: Edwin Land, Polaroid, and the Kodak Patent War by Ronald Fierstein (Founders #134)Land's Polaroid: A Company and the Man Who Invented It by Peter C. Wensberg (Founders #133)The Instant Image: Edwin Land and the Polaroid Experienceby Mark Olshaker (Founders #132)Insisting On The Impossible: The Life of Edwin Land and Instant: The Story of Polaroid(Founders #40) [10:00] Vannevar Bush and Edwin Land both had a profound belief in the individual capacity for greatness. [12:15] Bush came from an American line of can do engineers and tinkerers, a line beginning with Franklin, and including Eli Whitney, Alexander, Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, and the Wright Brothers The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin. (Founders #62) Benjamin Franklin: An American Life by Walter Isaacson. (Founders #115) Franklin & Washington: The Founding Partnership by Edward Larson. (Founders #251) Reluctant Genius: The Passionate Life and Inventive Mind of Alexander Graham Bellby Charlotte Gray. (Founders #138) Edison: A Biography by Matthew Josephson. (Founders #268) The Wright Brothers by David McCullough. (Founders #239) [13:35] The Essential Writings of Vannevar Bush by Vannevar Bush and G. Pascal Zachary [16:30] My whole philosophy is very simple. If I have any doubt as to whether I am supposed to do a job or not, I do it, and if someone socks me, I lay off. [18:00] The Richest Woman in America: Hetty Green in the Gilded Age by Janet Wallach (Founders #103) [19:00] What Bush learned from reading old whaling logs I’m learning 120 years later reading biographies of founders. [19:45] Books by Sebastian Mallaby: The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future and More Money Than God: Hedge Funds and the Making of a New Elite [21:20] He admired men of action, despised rules, and felt that merit meant everything. [22:32] If something is going to take two years he wants to figure out how to do it in six months or a year. This kind of the mentality he applied to everything. [24:45] Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader by Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli (Founders #265) [25:45] I lose my shit when thinking about how all these ideas connnect. [30:45] He remained susceptible to bouts of nervous tension throughout his prime years. [31:50] Advice he gave his sons: Justify the space you occupy. [32:30] Do not emulate the ostrich: For better or worse we are destined to live in a world devoted to modern science and engineering. If the road we are on is slippery, we cannot avoid a catastrophe by putting on the brakes, closing our eyes or taking our hands off the wheel. What is the sane attitude of a scientist or layman? Absence of wishful thinking. No emulation of the ostrich. [35:00] He insisted that discipline must be self applied or will be externally imposed. [33:36] He found romance in adversity and solace in hard work. [36:00] Vannevar Bush on Leonardo da Vinci and Ben Franklin [42:33]  It is being realized with a thud that the world is going to be ruled by those who know how, in the fullest sense, to apply science. [44:45] We want an inventive company rather than an orderly company. [45:38] Tolerate genius. There are very few men of genius. But we need all we can find. Almost without exception they are disagreeable. Don't destroy them. They lay golden eggs.  —Confessions of an Advertising Man by David Ogilvy. (Founders #89) [48:34] David Ogilvy episodes: The Unpublished David Ogilvy by David Ogilvy. (Founders #189) The King of Madison Avenue: David Ogilvy and the Making of Modern Advertisingby Kenneth Roman. (Founders #169) Confessions of an Advertising Man by David Ogilvy. (Founders #89) Ogilvy on Advertising by David Ogilvy. (Founders #82) [49:00] Bush’s personal motto: Don’t let the bastards get you down. [51:50] The General and the Genius: Groves and Oppenheimer—The Unlikely Partnership that Built the Atom Bomb by James Kunetka. (Founders #215) [55:15] The more resourceful entrepreneurs are the ones that are going to win. ---- Founders Notes gives you the superpower to learn from history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. You can search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast. Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#270: Vannevar Bush (Pieces of the Action)

What I learned from reading Pieces of the Action by Vannevar Bush. ---- Founders Notes gives you the superpower to learn from history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. You can search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast. Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- Outline:  Pieces of the Action offers his hard-won lessons on how to operate and manage effectively within complex organizations and drive ambitious, unprecedented programs to fruition. Stripe Press Books: The Dream Machine by M. Mitchell Waldrop The Making of Prince of Persia: Journals 1985-1993 by Jordan Mechner.]  Endless Frontier: Vannevar Bush, Engineer of the American Century by G. Pascal Zachary — Any exploration of the institutions that shape how we do research, generate discoveries, create inventions, and turn ideas into innovations inevitably leads back to Vannevar Bush. — No American has had greater influence in the growth of science and technology than Vannevar Bush. — That’s why I'm going to encourage you to order this book —because when you pick it up and you read it —you're reading the words of an 80 year old genius. One of the most formidable and accomplished people that has ever lived— laying out what he learned over his six decade long career. — A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age by Jimmy Soni and Rob Goodman (Founders #95) — Bootstrapping: Douglas Engelbart, Coevolution, and the Origins of Personal Computing by Thierry Bardini — I don’t know what Silicon Valley will do when it runs out of Doug Engelbart’s ideas. —  The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution by Walter Isaacson. (Founders #157) — Bush points out that tipping points often rest with far-seeing, energetic individuals. We can be those individuals. — I went into this book with little more than a name and came out with the closest thing to a mentor someone you've never met can be. — We are not the first to face problems, and as we face them we can hold our heads high. In such spirit was this book written. The essence of civilization is the transmission of the findings of each generation to the next. This is not a call for optimism, it is a call for determination. It is pleasant to turn to situations where conservatism or lethargy were overcome by farseeing, energetic individuals. People are really a power law and that the best ones can change everything. —Sam Hinkie There should never be, throughout an organization, any doubt as to where authority for making decisions resides, or any doubt that they will be promptly made. You can drive great people by making the speed of decision making really slow. Why would great people stay in an organization where they can't get things done? They look around after a while, and they're, like, "Look, I love the mission, but I can't get my job done because our speed of decision making is too slow." — Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos by Jeff Bezos and Walter Isaacson.(Founders #155) Rigid lines of authority do not produce the best innovations. Research projects flowered in pockets all around the company, many of them without Steve's blessing or even awareness. They'd come to Steve's attention only if one of his key managers decided that the project or technology showed real potential. In that case, Steve would check it out, and the information he'd glean would go into the learning machine that was his brain. Sometimes that's where it would sit, and nothing would happen. Sometimes, on the other hand, he'd concoct a way to combine it with something else he'd seen, or perhaps to twist it in a way to benefit an entirely different project altogether. This was one of his great talents, the ability to synthesize separate developments and technologies into something previously unimaginable. —Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader by Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli (Founders #265) He was so industrious that he became a positive annoyance to others who felt less inclined to work.  —Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print, and Power by James McGrath Morris. (Founders #135) Tuxedo Park: A Wall Street Tycoon and The Secret Palace of Science That Changed The Course of World War II by Jennet Conant. (Founders #143) If a man is a good judge of men, he can go far on that skill alone. All the past episodes mentioned by Vannevar Bush in this book: General Leslie Groves: The General and the Genius: Groves and Oppenheimer—The Unlikely Partnership that Built the Atom Bomb by James Kunetka. (Founders #215) J. Robert Oppenheimer: The General and the Genius: Groves and Oppenheimer—The Unlikely Partnership that Built the Atom Bomb by James Kunetka. (Founders #215) Alfred Lee Loomis: Tuxedo Park: A Wall Street Tycoon and The Secret Palace of Science That Changed The Course of World War II by Jennet Conant. (Founders #143) J.P. Morgan: The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance by Ron Chernow. (Founders #139) The Hour of Fate: Theodore Roosevelt, J.P. Morgan, and the Battle to Transform American Capitalism by Susan Berfield. (Founders #142) Orville Wright: The Wright Brothers by David McCullough. (Founders #239) Birdmen: The Wright Brothers, Glenn Curtiss, and the Battle to Control the Skies by Lawrence Goldstone. (Founders #241) Edwin Land: Land's Polaroid: A Company and the Man Who Invented It by Peter C. Wensberg. (Founders #263) Instant: The Story of Polaroid by Christopher Bonanos. (Founders #264) Henry J. Kaiser: Builder in the Modern American West by Mark Foster. (Founders #66) Professional Amateur: The Biography of Charles Franklin Kettering by Thomas Boyd (Founders #125) Reluctant Genius: The Passionate Life and Inventive Mind of Alexander Graham Bellby Charlotte Gray. (Founders #138) Difficulties are often encountered in bringing an invention into production and use. An invention has some of the characteristics of a poem.It is said that a poet may derive real joy out of making a poem, even if it is never published, even if he does not recite it to his friends, even if it is not a very good poem. No doubt, one has to be a poet to understand this.In the same way, an inventor can derive real satisfaction out of making an invention, even if he never expects to make a nickel out of it, even if he knows it is a bit foolish, provided he feels it involves ingenuity and insight. An inventor invents because he cannot help it, and also because he gets quiet fun out of doing so. Sometimes he even makes money at it, but not by himself. One has to be an inventor to understand this. One evening in Dayton, I dined alone with Orville Wright. During a long evening, we discussed inventions we had made that had never amounted to anything. He took me up to the attic and showed me models of various weird gadgets. I had plenty of similar efforts to tell him about, and we enjoyed ourselves thoroughly. Neither of us would have thus spilled things except to a fellow practitioner, one who had enjoyed the elation of creation and who knew that such elation is, to a true devotee, independent of practical results.So it is also, I understand, with poets. Against The Odds: An Autobiography by James Dyson (Founders #200) When picking an industry to enter, my favorite rule of thumb is this: Pick an industry where the founders of the industry—the founders of the important companies in the industry—are still alive and actively involved. — The Pmarca Blog Archive Ebook by Marc Andreessen. (Founders #50) If a company operates only under patents it owns, and infringes on no others, its monopoly should not be disturbed, and the courts so hold. An excellent example is Polaroid Corporation. Founded by Edwin Land, one of the most ingenious men I ever knew (and also one of the wisest), it has grown and prospered because of his inventions and those of his team. I came to the realization that they knew more about the subject than I did. In some ways, this was not strange. They were concentrating on it and I was getting involved in other things. P.T. Barnum: An American Life by Robert Wilson. (Founders #137) We make progress, lots of progress, in nearly every intellectual field, only to find that the more we probe, the faster our field of ignorance expands. All the books from Stripe Press ---- Founders Notes gives you the superpower to learn from history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. You can search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast. Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#269 Sam Zell

What I learned from reading Am I Being Too Subtle?: Straight Talk From a Business Rebel by Sam Zell. ---- Founders Notes gives you the superpower to learn from history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. You can search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast. Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- [6:37] I have an embedded sense of urgency. What I can’t figure out is why so many other people don’t have it. [6:50] I was willing to trade conformity for authenticity. [8:26] Problems are just opportunities in work clothes.  —Henry J. Kaiser: Builder in the Modern American West by Mark Foster. (Founders #66) [9:36] Once I have formed my opinion, I have to trust my perspective enough to act on it. That means putting my own money behind it. My level of commitment is usually high. And I stay with my decision even when everyone is telling me I’m wrong, which happens a lot. [10:37] Long term relationships reflect the most important lesson imparted to me by my father. He taught me simply how to be. He often told me that nothing was more important than a man’s honor. A good name. Reputation is your most important asset. [11:10] When I was younger my career competed with my role as a husband and father and my career often won. [11:37] Childhood does not allow itself to reconquered. — Leading By Design: The Ikea Story (Founders #104) [12:20] The personality types that stay in the game for as long as Sam has —and he's been in the game for 50 years — usually describe entrepreneurship as a calling and an obsession. [12:35] The great thing about entreprenuership is that you get to spend your time building something you enjoy. Most people don’t get to do this. They are stuck in jobs they hate. I had the time of my life. —Sam Walton: Made In America by Sam Walton. (Founders #234) [13:29] Business is not a battle to be waged — it’s a puzzle to be solved. [14:33] Optimize for irreverence. [16:54] Swimming Across by Andy S. Grove (Founders #159) [18:11] His family narrowly escapes the Holocaust: His train arrived at 2:00 p.m. It was a ten minute walk home and when he got there he told my mother to pack what she could carry; they were boarding the 4:00 train out that afternoon. [19:21] Every year for the rest of their lives they celebrated the date of their arrival with the toast to America. My sister and I grew up keenly aware of how fortunate we were to be in this country. [15:58] You've got to understand that the world is a hard place. [19:13] My tendency to go against conventional wisdom would later end up defining my career. [26:55] Sam Zell — Strategies for Investing, Dealmaking, and Grave Dancing on The Tim Ferriss Show [27:25] It just never occurred to me that I couldn't do it. [28:42] Indifference to rejection is a fundamental part of being an entrepreneur. [31:59] It was at this point in my career that I fully realized the value of tenacity. I just had to assume there was a way through any obstacle, and that I’d find it. This is perhaps my most fundamental principle of entrepreneurship, and to success in general. [33:44] Difference for the sake of it. —James Dyson Against The Odds: An Autobiography by James Dyson (Founders #200) [35:58] I was going to do what I love doing and I wasn't going to be encumbered by anyone else's rules. [40:35] What I find fascinating is just how many of these ideas that he got from a older, more experienced entrepreneur, that he used for the rest of his life. [41:36] Larry Ellison episodes: Softwar: An Intimate Portrait of Larry Ellison and Oracle by Matthew Symonds (Founders #124) The Billionaire and the Mechanic: How Larry Ellison and a Car Mechanic Teamed up to Win Sailing's Greatest Race, the America’s Cup, Twice by Julian Guthrie (Founders #126) The Difference Between God and Larry Ellison: God Doesn't Think He's Larry Ellisonby Mike Wilson (Founders #127) [41:59] Like most oracles, Wasserman gave an opinion that was simple and sensible (but unambiguously presented, thank goodness). “It is not prudent,” replied Wasserman, “to ask people to change their nightly viewing habits. Once they are used to tuning in a given channel, they find it hard to make the move, no matter how good an alternative is being provided elsewhere.” Was that it? All of our thinking and talking and arguing and agonizing came down to the belief that Americans won’t change the dial? Wasserman’s advice sealed our decision. — Johnny Carson by Henry Bushkin. (Founders #183) [43:55] Zeckendorf: The autobiograpy of the man who played a real-life game of Monopoly and won the largest real estate empire in history by William Zeckendorf. [47:27] The captain of a Ludwig ship made the extravagant mistake of mailing in a report of several pages held together by a paper clip. He received a sharp rebuke: "We do not pay to send ironmongery by air mail!" — The Invisible Billionaire: Daniel Ludwig by Jerry Shields. [51:32] There’s no substitute for limited competition. You can be a genius, but if there’s a lot of competition, it won’t matter. I’ve spent my career trying to avoid its destructive consequences. [52:32] Cable Cowboy: John Malone and the Rise of the Modern Cable Business by Mark Robichaux (Founders #268) [55:20] What do you do? I'm a professional opportunist. [59:31] A mantra that I would repeat regularly for decades to come: Liquidity equals value. [1:07:59] I have always believed that every day you choose to hold an asset, you are also choosing to buy it. Would I buy our buildings at the price Blackstone was quoting? Nope. [1:12:29] Fast decision making and autonomy had become like oxygen to him. ---- Founders Notes gives you the superpower to learn from history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. You can search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast. Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#268 John Malone (Cable Cowboy)

What I learned from reading Cable Cowboy: John Malone and the Rise of the Modern Cable Business by Mark Robichaux. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- Outline: Thread of highlights from Cable Cowboy by @Loadlinefinance Malone was stalwart about building long term value through leveraged cash flow. Earnings didn’t count. He wasn’t constrained by quarterly expectations. Malone built the pipes, then bought the water that flows through them. Malone took spartan operations to another level. Absolutely no bureaucracy. No waste. We don’t believe in staff. Staff are people who second-guess people. Malone averaged one M&A deal every two weeks over 15 years. That’s insane. These guys were slinging billion dollar deals like bowls of breakfast cereal. One of the best parts of the book is Robichaux’s exploration of Malone’s complex personality. It’s not just a fawning glow piece. The beginning of industries are always filled with cowboys, pirates, and misfits. This book— by far — has been the most requested book for me to cover on Founders for years. Founders episodes on Andrew Carnegie: Meet You In Hell: Andrew Carnegie Henry Clay Frick, and the Bitter Partnership That Transformed America by Les Standiford. (Founders #73) The Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie by Andrew Carnegie. (Founders #74) Founders episodes on JP Morgan: The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance by Ron Chernow (Founders #139) The Hour of Fate: Theodore Roosevelt, J.P. Morgan, and the Battle to Transform American Capitalism by Susan Berfield (Founders #142) Mavericks Lecture: John Malone Two Rockefeller podcasts: Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller by Ron Chernow (Founders #248) John D: The Founding Father of the Rockefellers by David Freeman Hawke (Founders #254) Bob when recruiting John: You've got a great future here. If you can create it. Malone's top executives were rough riders. In 1972 TCI had $19 million in annual revenue and its debt load was an obscene $132 million. Magness learned to listen instead of talk. Successful people listen. Those who don’t listen, don’t survive long. —Michael Jordan Driven From Within by Michael Jordan and Mark Vancil (Founders #213) That $2,500 loan turns into hundreds of millions of dollars for his grandsons. New employees were asked can you walk 10 miles in 10 below zero weather? The cable companies hardly paid any taxes because of the high depreciation on the equipment. He skimmed the company's numbers, looked up at Betsy and blurted out, I'm gonna hire the smartest son of a bitch I can find. Francis Ford Coppola: A Filmmaker's Life by Michael Schumacher (Founders #242) Once you make a guy rich don’t expect him to work hard. Very unusual people do that. You can identify an opportunity because you have deep knowledge about one industry and you see that there is an industry developing parallel to the industry that you know about. Jay Gould saw the importance of the telegraph industry in part because telegraph lines were laid next to railraod tracks. Edison: A Biography by Matthew Josephson (Founders #267) Dark Genius of Wall Street: The Misunderstood Life of Jay Gould, King of the Robber Barons by Edward J. Renehan Jr (Founders #258) 1. You raise money so you can increase production.  2. Use your increased production to get better rates on transportation than other refiners.  3. Use your increased profits —because you have better transportation —to buy your competitors.  4. You continue to find secret sources of income. — John D: The Founding Father of the Rockefellers by David Freeman Hawke (Founders #254) Malone thinks about his industry more than anyone else. He blundered early by suggesting in a meeting that Amazon executives who traveled frequently should be permitted to fly business-class. Jeff slammed his hand on the table and said, “That is not how an owner thinks! That’s the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard.”  — The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon by Brad Stone (Founders #179) Our experience has been that the manager of an already high-cost operation frequently is uncommonly resourceful in finding new ways to add to overhead, while the manager of a tightly-run operation usually continues to find additional methods to curtail costs, even when his costs are already well below those of his competitors. — Berkshire Hathaway Letters to Shareholders 1965-2018 by Warren Buffett (Founders #88) FedEx was fearful the bank would try to seize the mortgaged planes. The bank had a young officer keeping track of the situation. Every time he showed up at the airport, we would radio the planes not to land. It was all very touchy. — Overnight Success: Federal Express and Frederick Smith, Its Renegade Creator by Vance Trimble (Founders #151) How John described this point in his career: I'm the head of a little pipsqueak company in debt up to its ass, a couple million dollars in revenue, and not credit worthy to borrow from a bank. We're barely making it. Malone like the mathematics of it. Tax sheltered cash flow could be leveraged to land more loans, to create more tax sheltered cash flow. Stay in the game long enough to get lucky. Bowerman’s response to other coaches: “As a coach, my heart is always divided between pity for the men they wreck and scorn for how easy they are to beat.” —Bowerman and the Men of Oregon: The Story of Oregon's Legendary Coach and Nike's Cofounder by Kenny Moore. (Founders #153) "Forget about earnings. That's a priesthood of the accounting profession," he would preach, unrelentingly. "What you're really after is appreciating assets.” If you control distribution you get equity in return. My Life and Work by Henry Ford (Founders #266) Call Me Ted by Ted Turner When picking an industry to enter, my favorite rule of thumb is this: Pick an industry where the founders of the industry—the founders of the important companies in the industry—are still alive and actively involved.  — The Pmarca Blog Archive Ebook by Marc Andreessen (Founders #50) ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- — “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#267 Thomas Edison

What I learned from reading Edison: A Biography by Matthew Josephson. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- Outline:   He had known how to gather interest, faith, and hope in the success of his projects. I think of this episode as part 5 in a 5 part series that started on episode 263: #263 Land's Polaroid: A Company and the Man Who Invented It by Peter C. Wensberg. #264 Instant: The Story of Polaroid by Christopher Bonanos.  #265 Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader by Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli #266 My Life and Work by Henry Ford. Follow your natural drift. —Charlie Munger Warren Buffett: “Bill Gates Sr. posed the question to the table: What factor did people feel was the most important in getting to where they’d gotten in life? And I said, ‘Focus.’ And Bill said the same thing.” —Focus and Finding Your Favorite Problems by Frederik Gieschen Focus! A simple thing to say and a nearly impossible thing to do over the long term. We have a picture of the boy receiving blow after blow and learning that there was inexplicable cruelty and pain in this world. He is working from the time the sun rises till 10 or 11 at night. He is 11 years old. He reads the entire library. Every book. All of them. At this point in history the telegraph is the leading edge of communication technology in the world. My refuge was a Detroit public library. I started with the first book on the bottom shelf and went through the lot one by one. I did not read a few books. I read the library. Runnin' Down a Dream: How to Succeed and Thrive in a Career You Love by Bill Gurley Blake Robbins Notes on Runnin’ Down a Dream: How to Succeed and Thrive in a Career You Love Greatness isn't random. It is earned. If you're going to research something, this is your lucky day. Information is freely available on the internet — that's the good news. The bad news is that you now have zero excuse for not being the most knowledgeable in any subject you want because it's right there at your fingertips. Why his work on the telegraph was so important to everything that happened later in his life: The germs of many ideas and stratagems perfected by him in later years were implanted in his mind when he worked at the telegraph. He described this phase of his life afterward, his mind was in a tumult, besieged by all sorts of ideas and schemes. All the future potentialities of electricity obsessed him night and day. It was then that he dared to hope that he would become an inventor. Edison’s insane schedule: Though he had worked up to an early hour of the morning at the telegraph office, Edison began reading the Experimental Researches In Electricity (Faraday’s book) when he returned to his room at 4 A.M. and continued throughout the day that followed, so that he went back to his telegraph without having slept. He was filled with determination to learn all he could. All the Thomas Edison episodes: The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented The Modern World by Randall Stross (Founders #3) Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World by Jill Jonnes. (Founders #83) The Vagabonds: The Story of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison's Ten-Year Road Tripby Jeff Guinn. (Founders #190) Having one's own shop, working on projects of one’s own choosing, making enough money today so one could do the same tomorrow: These were the modest goals of Thomas Edison when he struck out on his own as full-time inventor and manufacturer. The grand goal was nothing other than enjoying the autonomy of entrepreneur and forestalling a return to the servitude of employee. —The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented The Modern World by Randall Stross Dark Genius of Wall Street: The Misunderstood Life of Jay Gould, King of the Robber Barons by Edward J. Renehan Jr. (Founders #258) It's this idea where you can identify an opportunity because you have deep knowledge about one industry and you see that there is an industry developing  parallel to the industry that you know about. Jay Gould saw the importance of the telegraph industry in part because telegraph lines were laid next to railraod tracks. Edison describes the fights between the robber barons as strange financial warfare. You should build a company that you actually enjoy working in. Don’t make this mistake: John Ott who served under Edison for half a century, at the end of his life described the "sacrifices" some of Edison's old co-workers had made, and he commented on their reasons for so doing. "My children grew up without knowing their father," he said. "When I did get home at night, which was seldom, they were in bed." "Why did you do it?" he was asked. "Because Edison made your work interesting. He made me feel that I was making something with him. I wasn't just a workman. And then in those days, we all hoped to get rich with him.” Don’t try to sell a new technology to an exisiting monopoly. Western Union was a telegraphy monopoly: He approached Western union people with the idea of reproducing and recording the human voice, but they saw no conceivable use for it! Against The Odds: An Autobiography by James Dyson (Founders #200) Passion is infectious. No Better Time: The Brief, Remarkable Life of Danny Lewin, the Genius Who Transformed the Internet by Molly Knight Raskin. (Founders #24) For more detail on the War of the Currents listen to episode 83 Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World by Jill Jonnes. From the book Empire of Light: And so it was that J. Pierpont, Morgan, whose house had been the first in New York to be wired for electricity by Edison but a decade earlier, now erased Edison's name out of corporate existence without even the courtesy of a telegram or a phone call to the great inventor. Edison biographer Matthew Josephson wrote, "To Morgan it made little difference so long as it all resulted in a big trustification for which he would be the banker." Edison had been, in the vocabulary of the times, Morganized. One of Thomas Edison’s favorite books: Toilers of The Sea by Victor Hugo “The trouble with other inventors is that they try a few things and quit. I never quit until I get what I want.” —Thomas Edison “Remember, nothing that's good works by itself. You've gotta make the damn thing work.” —Thomas Edison The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America's Banana Kingby Rich Cohen. (Founders #255) He (Steve Jobs) was always easy to understand. He would either approve a demo, or he would request to see something different next time. Whenever Steve reviewed a demo, he would say, often with highly detailed specificity, what he wanted to happen next. He was always trying to ensure the products were as intuitive and straightforward as possible, and he was willing to invest his own time, effort, and influence to see that they were. Through looking at demos, asking for specific changes, then reviewing the changed work again later on and giving a final approval before we could ship, Steve could make a product turn out like he wanted. — Creative Selection: Inside Apple's Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs by Ken Kocienda (Bonus episode between Founders #110 and #111) Charles Kettering is the 20th Century’s Ben Franklin. — Professional Amateur: The Biography of Charles Franklin Kettering by Thomas Boyd (Founders #125) ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#266 Henry Ford's Autobiography

What I learned from rereading My Life and Work by Henry Ford. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- [7:45] True education is gained through the discipline of life. [8:00] Land's Polaroid: A Company and the Man Who Invented It by Peter C. Wensberg. (Founders #263) [9:40] Reading this book is like having a one-sided conversation with one of the greatest entrepreneurs to ever live who just speaks directly to you and tells you, “Hey this is my philosophy on company building.” [12:40] His main idea is that business exists for one reason and one reason only —to provide service for other people. [12:50] Everything I do is serving my true end — which is to make a product that makes other people's lives better. [13:47] A sale is proof of utility. [15:00] The sense of accomplishment from overcoming difficulty is satisfying in a way that a life of leisure and ease will never be. [16:00] I think Amazon's culture is largely based on one thing. It's not based on 14. It's based on customer obsession. That is what Bezos would die on the hill for.  —Invest Like The Best: Ravi Gupta [20:04] Later Bezos recalled speaking at an all-hands meeting called to address the assault by Barnes & Noble. “Look, you should wake up worried, terrified every morning,” he told his employees. “But don’t be worried about our competitors because they`re never going to send us any money anyway. Let’s be worried about our customers and stay heads-down focused.” — The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon by Brad Stone (Founders #179) [20:40] Henry Fords philosophy: Get rid of waste, increase efficiency through thinking and technology, drop your prices and make more money with less profit per car, watch your costs religiously, when needed bring that business process in house, and always focus on service. [21:15] Money comes naturally as the result of service.  —Henry Ford [21:56] Churchill by Paul Johnson. (Founders #225) [22:10] Churchill tells his son “Your idle and lazy life is very offensive to me. You appear to be leading a perfectly useless existence.” [23:45] 3 part series on the founder of General Motors Billy Durant and Alfred Sloan: Billy Durant Creator of General Motors: The Story of the Flamboyant Genius Who Helped Lead America into the Automobile Age by Lawrence Gustin. (Founders #120) Billy, Alfred, and General Motors: The Story of Two Unique Men, A Legendary Company, and a Remarkable Time in American History by William Pelfrey. (Founders #121) My Years with General Motors by Alfred Sloan. (Founders #122) [24:16] Henry Ford's ONE idea that was different from every other automobile manufacturer: He was determined to concentrate on the low end of the market, where he believed that high volume would drive costs down and at the same time feed even more demand for the product. It was a fundamental difference in philosophy.  — Billy, Alfred, and General Motors: The Story of Two Unique Men, A Legendary Company, and a Remarkable Time in American History by William Pelfrey. (Founders #121) [25:50] There must be a better way of doing that. And so through a thousand processes. [27:59] The only way to truly understand what you're doing is to do it for a long time and focus on it. [28:30] It's unbelievable how much you don't know about the game that you've been playing all your life. — Mickey Mantle [32:25] One idea at a time is about as much as anyone can handle. [35:45] Picking up horse shit used to be a job. [37:30] That is the way with wise people — they are so wise and practical that they always know to a dot just why something cannot be done; they always know the limitations. That is why I never employ an expert in full bloom. If ever I wanted to kill opposition by unfair means I would endow the opposition with experts. They would have so much good advice that I could be sure they would do little work. [38:20] I cannot say that it was hard work. No work with interest is ever hard. [40:45] None of this works unless you bet on yourself. And usually you are not in the best position when you have to make this decision. [49:59] The most beautiful things in the world are those from which all excess weight has been eliminated. [50:15] Rick Rubin: In the Studio by Jake Brown. (Founders #245) [54:10] I can entirely sympathize with the desire to quit a life of activity and retire to a life of ease. I have never felt the urge myself. [55:30] I don't wanna make a low quality cheap product. I wanna make a high quality cheap product. To do that he's literally got to invent the ability to mass produce cars —which did not exist before Henry Ford. [56:00] A principle rather than an individual is at work. And that the principle is so simple that it seems mysterious. [56:25] He says if we can save 10 steps a day for each of the 12,000 employees that I have, you will save 50 miles of wasted motion and misspent energy every day. The way Ford’s brain works is very similar to the way Rockefeller's brain works. — Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller by Ron Chernow. (Founders #248) [58:25] What a line! : No one ever considers himself expert if he really knows his job. A man who knows a job sees so much more to be done than he has done, that he is always pressing forward and never gives up an instant of thought to how good and how efficient he is. Thinking always ahead, thinking always of trying to do more, brings a state of mind in which nothing is impossible. [59:10] I refuse to recognize that there are impossibilities. I cannot discover that any one knows enough about anything on this earth definitely to say what is and what is not possible. [59:30] Not a single operation is ever considered as being done in the best or cheapest way in our company. [1:01:05] Continuous improvement makes your business likely to survive economic downturns. [1:05:27] “The definition of business is problems." His philosophy came down to a simple fact of business life: success lies not in the elimination of problems but in the art of creative, profitable problem solving. The best companies are those that distinguish themselves by solving problems most effectively. — Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business by Danny Meyer. (Founders #20) [1:06:38] The best companies are those that distinguish themselves by solving problems most effectively. [1:06:53] That is the point that Henry Ford is making. You should thank your stars for the problem that you're having because once you solve it, you will now have better problem solving abilities. And therefore it's likely over time, that your company becomes more successful as a result of you being forced into this very difficult position to actually grow and acquire these new skills, because business is problems. [1:08:45] Lucas unapologetically invested in what he believed in the most: himself. —George Lucas: A Life by Brian Jay Jones. (Founders #35) [1:12:35] Henry Ford distilled down to five words: maximum service at minimum cost. [1:18:52] Every advance begins in a small way and with the individual. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#265 Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader

What I learned from rereading Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader by Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- [3:11] His mind was never a captive of reality. [5:16] A complete list of every Founders episode on Steve Jobs and the founders Steve studied: Steve Jobs’s Heroes [7:15] Steve Jobs and The Next Big Thing by Randall Stross (Founders #77) [9:05] Steve Job’s Commencement Address [9:40] Driven and curious, even when things were tough, he was a learning machine. [10:20] He learned how to manage himself. [12:45] Anything could be figured out and since anything could be figured out anything could be built. [14:10] It was a calculation based on arrogance. — The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America's Banana King by Rich Cohen (Founders #255) [18:00] We were no longer aiming for the handful of hobbyists who liked to assemble their own computers. For every one of them there were a thousand people who would want the machine to be ready to run. [17:40] He was a free thinker whose ideas would often run against the conventional wisdom of any community in which he operated. [19:55] He had no qualms about calling anyone up in search of information or help. [20:40] I've never found anybody who didn't want to help me when I've asked them for help. I've never found anyone who's said no or hung up the phone when I called. I just asked. Most people never pick up the phone and call. Most people never ask. [21:50] First you believe. Then you work on getting other people to share your belief. [24:55] All the podcasts on Edwin Land: Land's Polaroid: A Company and the Man Who Invented It by Peter C. Wensberg (Founders #263)A Triumph of Genius: Edwin Land, Polaroid, and the Kodak Patent War by Ronald Fierstein (Founders #134)Land's Polaroid: A Company and the Man Who Invented It by Peter C. Wensberg (Founders #133)The Instant Image: Edwin Land and the Polaroid Experienceby Mark Olshaker (Founders #132)Insisting On The Impossible: The Life of Edwin Land and Instant: The Story of Polaroid (Founders #40) [25:00] My friend Frederick’s newsletter I was interviewed for [30:20] He was an extraordinary speaker and he wielded that tool to great effect. [31:00] Never underestimate the value of an ally. — Estée Lauder: A Success Story by Estée Lauder. (Founders #217) [32:50] If you go to sleep on a win you’re going to wake up with a loss. [33:00] Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire by James Wallace and Jim Erickson (Founders #140) [34:20] Software development requires very little capital investment. It is basically intellectual capital. The main cost is the labor required to design and test it. There's no need for expensive factories. It can be replicated endlessly for practically nothing. [38:10] He cared passionately and he never dialed it in. [39:45] To Pixar And Beyond: My Unlikely Journey with Steve Jobs to Make Entertainment History by Lawrence Levy (Founders #235) [42:58] Time carries most of the weight. [43:30] People that are learning machines and then refuse to quit are incredibly hard to beat. Steve jobs was a learning machine who refused to quit. [44:17] Steve Jobs and The Next Big Thing by Randall Stross (Founders #77) [49:40] Creativity Inc by Ed Catmull [50:30] There were times when the reactions against Steve baffled Steve. I remember him sometimes saying to me: Why are they upset? What that said to me was that he didn't intend to get that outcome. It was a lack of skill as opposed to meanness. A lack of skill of dealing with other people. [55:50] Creative thinking, at its best, is chalk full of failures and dead ends. [56:40] Successful people listen. Those that don’t listen don’t last long. —Michael Jordan: The Life by Roland Lazenby. (Founders #212)  [58:40] You can't go to the library and find a book titled The Business Model for Animation. The reason you can't is because there's only been one company Disney that's ever done it well, and they were not interested in telling the world how lucrative it was. [1:01:20] The company is one of the most amazing inventions of humans. [1:02:25] The only purpose for me in building a company is so that the company can make products. One is a means to the other. [1:04:00] Personal History by Katherine Graham (Founders #152) [1:10:11] Creative Selection: Inside Apple's Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs by Ken Kocienda [1:11:12] What am I focusing on that sets me apart from my competitors? [1:13:00] The channel? We lost $2 billion last year. Who gives a fuck about the channel? [1:15:21] Time carries most of the weight. Stay in the game as long as possible. [1:16:41] The information he'd glean would go into the learning machine that was his brain. Sometimes that's where it would sit, and nothing would happen. Sometimes he'd concoct a way to combine it with something else he'd seen, or perhaps to twist it in a way to benefit an entirely different project altogether. This was one of his great talents, the ability to synthesize separate developments and technologies into something previously unimaginable. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#264 The Story of Edwin Land and Polaroid

What I learned from rereading Instant: The Story of Polaroid by Christopher Bonanos.  ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- (0:01) The most obvious parallel is to Apple Computer. Both companies specialized in relentless, obsessive refinement of their technologies. Both were established close to great research universities to attract talent. Both fetishized superior, elegant, covetable product design. And both companies exploded in size and wealth under an in-house visionary-godhead-inventor-genius. At Apple, that man was Steve Jobs. At Polaroid, the genius was Edwin Land. Just as Apple stories almost all lead back to Jobs, Polaroid lore always seems to focus on Land. (1:22) Both men were college dropouts; both became as rich as anyone could ever wish to be; and both insisted that their inventions would change the fundamental nature of human interaction. (1:37) Jobs expressed his deep admiration for Edwin Land. He called him a national treasure. (3:12) All the podcasts on Edwin Land: Land's Polaroid: A Company and the Man Who Invented It by Peter C. Wensberg (Founders #263)A Triumph of Genius: Edwin Land, Polaroid, and the Kodak Patent War by Ronald Fierstein (Founders #134)Land's Polaroid: A Company and the Man Who Invented It by Peter C. Wensberg (Founders #133)The Instant Image: Edwin Land and the Polaroid Experience by Mark Olshaker (Founders #132)Insisting On The Impossible: The Life of Edwin Land and Instant: The Story of Polaroid (Founders #40) (4:07) Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader by Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli (5:51) Edwin Land of Polaroid talked about the intersection of the humanities and science. I like that intersection. There's something magical about that place. There are a lot of people innovating, and that's not the main distinction of my career. The reason Apple resonates with people is that there's a deep current of humanity in our innovation. I think great artists and great engineers are similar, in that they both have a  desire to express themselves. In fact some of the best people working on the original Mac were poets and musicians on the side. In the seventies computers became a way for people to express their creativity. Great artists like Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo were also great at science. Michelangelo knew a lot about how to quarry stone, not just how to be a sculptor. —  Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography by Walter Isaacson (Founders #214) (7:07) All the podcasts about Henry Ford: I Invented the Modern Age: The Rise of Henry Ford by Richard Snow (Founders #9) The Autobiography of Henry Ford by Henry Ford (Founders #26)  Today and Tomorrow Henry Ford (Founders #80)  My Forty Years With Ford by Charles Sorensen  (Founders #118) The Story of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison's Ten Year Road Trip by Jeff Guinn (Founders #190)  (9:16) Another parallel to Jobs: Land's control over his company was nearly absolute, and he exercised it to a degree that was compelling and sometimes exhausting. (11:43) When you read a biography of Edwin land you see an incredibly smart, gifted, driven, focused person endure decade after decade of struggle. And more importantly —finally work his way through. (13:32) Another parallel to Jobs: You may be noticing that none of this has anything to do with instant photography. Polarizers rather than pictures would define the first two decades of lands intellectual life and would establish his company. Instant photos were an idea that came later on, a secondary business around which his company was completely recreated. (14:26) “Missionaires make better products.” —Jeff Bezos (17:44) His letter to shareholders gradually became a particularly dramatic showcase for his language and his thinking. These letters-really more like personal mission statements-are thoughtful and compact, and just eccentric enough to be completely engaging. Instead of discussing earnings and growth they laid out Land's World inviting everyone to join. (18:03) Land gave him a four-word job description: "Keeper of the language.” (23:15) No argument in the world can ever compare with one dramatic demonstration. — My Life in Advertising by Claude Hopkins (Founders #170) (27:00) The leap to Polaroid was like replacing a messenger on horseback with your first telephone. (28:01) Hire a paid critic: Norio Ohga, who had been a vocal arts student at the Tokyo University of Arts when he saw our first audio tape recorder back in 1950. I had had my eye on him for all those years because of his bold criticism of our first machine. He was a great champion of the tape recorder, but he was severe with us because he didn't think our early machine was good enough. It had too much wow and flutter, he said. He was right, of course; our first machine was rather primitive. We invited him to be a paid critic even while he was still in school. His ideas were very challenging. He said then, "A ballet dancer needs a mirror to perfect her style, her technique. — Made in Japan: Akio Morita and Sony by Akio Morita. (32:13) Another parallel to Jobs: Don't kid yourself. Polaroid is a one man company. (33:32) He argued there was no reason that well-designed, wellmade computers couldn't command the same market share and margins as a luxury automobile. A BMW might get you to where you are going in the same way as a Chevy that costs half the price, but there will always be those who will pay for the better ride in the sexier car. Rather than competing with commodity PC makers like Dell, Compaq and Gateway, why not make only first-class products with high margins so that Apple could continue to develop even better first-class products? The company could make much bigger profits from selling a $3,000 machine rather than a $500 machine, even if they sold fewer of them. Why not, then, just concentrate on making the best $3,000 machines around? — Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple's Greatest Products by Leander Kahney. (37:51) How To Turn Down A Billion Dollars: The Snapchat Story by Billy Gallagher  (45:00) All the podcasts about Enzo Ferrari Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari, and Their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans by A.J. Baime. (Founders #97)  Enzo Ferrari: Power, Politics, and The Making of an Automotive Empire by Luca Dal Monte (Founders #98)  Enzo Ferrari: The Man and The Machine by Brock Yates (Founders #220)  (45:08) Soul in the game. Listen to how Edwin Land describes his product: We would not have known and have only just learned that a new kind of relationship between people in groups is brought into being by SX-70 when the members of a group are photographing and being photographed and sharing the photographs: it turns out that buried within us— there is latent interest in each other; there is tenderness, curiosity, excitement, affection, companionability and humor; it turns out, in this cold world where man grows distant from man, and even lovers can reach each other only briefly, that we have a yen for and a primordial competence for a quiet good-humored delight in each other: we have a prehistoric tribal competence for a non-physical, non-emotional, non-sexual satisfaction in being partners in the lonely exploration of a onceempty planet. (50:31) “Over the very long term, history shows that the chances of any business surviving in a manner agreeable to a company’s owners are slim at best.” —Charlie Munger ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#263 Land's Polaroid: A Company and the Man Who Invented It

What I learned from rereading Land's Polaroid: A Company and the Man Who Invented It by Peter C. Wensberg. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- [0:01] Why is Polaroid a nutty place? To start with, it’s run by a man who has more brains than anyone has a right to. He doesn’t believe anything until he’s discovered it and proved it for himself. Because of that, he never looks at things the way you and I do. He has no small talk. He has no preconceived notions. He starts from the beginning with everything. That’s why we have a camera that takes pictures and develops them right away. [1:33] More books on Edwin Land:  Insisting on The Impossible: The Life of Edwin Land by Victor McElheny  The Instant Image: Edwin Land and the Polaroid Experienceby Mark Olshaker  A Triumph of Genius: Edwin Land, Polaroid, and the Kodak Patent War by Ronald Fierstein  Instant: The Story of Polaroid by Chris Bonanos  [2:18] “Then I read something that one of my heroes, Edwin Land of Polaroid, said about the importance of people who could stand at the intersection of humanities and sciences, and I decided that’s what I wanted to do.” —  Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography by Walter Isaacson (Founders #214) [5:17] This guy started one of the great technology monopolies and ran it for 50 years. [7:35] He lived his life more intensely than the rest of us. [8:53] His interest in our reactions was minimal — polite, sometimes kind, but limited by the great drain of energy necessary to sustain his own part. [9:30] He never argued his ideas. If people didn’t believe in them, he ignored those people. —A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age by Jimmy Soni and Rob Goodman  (Founders #95)  Loomis was not someone you could argue with. He would listen patiently to an opposing opinion. But his consideration was nothing more than that-an act of politeness on his part.” — Tuxedo Park: A Wall Street Tycoon and The Secret Palace of Science That Changed The Course of World War II by Jennet Conant (Founders #143) [11:40] Right before he introduces the most important product he ever makes — he is in a fight for his life. There's a good chance that Polaroid is going to be bankrupt. [14:29] The parallel to Steve Jobs is striking. Edwin Land —like jobs — had to turn around the company he founded before they ran out of money! [15:02] At 37 he had achieved everything to which he aspired except success. [15:32] Against The Odds: An Autobiography by James Dyson (Founders #200) [22:48] The heroes of your heroes become your heroes. [23:39] Bill Gates would later tell a friend he went to Harvard to learn from people smarter than he was —and left disappointed. —Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire by James Wallace and Jim Erickson (Founders #140) [27:22] The young hurl themselves into vast problems that have troubled the world's best thinkers, believing that they can find a solution. It is well that they should for, from time to time, one of them does. — Autobiography of a Restless Mind: Reflections on the Human Condition Volume 2 by Dee Hock. (Founders #261) [29:30] He concentrated ferociously on his quest. [29:43] We live in the age of infinite distraction. [30:03] My whole life has been spent trying to teach people that intense concentration for hour after hour can bring out in people resources they didn't know they had. [30:29] Among all the components and Land's intellectual arsenal, the chief one seems to be simple concentration. — The Instant Image: Edwin Land and The Polaroid Experience by Mark Olshaker. (Founders #132) [41:50] A Landian question took nothing for granted, accepted no common knowledge, tested the cliche, and treated conventional wisdom as an oxymoron. [42:44] A Triumph of Genius: Edwin Land, Polaroid, and the Kodak Patent War by Ronald Fierstein  (Founders #134) [48:33] They had no alternative but to succeed with the camera. Everyone left at Polaroid knew that at the present rate of decline the business, the company, and their jobs would not survive 1947. [55:45] Smith estimated that throughout the eighties he spent at least four hours a day reading. He found he relied quite heavily on his own vision, backed by assimilating information from many different disciplines all at once. “The common trait of people who supposedly have vision is that they spend a lot of time reading and gathering information, and then synthesize it until they come up with an idea." — Overnight Success: Federal Express and Frederick Smith, Its Renegade Creator by Vance Trimble (Founders #151) [59:05] If you’re not good, Jeff will chew you up and spit you out. And if you’re good, he will jump on your back and ride you into the ground. — The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon by Brad Stone. (Founders #179) [1:02:24] They were among the first of the park's attractions to be finished, but the pressure of time was already weighing on everyone. One day John Hench stopped by to check the progress on the coaches and had an idea, which he brought to his boss. "Why don't we just leave the leather straps off, Walt? The people are never going to appreciate all the close-up detail." Walt Disney treated Hench to a tart little lecture: "You're being a poor communicator. People are okay, don't you ever forget that. They will respond to it. They will appreciate it." Hench didn't argue. "We put the best darn leather straps on that stagecoach you've ever seen." — Disney’s Land: Walt Disney and the Invention of the Amusement Park That Changed the World by Richard Snow. (Founders #158) [1:05:53] There is no such thing as group originality or group creativity or group perspicacity. I do believe wholeheartedly in the individual capacity for greatness. Profundity and originality are attributes of single, if not singular, minds. [1:10:32] There's nothing more refreshing than thinking for a few minutes with your eyes closed. [1:11:00] The present is the past biting into the future. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#262 Herbie Cohen (World's Greatest Negotiator)

What I learned from reading The Adventures of Herbie Cohen: World's Greatest Negotiator by Rich Cohen. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- [1:20] The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America's Banana King by Rich Cohen (Founders #255) [2:42] You Can Negotiate Anything: How to Get What You Want by Herb Cohen. [3:57] Even our heroes falter. [6:01] Once you see your life as a game, and the things you strive for as no more than pieces in that game, you'll become a much more effective player. [7:20] He was proving what would become a lifelong principle: Most people are schmucks and will obey any type of authority. [7:34] Power is based on perception; if you think you got it, you got it, even if you don't got it. [7:54] Nolan Bushnell to a young Steve Jobs: “I taught him that if you act like you can do something, then it will work. I told him, ‘Pretend to be completely in control and people will assume that you are.”  from Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography by Walter Isaacson. (Founders #214) [10:30] Life is a game and to win you must consider other people as players with as much at stake as yourself. If you understand their motivations, you can control the action and free yourself from every variety of jam. Focus less on yourself and more on others. Everyone has something at stake. If you address that predicament you can move anyone from no to yes. [14:01] Those who can live with ambiguity and still function do the best. [14:21] Ambiguity is the constant companion of the entrepreneur. [15:26] Don't bitch. Don't complain. Just play the cards that you've been dealt. [20:12] Most people try to blend in. Herbie went the other way. When they zig, I zag. [21:49] It meant Sharon had failed to understand an essential part of an ancient code. If you have a problem with your brother, you deal with it inside the family. Don't rat. Don't turn your brother in to the cops. It was another one of his big lessons. Loyalty. Without that you have nothing. [27:03] Man’s Search For Meaning by Viktor Frankl [30:11] When it comes to negotiating you'd be better off acting like you know less, not more. [32:18] How Brands Grow: What Marketers Don't Know by Byron Sharp [35:56] He believed it was good, possibly very good, and it was this belief, which never wavered, that would give him the confidence to persist despite  the rejections that were coming. Quoting Harry Truman, he'd say, "I make a decision once." And he'd made his decision about the book. In case of rejection, the only thing that would change was his opinion of the publishing house. [37:01] It took 18 no's to get to a yes. [37:37] Herbie sells his book by hand. This part is incredible. [40:36] Back in Bensonhurst we were seeing my father as he'd been before he was our father. As he was still deep down when we weren't looking. [43:50] I told him I did not want something to fall back on because people who have something to fall back on usually end up "falling back on it. [47:34] You can always understand the son by the story of his father. The story of the father is embedded in the son. —Francis Ford Coppola: A Filmmaker's Life by Michael Schumacher (Founders #242) That was the last time I saw him. His brave cheerfulness chokes me every time I recall the scene. It is impossible to imagine my father's emotions as he waved goodbye knowing that he might be on his way to London to die. Sixty years have not softened these memories, nor the sadness that he missed enjoying his three children growing up. I felt the devastating loss of my dad, his love, his humor, and the things he taught me. I feared for a future without him. — Invention: A Life by James Dyson (Founders #205) [52:48] Even our heroes falter. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#261 Dee Hock's Autobiography of a Restless Mind Volume One and Two

What I learned from rereading Autobiography of a Restless Mind: Reflections on the Human Condition Volume 1 and Autobiography of a Restless Mind: Reflections on the Human Condition Volume 2 by Dee Hock. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- [4:39] Quotes: Abraham Lincoln | Pythagoras | Mark Twain | Socrates | Napoleon | Leonardo da Vinci [6:15] One should not read like a dog obeying its master, but like an eagle hunting its prey. [6:48] Humility and generosity have no enemies. [7:12] Powerful writing should take one side and stick to it tenaciously, ignoring the other even though it may have merit. Objective writing is impotent. [8:02] The essential reward of anything well done is to have done it. [8:07] What becomes known is worthless until it is shared. [9:25] No dream is so great as the person you might become by remaining true to it. [11:04] The wise make great use of adversity. The foolish whine about it. [12:02] Impatience is a perpetual barrier between desire and realization. [12:46] There are two ways to look at opposition: I want to do it and they will not let me or they want to prevent me and I won’t let them. [13:54] When we fully attend to management of self, excellent management of all else is unavoidable. [14:43] A meaningful life cannot be made from denial. It must be made from affirmation. [15:16] We are each the author of our own life. Whatever we write, masterpiece or trash, it will be published and widely read throughout our life and for decades thereafter. [16:21] The wise do not feel demeaned by asking for advice or diminished by following it. [16:37] A wise man goes forth to meet difficulty on rather than agonizing at its approach. [21:27] Superb design and sluggish effort can never compete with modest design and diligent effort. [21:45] It is both foolish and weak to defer confronting what cannot be avoided. [22:04] I have done many great things perfectly—the ones I imagined but never attempted. [22:09] Delaying what we must do eventually does nothing but lengthen the time and distance we must carry the burden. [22:30] The most interesting people are always the most interested people. [22:54] Complaining about life is like hurling sand against the wind. [23:31] Beginning of Volume 2 [27:29] Certainty is not a property of the universe. It is a construct of the mind. [28:09] Any idiot can impose and exercise control. It takes genius to ensure freedom and release creativity. [29:18] Two centuries ago it took a year to send a message around the globe. Now it takes a fraction of a second. We have no idea what this means or what the consequences may be. [30:04] “Use your head, but follow your heart.” is my advice to all my grandchildren. Come to think of it. It's not bad advice for adults as well. [30:54] Man is at war with his own nature. [31:12] There is nothing at all wrong with discipline providing it is self-induced rather than imposed. [31:26] Books are seductive things. All are worth a look and a touch, some a kiss, others an affair, the best marriage and lifelong devotion. [32:41] Genius merely articulates what your heart already knows. [32:45] The young hurl themselves into vast problems that have troubled the world's best thinkers, believing that they can find a solution. It is well that they should for, from time to time, one of them does. [33:20] Great accomplishment often consists of doing little things well. [33:35] The superior man is concerned when his deeds are not better than his words. [34:16] Books are not dead things. They preserve some thing of the intellect and spirit that writes, and are instrumental in forming the intellect and spirit that reads. [34:42] Ignorant commentaries corrupt brilliant thoughts. That may well prove to be the curse of the internet. [35:44] Conduct is a silent sermon powerfully preached without cessation. [36:02] Every organization has one or two heroes who gives it birth, direction, and purpose. [36:20] Minnows of thought dart about in shallow minds with great agitation. Great whales of thought majestically move through oceanic minds without commotion. [38:00] The new and novel should be viewed with suspicion. For it is improbable that one generation can be wiser than all ancestors combined. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#260 One from Many: VISA and the Rise of Chaordic Organization

What I learned from rereading One from Many: VISA and the Rise of Chaordic Organization by Dee Hock.  ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- [2:00] I feel compelled to open my life to new possibilities. [2:54] Life is a magnificent, mysterious Odyssey to be experienced. [3:12] One From Many (Founders #42) [3:30] Autobiography of a Restless Mind: Reflections on the Human Condition Volume 1 by Dee Hock and Autobiography of a Restless Mind: Reflections on the Human Condition Volume 2 by Dee Hock [5:12] Patrick Collison tweet on Dee Hock [7:51] He thought from first principles and questioned everything, even down to the nature of money itself. [8:26] He saw a better way of doing things and he didn't listen to folks who said it couldn't be done. [9:32] Today's magic was yesterday's dream. [13:27] Chaordic 1. The behavior of any self-organizing, self-governing, organ, organization, or system that harmoniously exhibits characteristics of both order and chaos.   2.  Patterned by chaos and order in a way not dominated by either.  3.  Blending of diversity, chaos, complexity and order characteristic of the fundamental organizing principles of evolution and nature. [17:05] That Hock boy is a little strange, he'll read anything. [23:01]  None of it seemed demeaning. It was life. It was making a living. It was what proud men did without whining. [24:14] 76 year old Dee Hock describing the 20 year old version of Dee Hock: Thus, at twenty, newly married, unemployed, eager to learn but averse to being taught, emerged an absurdly naive, idealistic, young man—an innocent lamb hunting the lion of life. The hungry lion was swift to pounce. [30:39] If you don’t zero in on your bureaucracy every so often, you will naturally build in layers. You never set out to add bureaucracy. You just get it. Period. Without even knowing it. So you always have to be looking to eliminate it. — Sam Walton: Made In America by Sam Walton (Founders #234) [31:57] In industrial age organizations purpose slowly erodes into process. [34:29] Excellence is the capacity to take pain. [38:41] You can't make a good deal with a bad person. [39:48] Stubborn opinionated, unorthodox, rebellious. [41:31] With three young children, a heavily mortgaged house, no job, little money in reserve, it was impossible to stay out of a dismal swamp of depression. Day after day, I walked the woods in misting Northwest rain. My constant companion was an overwhelming feeling of failure. What was wrong with me? [42:51] There would be no more intense commitment to work. [43:55] He's got an intense commitment to life! [45:38] Use your brain but follow your heart. [53:52] When I die and go to hell, the devil is going to make me the marketing director for a cola company. I’ll be in charge of trying to sell a product that no one needs, is identical to its competition, and can’t be sold on its merits. I’d be competing head-on in the cola wars, on price, distribution, advertising, and promotion, which would indeed be hell for me. — Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman by Yvon Chouinard (Founders #18) [55:56] Focus on how your product or company ought to be and nothing else. [57:28] Business Breakdowns Visa: The Original Protocol Business [58:10] Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary by Linus Torvalds and David Diamond (Founders #176) [1:02:40] His Oh Shit! Moment [1:06:12] He had a passionate commitment to the ideas that bordered on zealotry. [1:06:39] There were dozens of times when I longed to quit. What prevented me is not entirely clear. [1:06:58] Possibility can never be determined by opinion, only by attempt. [1:07:26] What kept me going remains a mystery. It doesn't really matter for there was an inexpressible sense that in some profound non-physical way existence would lose meaning if I did not persist. [1:10:03] Chronicles: Volume One by Bob Dylan (Founders #259) ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast   ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#259 Bob Dylan

What I learned from reading Chronicles: Volume One by Bob Dylan. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- [0:51] No one could block his way and he didn't have any time to waste. [2:38] Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself. —Bob Dylan [3:01] The best talk on YouTube for entrepreneurs: Runnin' Down a Dream: How to Succeed and Thrive in a Career You Love by Bill Gurley [3:21] Estée: A Success Story by Estée Lauder (Founders #217) [7:52] Billy asked me who I saw myself like in today's music scene. I told him, nobody. I really didn't see myself like anybody. [8:12] We may be in the same genre but we don't put out the same product. [16:34] What really set me apart in these days was my repertoire. It was more formidable than the rest of the players. There were a lot of better musicians around but there wasn't anybody close in nature to what I was doing. [18:00] Bob spends a lot of time thinking about and studying history. [20:34] I'd come from a long ways off and had started from a long ways down. But now destiny was about to manifest itself. I felt like it was looking right at me and nobody else. [21:27] I walked over to the window and looked outside. The air was bitter cold but the fire in my mind was never out. It was like a wind vane that was constantly spinning. [21:45] It is incredible how much reading this guy is going to do. He takes ideas from everything that he reads and applies it to his work. [22:30] Towering figures that the world would never see the likes of again, men who relied on their own resolve, for better or worse, every one of them prepared to act alone, indifferent to approval—indifferent to wealth or love, all presiding over the destiny of mankind and reducing the world to rubble. Coming from a long line of Alexanders and Julius Caesars, Genghis Khans, Charlemagnes and Napoleons, they carved up the world. They would not be denied and were impossible to reckon with—rude barbarians stampeding across the earth and hammering out their own ideas of geography. [26:29] Alexander the Great: The Brief Life and Towering Exploits of History's Greatest Conqueror--As Told By His Original Biographers by Arrian, Plutarch, and Quintus Curtius Rufus. (Founders #232) [29:37] I don't think there's been another human invention that can evoke deeper emotions than a great book —than great writing. [31:17] “What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic." —Carl Sagan [32:35] On War by Carl von Clausewitz [37:55] I knew what I was doing and wasn't going to take a step back or retreat for anybody. [46:40] This idea of being completely separate from the outside world is a main theme in the book. [48:00] Being true to yourself. That was the thing. [51:11] After a while you learn that privacy is something you can sell but you can't buy it back. [57:44] Too many distractions had turned my musical path into a jungle of vines. [58:29] There was a missing person inside of myself and I needed to find him. [59:53] You have to find ways to get out of your own head. [1:01:47] At first it was hard going like drilling through a brick wall. All I did was taste the dust. [1:05:14] Sometimes you could be looking for heaven in the wrong places. Sometimes it could be under your feet or in your bed. [1:07:25] Decoded by Jay Z. (Founders #238) [1:07:42] Somebody different was bound to come along sooner or later who would know that world, been born and raised with it. . . be all of it and more. He'd be able to balance himself on one leg on a tightrope that stretched across the universe and you'd know him when he came-there'd be only one like him. [1:08:23] A new performer was bound to appear. He'd be doing it with hard words and he'd be working 18 hours a day. [1:09:15] Advice from his Dad: “Remember, Robert, in life anything can happen. Even if you don't have all the things you want, be grateful for the things you don't have that you don't want." [1:11:54] I was beginning to feel like a character from within these songs, even beginning to think like one. [1:12:28] Y’all can't match my hustle You can't catch my hustle You can't fathom my love dude Lock yourself in a room doin' five beats a day for three summers I deserve to do these numbers [1:12:51] I played morning, noon and night. That's all I did, usually fell asleep with the guitar in my hands. I went through the entire summer this way. [1:13:31] The place I was living was no more than an empty storage room with a sink and a window looking into an alley, no closet, a toilet down the hall. I put a mattress on the floor. [1:15:22] Bound for Glory: The Hard-Driving, Truth-Telling, Autobiography of America's Great Poet-Folk Singer by Woody Guthrie ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast   ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#258: Jay Gould (Dark Genius of Wall Street)

What I learned from reading Dark Genius of Wall Street: The Misunderstood Life of Jay Gould, King of the Robber Barons by Edward J. Renehan Jr. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- [2:40] John D: The Founding Father of the Rockefellers by David Freeman Hawke. (Founders #254) [3:46] From the back cover: Though reviled for more than a century as Wall Street's greatest villain, Jay Gould was in fact its most original creative genius. Gould was the most astute financial and business strategist of his time and also the most widely hated. He was the undisputed master of the nation's railroads and telegraph systems at a time when these were the fastest-growing new technologies of the age. His failed scheme to corner the gold market in 1869 caused the Black Friday panic. He created new ways of manipulating markets, assembling capital, and swallowing his competitors. Many of these methods are now standard practice; others were unique to their circumstances and unrepeatable; some were among the first things prohibited by the SEC when it came into being in the 1930s. [5:59] If he was exceptional, it was as a strategist. He had a certain genius. Time and time again, Wall Street never saw him coming. [7:22] Jay was in fact the Michelangelo of Wall Street: a genius who crafted financial devices and strategies, and who leveraged existing laws, in stunningly original ways. [7:45] His success was profound, his productivity was astonishing, and his motivations and tactics were fascinating. [10:54] Francis Ford Coppola: A Filmmaker's Life by Michael Schumacher. (Founders #242) [11:11] You can always understand the son by the story of his father. The story of the father is embedded in the son. [11:43] All ambitious men want either to please their fathers or to punch them in the goddamn face. [15:05] Persistent. Deliberate in his study. Disciplined. [16:30] Born of This Land: My Life Story by Chung Ju-yung (Founders #117) [20:07] Jay stated his outright belief that happiness consisted not so much in indulgence as in self-denial. [20:28] I am determined to use all my best energies to accomplish this life's highest possibilities. [21:12] I'm going to be rich. I've seen enough to realize what can be accomplished by means of riches, and I tell you I'm going to be rich. I have no immediate plan. I only see the goal. Plans must be formed along the way. [23:09] One decent editorial counts for 1000 advertisements. —  Against The Odds: An Autobiography by James Dyson and reading A History of Great Inventions by James Dyson. (Founders #200) [27:32] Jay would always remain acutely aware of the brevity of one's time on earth. [33:02] Great question to ask: Who would I rather be? Jay breaks down the tanner industry and who is in the best position: I’ve come to realize that it is the merchants who command the true power in this industry. The tanner appears to take the greatest share of capital, but merely processes that capital, his expenses being extensive, his risk real, and his labor heavy. The shippers deal with the next largest sums, but again have extensive expenses and much work to do. The brokers, meanwhile, take what seems the smallest share but is in fact the largest. Theirs is nearly pure profit made on the backs of the shippers and the tanner, never their hands dirtied. [38:39] He was aggressive and expansionist by temperament. [46:10] There are magician’s skills to be learned on Wall Street and I mean to learn them. [46:51] He fixated on the business and his own future and he appears to have cared little about the wider world. [47:10] He seemed to have approached all things with a machine like intensity that some found hard to take. [48:40] As I learned time and again, success in business often rests on a minute reading of the regulations that  impact your business. — Becoming Trader Joe: How I Did Business My Way and Still Beat the Big Guys by Joe Coulombe. (Founders #188) [50:46] Action was his hobby. [50:48] He was relentless in his efforts to bring about the accomplishment of those things which he set about to do. [57:16] What finding your life’s work sounds like: We are at a moment where there is a particular, inevitable future waiting to be made. I see things very, very clearly. I feel inspired with an artist's conception. My road is laid out before me in the plainest of ways. He felt as if “all the wheels” had finally been installed on his life. Not only did he have professional focus, "but also the meaning that is family: a wife and child to fight wars and build castles for. Now that I am at this place, it is a puzzlement to me how I endured before. Everything prior seems to have been boxing in the dark, scraping without reason. Now I have my road to walk and my reason for walking it. Now the pieces fit, and this thing ambition is no longer blind but divine, a true and noble and necessary path." [58:33] Work and family would remain his two hallmarks to the end of his days. [59:56] He only wanted to be around A Players: Jay's abilities as an entrepreneurial talent scout, selecting the natural leaders from among the naturally led, the innovators from among the drones, would loom large in the making of his fortune. [1:04:18] No one could have guessed that these two unknowns would soon be notorious as the all time greatest tag team ever to wrestle Wall Street to its knees. [1:05:56] Both men (Fisk and Gould) had an inexhaustible capacity for work and both were unusually intelligent. They made a formidable combination when they joined forces. [1:07:51] The Father of Spin: Edward L. Bernays and the Birth of Public Relations by Larry Tye. (Founders #256) [1:18:14] It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things differently. —Warren Buffett [1:25:51] Things are not as they appear from the outside. —John D. Rockefeller [1:29:16]  Big Brown: The Untold Story of UPS by Greg Niemann. (Founders #192) ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#257 Richard Garriott (Video Games and Space Exploration)

What I learned from reading Explore/Create My Life in Pursuit of New Frontiers, Hidden Worlds, and the Creative Spark by Richard Garriott. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- [6:49] Richard Garriott’s house [7:39] Past episodes on video game creators Sid Meier's Memoir!: A Life in Computer Games by Sid Meier (Founders#195) Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture by David Kushner (Founders #21) [9:31] I was lucky to learn early on that a deep understanding of the world around you makes you its master. [9:52] The world is a very malleable place. If you know what you want, and you go for it with maximum energy and drive and passion, the world will often reconfigure itself around you much more quickly and easily than you would think. — The Pmarca Blog Archive Ebook by Marc Andreessen (Founders #50) [10:08] Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact. And that is everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it. You can influence it. You can build your own things that other people can use. —Steve Jobs [10:33] The tagline of his company: We create worlds. [13:13] My heroes are people who took epic journeys into the unknown often at substantial personal risk. I am simply following the path that they carved into history. [13:33] Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing (Founders #144) [13:49] Two books coming soon: Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know by Ranulph Fiennes Shackleton: The Biography by Ranulph Fiennes [14:57] By endurance we conquer. —Ernest Shackleton [17:01] Insisting On the Impossible : The Life of Edwin Land by Victor McElheny [17:45] In his acceptance speech, Land chose to pay tribute to the process of invention by analogy to the basic American sense of adventure and exploration: We are becoming a country of scientists, but however much we become a country of scientists, we will always remain first of all that same group of adventurous transcontinental explorers pushing our way from wherever it is comfortable into some more inviting, unknown and dangerous region. Now those regions today are not geographic, they are not the gold mines of the west; they are the gold mines of the intellect. And when the great scientists, and the innumerable scientists of today, respond to that ancient American urge for adventure, then the form that adventure takes is the form of invention; and when an invention is made by this new tribe of highly literate, highly scientific people, new things open up. . . . Always those scientific adventurers have the characteristic, no matter how much you know, no matter how educated you are in science, no matter how imaginative you are, of leading you to say, “I’ll be darned, who ever thought that such a domain existed?” —Edwin Land in A Triumph of Genius: Edwin Land, Polaroid, and the Kodak Patent War by Ronald K. Fierstein (#134) [17:55] I misspoke. The word should have been ancestors! Not descendants :( [21:40] The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller. —Steve Jobs [22:00] Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making by Tony Fadell [25:09] One of my favorite sentences in the book. Every storyteller is familiar with the pleasure that comes from sitting with your friends around a fire, pouring a few drinks, and weaving a yarn. This was man's first form of entertainment, and when done well is still his best. [26:09] Finding The Next Steve Jobs: How to Find, Keep, and Nurture Talent by Nolan Bushnell (Founders #36) [34:10] The owner of the store told me, "Richard, this game you've created that we're all playing is obviously a more compelling reason to have one of these machines than anything that's out there. We really need to be selling this on the store wall." Selling? Wow, what an interesting idea. [35:30] This was a state-of-the-art operation then. We hung them up in the store and in the first week sold about twelve copies at $20 each. I would estimate that at the time, there were probably fewer than a couple of dozen people anywhere in the world creating computer games, and not one of us could have imagined we were creating an industry that in less than three decades would become the largest and most successful entertainment industry in history, that a game would gross more in a few weeks than the most successful movie in history had earned in decades. [37:46] California Pacific's version of Akalabeth was priced at $34, of which I received $5; and they sold thirty thousand copies. I had earned $150,000, more than twice my father's yearly salary as an astronaut. It was a phenomenal amount of money, enough to buy a house. It was so much money that it didn't really sink in; it all seemed like some kind of fantasy. We all thought it was a fluke. It was great that someone wanted to pay me for doing what I was already doing. [38:59] The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America's Banana King by Rich Cohen (Founders #255) [41:55] By then I knew enough about the computer game industry to understand that it wasn't actually an industry; it was an association of companies run by people who had no more experience than I did and who popped up, published a few games, then disappeared. So my brother Robert and I decided to start our own company. [43:21] The leader's habits become everyone's habits. [47:00] It would have been almost impossible to be more wrong. That was one of my first big lessons in: "What I think is not necessarily right and perhaps not what everybody else thinks.” [49:04] Dune Director Denis Villeneuve Breaks Down the Gom Jabbar Scene [53:32] The belief system of the founder is the language of the company. That is why it is usually written down and repeated over and over again. [54:03] Imitation precedes creation. —Stephen King On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King. (Founders #210) [1:05:59] This is going to be one of the most successful games they ever make and he had to fight just to get them to let him do this. [1:07:42] The EA marketing team had projected lifetime sales of Ultima Online at 30,000 units—which they thought was wildly optimistic. We put it on the Internet Within a week or so 50,000 people had signed up to pay $5 for the disc. [1:08:46]  The Pmarca Blog Archive Ebook by Marc Andreessen (Founders #50) [1:09:40] One thing is for sure. People are very, very willing to spend real money on all types of virtual items. [1:10:18] A lesson on human nature: People began to covet these items— like property and magic swords— but were not willing to put in the time to earn the gold needed to buy them. [1:12:01] The art of business was to stay in business long enough to give yourself the best chance to get a big hit. [1:15:55] The creative joy we'd once shared in developing a game had been replaced by the prosaic demands of running a business. It was hard to believe how much had changed; only a few years earlier our people would happily work all night and love every minute of it, and now we had become a sweatshop. [1:17:17] I left the office, drove to a grocery store parking lot, and wept for several hours. It was the end of my personal Camelot. This was no game, this was my life. It had been painful for me to fire other people, but as I had just learned, that was nothing compared to being fired myself. I got blindsided by a deep and complex range of feelings. I  felt like a failure; I was angry and depressed and confused. It was a hurt that lasted a long time and, frankly, I don't think I ever fully got over it. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#256 Edward L. Bernays (Public Relations, Advertising, & Persuasion)

What I learned from reading The Father of Spin: Edward L. Bernays and the Birth of Public Relations by Larry Tye. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- [0:54] The very substance of American thought was mere clay to be molded by the savvy public relations practitioner. [1:48] Bernays saved every scrap of paper he sent out or took in and provided them to be made public after his death. [4:15] The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America's Banana King by Rich Cohen. (Founders #255) [6:43] Thinking unconventionally, operating at the edge, and pushing the boundaries became his trademark over a career that lasted more than 80 years. [10:13] Problems are just opportunities in work clothes. [12:06] Eddie was convinced that understanding the instincts and symbols that motivate an individual could help him shape the behavior of the masses. [12:32] 1. Get hired to promote a product. 2. Attach that product to a cause that gives the consumption of that product a deeper meaning. 3. Use the cause to get a small newspaper/media organization to write about the product. 4. Use that media to get larger media to promote the cause indirectly promoting your product. [15:36] Set yourself to becoming the best-informed person in the agency on the account to which you are assigned. If, for example, it is a gasoline account, read books on oil geology and the production of petroleum products. Read the trade journals in the field. Spend Saturday mornings in service stations, talking to motorists. Visit your client’s refineries and research laboratories. At the end of your first year, you will know more about the oil business than your boss. — Ogilvy on Advertising by David Ogilvy (Founders #82) [17:13] Humans love if other humans will do their work for them. [19:01] A lesson he is learning promoting: Public visibility had little to do with real value. [24:13] The Man Who Sold America: The Amazing (but True!) Story of Albert D. Lasker and the Creation of the Advertising Century by Jeffrey L. Cruikshank and Arthur W. Schultz (Founders #206) [24:35] He never, never, never, never has just one plan of attack. It is always many, many, attack vectors, relentlessly. [28:29] Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike by Phil Knight. (Founders #186) [37:23] The outcome was one that most publicity men can only dream about. An irresistible script for a stunt flawlessly executed, covered in nearly every paper in America, with no one detecting the fingerprints of either Bernays or his tobacco company client. [38:18] John D: The Founding Father of the Rockefellers by David Freeman Hawke (Founders #254) and Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller by Ron Chernow (Founders #248) [44:15] His philosophy in each case was the same. Hired to sell a product or service, he instead sold whole new ways of behaving, which appeared obscure but over time repaid huge rewards for his clients. [44:26] The Dao of Capital: Austrian Investing in a Distorted World by Mark Spitznagel (Founders #70) [45:00] He was convinced that ordinary rules did not apply to him. He repeatedly proved that he could reshape reality. [45:21] The formula was simple: Bernays generated events, the events generated news, and the new generated a demand for whatever he happened to be selling. [48:47] In an era of mass communications modesty is a private virtue and a public fault. [52:45] The best defense against propaganda is more propaganda. [59:54] Advice to younger parents from Eddie’s wife: Be certain to keep a balance where that little girl is concerned. Be sure not to let her get lost in your busy life. (The little girl was 2 or 3 at the time) [1:09:14] He's like journalists, writers, media representatives, news anchors — You have something very valuable that I want —the attention of the public. If I can make your job easier, I am more likely to get some of that attention for my private interest. [1:14:55] I still earned fees until I was 95. [1:17:29] His children remained mystified as to how Eddie managed to die with so few assets. [1:17:37] Sometimes later in life Eddie told me that he hadn't spent his money wisely. It is the only time he ever told me that he regretted anything. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#255 Sam Zemurray (Banana King)

What I learned from rereading The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America's Banana King by Rich Cohen. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- [0:47] This story can shock and infuriate us, and it does. But I found it invigorating, too. It told me that the life of the nation was written not only by speech-making grandees in funny hats but also by street-corner boys, immigrant strivers, crazed and driven, some with one good idea, some with thousands, willing to go to the ends of the earth to make their vision real. [4:56] Tycoon's War: How Cornelius Vanderbilt Invaded a Country to Overthrow America's Most Famous Military Adventurer by Stephen Dando-Collins (Founders #55) [6:00] Unlike Vanderbilt's other adversaries William Walker was not afraid of Cornelius when he should have been. [8:21] The immigrants of that era could not afford to be children. [8:42] The Adventures of Herbie Cohen: World's Greatest Negotiator by Rich Cohen [8:54] He was driven by the same raw energy that has always attracted the most ambitious to America, then pushed them to the head of the crowd. Grasper, climber-nasty ways of describing this kid, who wants what you take for granted. From his first months in America, he was scheming, looking for a way to get ahead. You did not need to be a Rockefeller to know the basics of the dream: Start at the bottom, fight your way to the top. [10:01] There is no problem you can't solve if you understand your business from A to Z. [13:08]  Sam spotted an opportunity where others saw nothing. [14:17] As far as he was concerned, ripes were considered trash only because Boston Fruit and similar firms were too slow-footed to cover ground. It was a calculation based on arrogance. I can be fast where others have been slow. I can hustle where others have been satisfied with the easy pickings of the trade. [14:42] The kid on the streets is getting a shot at a dream. He sees the guy who gets rich and thinks, yep, that'll be me. He ignores the other stories going around.  // There's no way to quantify all that on a spreadsheet, but it's that dream of being the exception, the one who gets rich and gets out before he gets got that's the key to a hustler's motivation. —Decoded by Jay Z. (Founders #238) [22:36] He was pure hustle. [24:15] Preston later spoke of Zemurray with admiration. He said the kid from Russia was closer in spirit to the banana pioneers than anyone else working. "He's a risk taker," Preston explained, “he's a thinker, and he's a doer.” [26:33] They don't write books about people that stopped there. [28:48] Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller by Ron Chernow (Founders #248) and John D: The Founding Father of the Rockefellers by David Freeman Hawke. (#254) [30:22] He seemed to strive for the sake of striving. [30:44] If you're on a mans side you stay on that mans side or you're no better than a goddamn animal. [31:11] The world is a mere succession of fortunes made and lost, lessons learned and forgotten and learned again. [35:41] A man whose commitment could not be questioned, who fed his own brothers to the jungle. [36:00] The Forgotten Highlander: An Incredible WWII Story of Survival in the Pacificby Alistair Urquhart. [37:02] Why the Founders of United Fruit were the Rockefellers of bananas. [43:23] He kept quiet because talking only drives up the price. [44:19] There are times when certain cards sit unclaimed in the common pile, when certain properties become available that will never be available again. A good businessman feels these moments like a fall in the barometric pressure. A great businessman is dumb enough to act on them even when he cannot afford to. [49:30] He believed in the transcendent power of physical labor—that a man can free his soul only by exhausting his body. [58:04] He disdained bureaucracy and hated paperwork. So seldom did he dictate a letter that he requires no full-time secretary. [1:00:01] He was respected because he understood the trade. By the time he was 40 he had served in every position. There was not a job he could not do nor a task he could not accomplish. He considered it a secret of his success. [1:01:02] Rick Rubin: In the Studio by Jake Brown. (Founders #245) [1:04:00] Zemurray was the founder, forever on the attack, at work, in progress, growing by trial and error. [1:06:44] Here was a self-made man, filled with the most dangerous kind of confidence: he had done it before and believed he could do it again. This gave him the air of a berserker, who says, If you're going to fight me, you better kill me. If you’ve ever known such a person, you will recognize the type at once. If he does not say much, it's because he considers small talk a weakness. Wars are not won by running your mouth. I'm describing a once essential American type that has largely vanished. Men who channeled all their love and fear into the business, the factory, the plantation, the shop. [1:07:44] Founder Mentality vs Big Company Mentality: When this mess of deeds came to light, United Fruit did what big bureaucracy-heavy companies always do: hired lawyers and investigators to search every file for the identity of the true owner. This took months. In the meantime, Zemurray, meeting separately with each claimant, simply bought the land from them both. He bought it twice paid a little more, yes, but if you factor in the cost of all those lawyers, probably still spent less than United Fruit and came away with the prize. [1:09:04] His philosophy: Get up first, work harder, get your hands in the dirt and blood in your eyes. [1:13:02] For every move there is a counter move. For every disaster there is a recovery. He never lost faith in his own agency. [1:13:57] A man focused on the near horizon of costs can sometimes lose sight of the far horizon of potential windfall. [1:16:22] You gentlemen have been fucking up this business long enough. I'm going to straighten it out. [1:19:03] In a time of crisis the mere evidence of activity can be enough to get things moving. [1:19:42] Zemurray was never heard to bitch or justify. He was a member of a generation that lived by the maxim: Never complain, never explain. [1:23:08] The Father of Spin: Edward L. Bernays and the Birth of Public Relations by Larry Tye [1:24:14] He should link his private interest to a public cause. [1:25:32] In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses, who harness old social forces and contrive new ways to bind and guide the world. [1:28:28] Sam's defining characteristic was his belief in his own agency, his refusal to despair. No story is without the possibility of redemption; with cleverness and hustle, the worst can be overcome. I can't help but feel that we would do well by emulating Sam Zemurray–not the brutality or the conquest, but the righteous anger that sent the striver into the boardroom of laughing elites, waving his proxies, shouting, "You gentlemen have been fucking up this business long enough. I'm going to straighten it out. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#254 John D. Rockefeller: The Founding Father of the Rockefellers

What I learned from reading John D: The Founding Father of the Rockefellers by David Freeman Hawke. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- [0:07] He transmitted messages in code and secrecy covered all of his operations. [0:39]  Rockefeller compared himself to Napoleon. [2:20] He could think quicker and along more individual and original lines than any of them. [2:35] It is always hard to successfully control what you don't understand. [3:32] Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller by Ron Chernow. (Founders #248) [7:27] By the time I was a man — long before it —I had learned the underlying principles of business and the rules of business as well as many men acquire them by the time they are 40. I needed no one to advise me about the nature of transactions with which I had been carrying on since childhood. [8:59] Random Reminiscences of Men and Events by John D. Rockefeller. (Founders #148) [10:55] You should try to expose yourself to experiences that are slightly ahead of your skillset or understanding and you should do so constantly. [13:48] A veteran of long-distance provider MCI, Price came to Amazon in 1999. He blundered early by suggesting in a meeting that Amazon executives who traveled frequently should be permitted to fly business-class. Bezos often said he wanted his colleagues to speak their minds, but at times it seemed he did not appreciate being personally challenged. “You would have thought I was trying to stop the Earth from tilting on its axis,” Price says, recalling that moment with horror years later. “Jeff slammed his hand on the table and said, ‘That is not how an owner thinks! That’s the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard.’ — The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon by Brad Stone (Founders #179) [18:42] He saw that posted rates, supposedly fixed, could also be negotiated. All was not as it seemed on the outside. [20:45] He was the greatest borrower I ever saw. [22:12] What if the president of a bank refused to make me a loan? That was nothing. That made no difference to me; simply meant that I must look elsewhere until I got what I wanted. [26:07] Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire by James Wallace and Jim Erickson (Founders #140) [26:41] Lost from view is the Rockefeller that Cleveland knew in the 1860s— a vigorous, alert gentleman with a quiet, but extraordinary personality. [29:10] Small egos do not build giant companies. [30:23] When Money Was In Fashion: Henry Goldman, Goldman Sachs, and the Founding of Wall Street by June Breton Fisher. (Founders #255) [33:10] The customer-experience path we've chosen requires us to have an efficient cost structure. The good news for shareowners is that we see much opportunity for improvement in that regard. Everywhere we look we find what experienced Japanese manufacturers would call muda, or waste.* I find this incredibly energizing. I see it as potential-years and years of variable and fixed productivity gains and more efficient, higher velocity, more flexible capital expenditures. — Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos (Founders #155) [34:54] Other refiners groused about these restrictions, but in general they accepted them as facts to live with. Rockefeller refused to do so. [38:55] Last Train to Paradise: Henry Flagler and the Spectacular Rise and Fall of the Railroad that Crossed an Ocean by Les Standiford. (Founders #247) [40:15] You don’t want turnover on your core product team. Knowledge compounds. Don’t interrupt the compounding. — Softwar: An Intimate Portrait of Larry Ellison and Oracle by Matthew Symonds (Founders #124) [47:47] 1. You raise money so you can increase production. 2. Use your increased production to get better rates on transportation than other refiners. 3. Use your increased profits —because you have better transportation —to buy your competitors. 4. You continue to find secret sources of income. [55:23] Most simply doubted that Rockefeller's plan would work. John, it cannot be done, they said. [56:13] It was ruthless efficiency and hyper competence. [1:00:07] Rockefeller loves secret allies. [1:00:31] The secret ownership of other companies was so well preserved that often a refiner enraged by Standard’s ruthless tactics would refuse its offer to buy him out and sell instead to a local competitor—unaware that he had in fact sold out to Standard. [1:02:01] He believed that Standard Oil stock is the most valuable thing in the world to own and always bought more of it. [1:05:57] Check out how Rockefeller turns an expense into a profit center: Standard purchased a half interest in Chess, Carley & Company, the largest distributor of refined oil to the South and Southwest. Together they purchased a number of the newly introduced bulk tank cars. Chess-Carley shipped turpentine from southern pine forests to Cleveland, where the cars were emptied and the turpentine was sold in the local market. The tank cars were then filled with kerosene and sent back to Louisville for distribution. In a single swoop the huge expense of shipment by barrels had been eliminated. [1:09:22] He proceeded in the same steady, methodical way that a farmer plowed a field. [1:13:47] The danger Potts and the Pennsylvania railroad posed to his creation convinced Rockefeller that the time had come to pick a fight with the world's largest industrial corporation. [1:23:20] Rockefeller would have horse-drawn carriages drive up and down the streets and sell oil directly. [1:28:28] I think it is fair to say that the strong men who were competitors in the oil refining business, the aggressive men in the best financial condition, and the most intelligent, indeed the class of men who would be most likely to survive in the competitive struggle, were the men who were most likely to take up our idea of cooperation. [1:33:09] Dark Genius of Wall Street: The Misunderstood Life of Jay Gould, King of the Robber Barons by Edward J. Renehan Jr. [1:35:38] Jay Gould was the single most unsettling force ever to appear on the American industrial scene. [1:36:22] Among wheelers and dealers of his day Gould had no peer. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers. ”— Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#253 Henry Goldman (Goldman Sachs)

What I learned from reading When Money Was In Fashion: Henry Goldman, Goldman Sachs, and the Founding of Wall Street by June Breton Fisher. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- [2:30] The Uses of Adversity by Malcolm Gladwell [2:40] Business Breakdowns: Goldman Sachs: Fortune Favors The Old [3:00] Men can learn from the past, and I've been shocked how little some of the younger executives in the present firm know about its origins. They don't even know that my grandfather, whose picture is on the wall there, founded the firm. [3:46] My grandfather, Henry Goldman, was the son of a poor German immigrant named Marcus Goldman. Marcus Goldman is the founder of Goldman Sachs. [5:45] Levi Strauss: The Man Who Gave Blue Jeans to the World by Lynn Downey (Founders #33) [7:10] The job Marcus Goldman was grateful to have: Walking the streets peddling goods seven days a week. Working regardless of rain, or snow, or the humid summer heat. [9:13] Henry had been slow learning to read. It was finally determined that the youngster suffered from astigmatism, and his chores in the shop were limited to fetching and carrying articles from the storeroom or fastening the shutters at closing time. His mother was convinced he would never succeed in a competitive world and was inclined to coddle and baby him. (The “slow learner” is the one that fuels much of Goldman Sachs growth!) [12:03] At the time no qualifications or special training were needed to enter the banking business. [13:36] Marcus was anxious to capitalize on every waking hour. [14:19] Henry was an attentive listener who committed everything he heard to memory. [18:40] Successful people listen. Those who don’t listen, don’t survive long. — Michael Jordan: The Life by Roland Lazenby (Founders #212) [25:12] This part about the Railroads reminded me of the Internet: As new businesses started up every day and the distribution of their goods was being revolutionized by the rapid spider webbing of railroads across the country, Henry was itching to get into the action. [26:05] Goldman Sachs partners with Kleinwort Sons & Co  [27:36] Founder: A Portrait of the First Rothschild by Amos Elon. (Founders #197) and The House of Rothschild: Money's Prophets by Niall Ferguson. (Founders #198) [30:01] David Ogilvy’s idea that The Good Ones Know More: First, you must be ambitious. Set yourself to becoming the best-informed man in the agency on the account to which you are assigned. If, for example, it is a gasoline account, read text books on the chemistry, geology and distribution of petroleum products. Read all the trade journals in the field. Read all the research reports and marketing plans that your agency has ever written on the product. Spend Saturday mornings in service stations, pumping gasoline and talking to motorists. Visit your client's refineries and research  laboratories. Study the advertising of his competitors. At the end of your second year, you will know more about gasoline than your boss; you will then be ready to succeed him. Most of the young men in agencies are too lazy to do this kind of homework. They remain permanently superficial. — Confessions of an Advertising Man by David Ogilvy. (Founders #89) [30:23] The best talk on YouTube: Runnin' Down a Dream: How to Succeed and Thrive in a Career You Love by Bill Gurley [32:28] Jacob Schiff was fascinated by railroad development in all its ramifications and became determined that his firm would dominate the field. There was not a facet of railroad investment or operation that he did not carry in his head. [34:30] Learn more about Standard Oil: Last Train to Paradise: Henry Flagler and the Spectacular Rise and Fall of the Railroad that Crossed an Ocean by Les Standiford. (Founders #247)  Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller by Ron Chernow. (Founders #248) [39:18] Markets can turn on a dime. —Risk Game: Self Portrait of an Entrepreneur by Francis Greenburger (Founders #243) [40:12] The greatest entrepreneurs that have ever lived optimized for survival. [44:22] Henry’s motto: Money is always in fashion. [45:08] The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst by David Nasaw. (Founders #145) [54:00] But he held no sympathy for them. They had relied on the decisions of others, which he himself would never have done. [54:13] Henry shared the regret that he had never developed greater rapport with his children. He thought of his inability to “noodle" with them, to express approval, to overlook their minor slips, to embrace them and say, “I love you.” ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers. ”— Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#252 Socrates

What I learned from reading Socrates: A Man for Our Times by Paul Johnson. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- [0:54] I would trade all my technology for an afternoon with Socrates. — Steve Jobs In His Own Words by George Beahm. (Founders #249) [1:20] Churchill by Paul Johnson. (Founders #225) Heroes: From Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar to Churchill and de Gaulle by Paul Johnson. (Founders #226) Mozart: A Life by Paul Johnson. (Founders #240) [2:07] It’s fascinating how great entrepreneurs would arrive at similar conclusions even though they lived at different times in history, they lived in different parts of the world, and they worked in different industries. [3:43] It was Confucius's view that education was the key to everything. [4:57] Socrates was in no doubt that education was the surest road to happiness. [7:05] Alexander the Great: The Brief Life and Towering Exploits of History's Greatest Conqueror--As Told By His Original Biographers by Arrian, Plutarch, and Quintus Curtius Rufus (Founders #232) [8:43] It is immoral to play at earning one's living. —Coco Chanel: The Legend and the Life by Justine Picardie (Founders #199) [9:40] Socrates was never a bore—far from it. [11:12] Excellence is the capacity to take pain. —Four Seasons: The Story of a Business Philosophy by Isadore Sharp. (Founders #184) [11:25] No discomfort seemed to dismay him. [12:36] A healthy body is the greatest of blessings. [14:50] Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duty, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Commonwealth and its empire last for a thousand years, men will still say, This was their finest hour. —Winston Churchill [15:18] An incredible paragraph: It was Pericles' gift to transmute Athenian optimism into a spirit of constructive energy and practical dynamism that swept through this city like a controlled whirlwind. Pericles believed that Athenians were capable of turning their brains and hands to anything of which human ingenuity was capable-running a city and an empire, soldiering, naval warfare, founding a colony, drama, sculpture, painting, music, law, philosophy, poetry, oratory, education, science and do it better than anyone else. [16:26] Robber barons like Henry Flagler (Founders #247) and Rockefeller (#248) believed you could be a master of fate too. [18:41] Franklin & Washington: The Founding Partnership by Edward Larson. (Founders #251) [21:20] His deepest instinct was to interrogate. The dynamic impulse within him was to ask and then use the answer to frame another question. [22:27] I don’t want to skip over how important that sentence is: He made the people he questioned feel important. [22:39] Mary Kay would teach her salespeople that everyone goes through life with an invisible sign hanging around his or her neck reading, “make me feel important.” —Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business by Danny Meyer. (Founders #20) [25:18] He was extremely interested in how things were done by experts. Craftsmanship fascinated him. He accumulated a good deal of information concerning products and processes. [27:48] There's just a tremendous amount of craftsmanship in between a great idea and a great product. —Steve Jobs [28:21] He wants to show that on almost any topic the received opinion is nearly always faulty and often wholly wrong. Socrates was always suspicious of the obvious. The truth is very rarely obvious. [29:39] Be suspicious of the obvious. [29:47] What is particularly liberating about Socrates is his hostility to the very idea of there being a right answer. [30:21] This denial of independent thought by individuals was exactly the kind of mentality he spent his life in resisting. [39:10] Intense competition generated artistic and cerebral innovation on a scale never before seen in history, but also envy, spite, personal jealousies, and vendettas. [42:14] We have to accept that Socrates was a curious mixture of genuine humility and obstinate pride. [44:42] Socrates in prison, about to die for the right to express his opinions, is an image of philosophy for all time. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers. ”— Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#251 Ben Franklin and George Washington: The Founding Partnership

What I learned from reading Franklin & Washington: The Founding Partnership by Edward Larson. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- [0:59] Both men have been called The First American but they were friends first and never rivals. [1:32] Leadership at this level is a rare quality and well-worth study. [1:53] The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin. (Founders #62) and  Benjamin Franklin: An American Life by Walter Isaacson. (Founders #115) [3:53] He was bookish and inquisitive. Franklin quickly displayed a seemingly inexhaustible capability for hard work and was self-taught by reading. [5:36] Franklin was convinced that acts mattered more than beliefs. [6:06] Franklin advised fellow tradesmen. The way to wealth depends chiefly on two words: Industry and Frugality. Waste neither time nor money. Make the best use of both. [7:06] The years roll around and the last one will come. When it does I would rather have it said he lived usefully than he died rich. [8:25] He found electricity a curiosity and left it a science. [8:50] When Franklin proposed the ideal prayer it was for “Wisdom that discovers my truest interests.” [9:26] George Washington was a vigorous and active man, an early riser about his business all day. And by no means intellectually idle, he accumulated a library of 800 books. —Heroes: From Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar to Churchill and de Gaulle by Paul Johnson. (Founders #226) [10:08] His (Washington) strategy was clear, intelligent, absolutely consistent, and maintained with an iron will from start to finish. [16:09] The pictures that we primarily know them as: Washington on the $1 bill and Franklin on the $100 bill — Washington was 64 years old in that picture and Franklin was almost 80 — that is not what they look like at this point. Washington is an extremely young man (21 or 22 years old) and Franklin (48 years old) still has almost 40 years left of life. [18:44] Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy [21:09] Think about this. Franklin is almost 50. He's already a successful entrepreneur, successful scientist, successful writer and now he focuses his talent on the most important project of his life. Something he will be working on in one form or another for the next 34 years —until he dies. [24:28] Never underestimate your opponent. It’s all downside and no upside. [26:39] You have to figure out what your own aptitudes are. If you play games where other people have the aptitudes and you don't, you're going to lose. And that's as close to certain as any prediction that you can make. You have to figure out where you've got an edge. And you've got to play within your own circle of competence. —Charlie Munger [27:58] Washington remained remarkably calm under fire. [28:23] This is a great description of how lopsided this was: You might as well send a cow in pursuit of a rabbit. The Indians were accustomed to these woods. [29:20] This is going to be  the most decorated military leader in early American history and so far everything we've seen from his early career is just one failure after another. [32:00] Where Washington's regimen was chronically undermanned, Franklin’s was oversubscribed. They had precisely the same job—to secure the frontier. [32:30] There's a lesson that both Franklin and Washington learned during this part that is going to eventually ripple throughout history: A final shared lesson carried weight. Despite the war's ultimate outcome, the British were beatable in New World combat. "This gave us Americans the first suspicion that our exalted Ideas of the Prowess of British soldiers was not well founded.” So it's like you have this reputation because you're this gigantic superpower, this world empire —and yet what we're seeing on the battlefield was like, oh, wait a minute —they're beatable. [36:55] Understanding what people believe is pivotal to understanding why they do what they do. [37:36] Washington’s view of the American Revolution: "Essentially, he saw the conflict as a struggle for power in which the colonists, if victorious, destroyed British pretensions of superiority and won control over half of a continent." [40:17] We have taken up arms in defense of our Liberty, our property, our wives, and our children. We are determined to preserve them or die. [43:02] Washington used the winter to reassess and revise his army structure and strategy because both were faulty. [47:08] By soldiering on for one more year Washington's army, destitute and half naked, turned the world upside down. Imagine if they had quit before this point! [51:50] When I look at this building, my dear sister, and compare it with that in which our good parents educated us, the difference strikes me with wonder. (A lot can change in one lifetime) ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers. ”— Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#250 Jacob Fugger (The Richest Man Who Ever Lived)

What I learned from reading The Richest Man Who Ever Lived: The Life and Times of Jacob Fugger by Greg Steinmetz. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- [1:55] The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness by Naval Ravikant and Eric Jorgenson. (Founders #191) [5:05] It is well known that without me your majesty might not have acquired the Imperial crown. You will order that the money which I've paid out, with the interest, shall be paid without further delay. [6:20] There's many examples in the book where Jacob is constantly pushing the pace and going further than you would expect when the consequences of making certain mistakes at this time in history was death. [6:51] He wanted to see how far he could go even if it meant risking his freedom and his soul. [7:01] He is the German Rockefeller. He thought that he was blessed with a talent for money-making by God. And so he couldn't retire. He couldn't live a life of leisure because God told him to make as much money as possible. [8:38] Fugger wrote the playbook for everyone who keeps score with money. A must for anyone interested in history or wealth creation. —Bryan Burrough Barbarians At The Gate [9:33] Jacob was the first documented millionaire in history. [10:43] His objective was neither comfort nor happiness. It was to stack up money until the end. [12:18] Venice was the most commercially minded city on Earth at the time. I wonder what the most commercially minded city on Earth is today? I don't know the answer. [13:31] Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller by Ron Chernow. (Founders #248) [17:42] The spectacle of the Emperor begging for help startled Jacob. Any belief he may have had in the Emperor’s superhuman qualities could not have survived the fact that mere shopkeepers had denied credit to the supposedly most powerful figure in Europe. [19:11] Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History WW1 series [23:16] There was nothing pioneering or innovative about the loan. His competitors could have made it as easily as Jacob did. All Jacob did was put up his money when no one else had the guts. Such out of favor investments became a hallmark of his investing career. [23:37] The Richest Woman in America: Hetty Green in the Gilded Age by Janet Wallach (Founders #103) [28:47] Founder: A Portrait of the First Rothschild by Amos Elon (Founders #197) and The House of Rothschild: Money's Prophets by Niall Ferguson (Founders #198) [30:44] He was a radical. He refused to believe that noble birth made someone better than anyone else. For him, intelligence, talent, and effort made the man. [32:29] You write the best life story by living an interesting life. [33:23] His greatest talent was an ability to borrow the money he needed to invest. [36:00] Nothing gave him greater joy than the chores required to make him richer. [38:12] I don’t like plan B. Plan B should be to make Plan A work. —Jeff Bezos [38:57] Last Train to Paradise: Henry Flagler and the Spectacular Rise and Fall of the Railroad that Crossed an Ocean by Les Standiford (Founders #247) [41:04] In every age men have been dishonest and governments corrupt. The Lessons of History by Will and Ariel Durant. (Bonus episode between #169 and #170) [43:47] Luther combined technology with an extremely strong worth ethic work. [45:29] Jacob monitored every transaction. [51:31] So this dude wanted to kill the rich and they put him on their currency. [55:55] Jacob believed that businesses could more easily function with fewer, not more decision-makers. [56:29] The Fugger family, 17 generations after Jacob lived, still enjoy income on land Jacob acquired centuries earlier. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers. ”— Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

Steve Jobs's Heroes

---- Come see a live show with me and Patrick O'Shaughnessy from Invest Like The Best on October 19th in New York City.  Get your tickets here!  ---- On Steve Jobs #5 Steve Jobs: The Biography #19 Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader #76 Return To The Little Kingdom: Steve Jobs and The Creation of Apple #77 Steve Jobs & The NeXT Big Thing #204 Inside Steve Jobs' Brain #214 Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography #235 To Pixar And Beyond: My Unlikely Journey with Steve Jobs to Make Entertainment History Bonus Episodes on Steve Jobs Insanely Simple: The Obsession That Drives Apple's Success (Between #112 and #113) Creative Selection: Inside Apple's Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs (Between #110 and #111) On Jony Ive and Steve Jobs #178 Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple's Greatest Products On Ed Catmull and Steve Jobs #34 Creativity Inc: Overcoming The Unseen Forces That Stand In The Way of True Inspiration On Steve Jobs and several other technology company founders #157 The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution #208 In the Company of Giants: Candid Conversations With the Visionaries of the Digital World STEVE JOBS'S INFLUENCES  Edwin Land #40 Insisting On The Impossible: The Life of Edwin Land and Instant: The Story of Polaroid #132 The Instant Image: Edwin Land and The Polaroid Experience #133 Land's Polaroid: A Company and The Man Who Invented It #134 A Triumph of Genius: Edwin Land, Polaroid, and the Kodak Patent War Bob Noyce and Andy Grove #8 The Intel Trinity: How Robert Noyce, Gordon Moore, and Andy Grove Built the World's Most Important Company #159 Swimming Across #166 The Man Behind the Microchip: Robert Noyce and the Invention of Silicon Valley Nolan Bushnell #36 Finding The Next Steve Jobs: How to Find, Keep, and Nurture Talent Akio Morita #102 Made in Japan: Akio Morita and Sony Walt Disney #2 Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination #39 Walt Disney: An American Original #158 Walt Disney and the Invention of the Amusement Park That Changed the World J. Robert Oppenheimer #215 The General and the Genius: Groves and Oppenheimer—The Unlikely Partnership that Built the Atom Bomb Henry Ford #9 I Invented the Modern Age: The Rise of Henry Ford #26 My Life and Work: The Autobiography of Henry Ford #80 Today and Tomorrow: Special Edition of Ford's 1926 Classic #118 My Forty Years With Ford #190 The Story of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison's Ten-Year Road Trip David Packard and Bill Hewlett #29 The HP Way: How Bill Hewlett and I Built Our Company Alexander Graham Bell #138 Reluctant Genius: The Passionate Life and Inventive Mind of Alexander Graham Bell Robert Friedland #131 The Big Score: Robert Friedland and The Voisey's Bay Hustle Larry Ellison (Steve’s best friend) #124 Softwar: An Intimate Portrait of Larry Ellison and Oracle #126 The Billionaire and the Mechanic: How Larry Ellison and a Car Mechanic Teamed up to Win Sailing's Greatest Race, the Americas Cup, Twice #127 The Difference Between God and Larry Ellison: God Doesn't Think He's Larry Ellison ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#249 Steve Jobs In His Own Words

What I learned from reading I, Steve: Steve Jobs In His Own Words by George Beahm. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- [1:05] On Steve Jobs #5 Steve Jobs: The Biography#19 Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader#76 Return To The Little Kingdom: Steve Jobs and The Creation of Apple#77 Steve Jobs & The NeXT Big Thing#204 Inside Steve Jobs' Brain#214 Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography#235 To Pixar And Beyond: My Unlikely Journey with Steve Jobs to Make Entertainment History Bonus Episodes on Steve Jobs Insanely Simple: The Obsession That Drives Apple's Success (Between #112 and #113)Creative Selection: Inside Apple's Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs (Between #110 and #111) On Jony Ive and Steve Jobs #178 Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple's Greatest Products On Ed Catmull and Steve Jobs #34 Creativity Inc: Overcoming The Unseen Forces That Stand In The Way of True Inspiration On Steve Jobs and several other technology company founders #157 The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution #208 In the Company of Giants: Candid Conversations With the Visionaries of the Digital World [3:13] We're not going to be the first to this party, but we're going to be the best. [4:54] Company Focus: We do no market research. We don't hire consultants. We just want to make great products. [5:06] The roots of Apple were to build computers for people, not for corporations. The world doesn't need another Dell or Compaq. [5:52] Nearly all the founders I’ve read about have a handful of ideas/principles that are important to them and they just repeat and pound away at them forever. [7:00] You can oftentimes arrive at some very elegant and simple solutions. Most people just don't put in the time or energy to get there. [8:09] I think of Founders as a tool for working professionals. And what that tool does is it gets ideas from the history of entrepreneurship into your brain so then you can use them in your work. It just so happens that a podcast is a great way to achieve that goal. [8:48] Tim Ferriss Podcast #596 with Ed Thorp [8:50] A Man for All Markets: From Las Vegas to Wall Street, How I Beat the Dealer and the Market by Ed Thorp. (Founders 222) [10:43] In most people's vocabularies, design means veneer. It's interior decorating. It's the fabric of the curtains and the sofa. But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design. Design is the fundamental soul of a man-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service. [12:05] The Essential Difference: The Lisa people wanted to do something great. And the Mac people want to do something insanely great. The difference shows. [14:21] Sure, what we do has to make commercial sense, but it's never the starting point. We start with the product and the user experience. [15:57] Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader by Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli. (Founders #19) [16:41] We had a passion to do this one simple thing. [16:51] And that's really important because he's saying I wasn't trying to build the biggest company. I wasn't trying to build a trillion dollar company. It wasn't doing any of that. Those things happen later as a by-product of what I was actually focused on, which is just building the best computer that I wanted to use. [17:14] In the Company of Giants: Candid Conversations With the Visionaries of the Digital World by Rama Dev Jager and Rafael Ortiz.  (Founders #208 ) [17:41] It comes down to trying to expose yourself to the best things that humans have done and then try to bring those things in to what you're doing. Picasso had a saying: good artists copy, great artists steal. And we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas. [20:29] Our belief was that if we kept putting great products in front of customers, they would continue to open their wallets. [21:06]  A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age by Jimmy Soni and Rob Goodman (Founders #95) “A very small percentage of the population produces the greatest proportion of the important ideas. There are some people if you shoot one idea into the brain, you will get half an idea out. There are other people who are beyond this point at which they produce two ideas for each idea sent in.” [22:29] Edwin land episodes: Insisting On The Impossible: The Life of Edwin Land and Instant: The Story of Polaroid (Founders #40) The Instant Image: Edwin Land and The Polaroid Experience by Mark Olshaker. (Founders #132) Land’s Polaroid: A Company and The Man Who Invented It by Peter C. Wensberg. (Founders #133) A Triumph of Genius: Edwin Land, Polaroid, and the Kodak Patent War by Ronald K. Fierstein. (Founders #134) [25:01] Macintosh was basically this relatively small company in Cupertino, California, taking on the goliath, IBM, and saying "Wait a minute, your way is wrong. This is not the way we want computers to go. This is not the legacy we want to leave. This is not what we want our kids to be learning. This is wrong and we are going to show you the right way to do it and here it is and it is so much better. [27:47] Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple's Greatest Productsby Leander Kahney. ((Founders #178) [29:00] Enzo Ferrari: Power, Politics, and the Making of an Automobile Empire by Luca Dal Monte (Founders #98) [34:39] On meeting his wife, Laurene: I was in the parking lot, with the key in the car, and I thought to myself: If this is my last night on earth, would I rather spend it at a business meeting or with this woman? I ran across the parking lot, asked her if she'd have dinner with me. She said yes, we walked into town, and we've been together ever since. [37:26] It's not about pop culture, and it's not about fooling people, and it's not about convincing people that they want something they don't. We figure out what we want. And I think we're pretty good at having the right discipline to think through whether a lot of other people are going to want it, too. That's what we get paid to do. [41:29] Constellation Software Inc. President's Letters by Mark Leonard. (Founders #246) [42:30] Made in Japan: Akio Morita and Sony by Akio Morita. (Founders #102) [44:36] Victory in our industry is spelled survival. [45:21] Once you get into the problem you see that it's complicated, and you come up with all these convoluted solutions. That's where most people stop, and the solutions tend to work for a while. But the really great person will keep going, find the underlying problem, and come up with an elegant solution that works on every level. [48:15] Churchill by Paul Johnson (Founders #225) [48:25] I would trade all my technology for an afternoon with Socrates. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers. ”— Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#248 John D. Rockefeller (Titan)

What I learned from reading Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller by Ron Chernow.  ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- [2:15]  Rockefeller trained himself to reveal as little as possible [4:22] Once Rockefeller set his mind to something he brought awesome powers of concentration to bear. [4:44] My whole life has been spent trying to teach people that intense concentration for hour after hour can bring out in people resources they didn’t know they had. —Edwin Land [9:00] When playing checkers or chess, he showed exceptional caution, studying each move at length, working out every possible countermove in his head. "I'll move just as soon as I get it figured out," he told opponents who tried to rush him. "You don't think I'm playing to get beaten, do you?" [9:20] To ensure that he won, he submitted to games only where he could dictate the rules. Despite his slow, ponderous style, once he had thoroughly mulled over his plan of action, he had the power of quick decision. [14:49] When John was child, Bill would urge him to leap from his high chair into his waiting arms. One day he dropped his arms letting his astonished son crash to the floor. Remember, Bill lectured him, never trust anyone completely. Not even me. [15:32] The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst by David Nasaw (Founders #145) He didn't care what people thought of him and despised society. [16:13] Rockefeller analyzed work, broke it down into component parts, and figured out how to perform it most economically. [18:49] He was a confirmed exponent of positive thinking. [19:10] Rockefeller was the sort of stubborn person who only grew more determined with rejection. [25:14] Rockefeller wasn't one to dawdle in an unprofitable concern. His career had few wasted steps, and he never vacillated when the moment ripened for advancement. [26:20] He's constantly praising adversity in early life as giving him strength to deal with all the stuff he had to deal with later on his life. [26:49] Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print, and Power by James McGrath Morris. (Founders #135) He was so industrious that he became a positive annoyance to others who felt less inclined to work. [27:17] Your future hangs on every day that passes. [36:13] If it is of critical importance to your business you have to do it yourself. [36:42] In-N-Out Burger: A Behind-the-Counter Look at the Fast-Food Chain That Breaks All the Rules by Stacy Perman. (Founders #244) [38:36] He would never experience a single year of loss. [39:30] Two quotes from Charlie Munger: The wise ones bet heavily when the world offers them that opportunity. They bet big when they have the odds. And the rest of the time, they don't. It's just that simple. Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger. (Founders #90) You should remember that good ideas are rare—when the odds are greatly in your favor, bet heavily. Tao of Charlie Munger: A Compilation of Quotes from Berkshire Hathaway's Vice Chairman on Life, Business, and the Pursuit of Wealth With Commentary by David Clark (Founders #78) [41:03] He's gonna to have a massive advantage over other people who only wanted to book short-term profits. [42:01]  The Clarks were the first of many business partners to underrate the audacity of the quietly calculating Rockefeller, who bided his time as he figured out how to get rid of them. [44:27] He's super frugal on one end of the spectrum. Extremely frugal! Not going to let his business waste a penny. But he's also —on the very other end of the spectrum— willing to spend and to borrow and to go big. I will borrow every single dollar the banks will give me. He is the weird combination of extreme frugality and extreme boldness. [46:08]  Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue by Ryan Holiday (Founders 31)  On that day his partners “woke up and saw for the first time that my mind had not been idle while they were talking so big and loud,” he would say later. They were shocked. They’d seen their empire dismantled and taken from them by the young man they had dismissed. Rockefeller had wanted it more. [47:13] On that day his partners “woke up and saw for the first time that my mind had not been idle while they were talking so big and loud,” he would say later. They were shocked. They’d seen their empire dismantled and taken from them by the young man they had dismissed. Rockefeller had wanted it more. [47:37] He would never again feel his advancement blocked by shortsighted, mediocre men. [48:16] From this point forward, there would be no zigzags or squandered energy, only a single-minded focus on objectives that would make him both the wonder and terror of American business. [48:38] Random Reminiscences of Men and Events by John D. Rockefeller. (Founders #148) We devoted ourselves exclusively to the oil business and its products. That company never went into outside ventures, but kept to the enormous task of perfecting its own organization. [55:02] He always kept plentiful cash reserves. He won many bidding contests simply because his war chest was deeper. [55:46] Alexander the Great: The Brief Life and Towering Exploits of History's Greatest Conqueror--As Told By His Original Biographers by Arrian, Plutarch, and Quintus Curtius Rufus. (Founders #232) [1:05:37] Twenty-nine-year-old John D. Rockefeller demanded that seventy four-year-old Commodore Vanderbilt, the emperor of the railroad world, come to him. This refusal to truckle, bend, or bow to others, this insistence on dealing with other people on his own terms, time, and turf, distinguished Rockefeller throughout his career. [1:11:07] The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance by Ron Chernow. (Founders #139) [1:14:16] This is the investment opportunity of a lifetime and they're running in the opposite direction. [1:23:37] His master plan was to be implemented in a thousand secret, disguised, and indirect ways. [1:26:37] I have ways of making money you know nothing about. [1:30:59] You don't have any ambition to drive fast horses, do you? [1:32:59] Risk Game: Self Portrait of an Entrepreneur by Francis Greenburger. (Founders #243) [1:34:42] He was now living a fantasy of extravagant wealth and few people beyond the oil business had ever even heard of him. [1:35:33] Big Brown: The Untold Story of UPS by Greg Niemann. (Founders #192) [1:36:00] American high society in the 20th century would be loaded with descendants of those refiners who opted for stock. [1:39:02]  Enzo Ferrari: Power, Politics, and the Making of an Automobile Empire by Luca Dal Monte (Founders #98) [1:39:30] Success comes from keeping the ears open and the mouth closed. [1:40:22] Do not many of us who fail to achieve big things, fail because we lack concentration-the art of concentrating the mind on the thing to be done at the proper time and to the exclusion of everything else? [1:42:31] Copy This!: How I turned Dyslexia, ADHD, and 100 square feet into a company called Kinkos by Paul Orfalea. (Founders #181) [1:42:40] Part of the Standard Oil gospel was to train your subordinate to do your job. As Rockefeller instructed a recruit, "Has anyone given you the law of these offices? No? It is this: nobody does anything if he can get anybody else to do it. As soon as you can, get some one whom you can rely on, train him in the work, sit down, cock up your heels, and think out some way for the Standard Oil to make some money.” True to this policy, Rockefeller tried to extricate himself from the intricate web of administrative details and dedicate more of his time to broad policy decisions. [1:49:50] He entered retirement just at the birth of the American automobile industry. The automobile would make John D. Rockefeller far richer in retirement than at work. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers. ”— Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#247 Henry Flagler (Rockefeller's partner)

What I learned from reading Last Train to Paradise: Henry Flagler and the Spectacular Rise and Fall of the Railroad that Crossed an Ocean by Les Standiford. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- [1:14] The building of the railroad across the ocean was a colossal piece of work born of the same impulse that made individuals believe that pyramids could be raised cathedrals, erected and continents Tamed the highway [1:31] All that remains of an error where men still lived, who believed that with enough will and energy and money that anything could be accomplished. [2:13] Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr by Ron Chernow (Founders #16) [2:35] Meet You in Hell: Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, and the Bitter Partnership That Changed America by Les Standiford. (Founders #73) The Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie by Andrew Carnegie (Founders #74) Henry Clay Frick: The Life of the Perfect Capitalist by Quentin Skrabec Jr. (Founders #75) [5:51] The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin (Founders #62) [6:24] Benjamin Franklin: An American Life by Walter Isaacson. (Founders #115) “This industry visible to our neighbors began to give us character and credit," Franklin noted. One of the town's prominent merchants told members of his club, "The industry of that Franklin is superior to anything I ever saw of the kind; I see him still at work when I go home from club, and he is at work again before his neighbors are out of bed." Franklin became an apostle of being-and, just as important, of appearing to be-industrious. Even after he became successful, he made a show of personally carting the rolls of paper he bought in a, wheelbarrow down the street to his shop, rather than having a hired hand do it. [8:54] Ogilvy on Advertising (Founders #82) Set yourself to becoming the best-informed person in the agency on the account to which you are assigned. If, for example, it is a gasoline account, read books on oil geology and the production of petroleum products. Read the trade journals in the field. Spend Saturday mornings in service stations, talking to motorists. Visit your client’s refineries and research laboratories. At the end of your first year, you will know more about the oil business than your boss, and be ready to succeed him. [10:50] The Essays of Warren Buffett by Warren Buffett and Lawrence Cunningham. (Founders #227) Over the years, a number of very smart people have learned the hard way that a long string of impressive numbers multiplied by a single zero always equals zero. That is not an equation whose effects I would like to experience personally. [13:20] Rockefeller did not believe in diversification. He said they had no outside interest. That it is an immense task building a successful company. It's silly to go out and diversify into other lines or to make other investments. Focus on your business! [13:53] Their chief binding passion: The desire to make large sums of money. [14:13] Random Reminiscences of Men and Events by John D. Rockefeller. (Founders #148) [19:44] Warren Buffett on MOATs: On a daily basis, the effects of our actions are imperceptible; cumulatively, though, their consequences are enormous. When our long-term competitive position improves as a result of these almost unnoticeable actions, we describe the phenomenon as "widening the moat." When short-term and long-term conflict, widening the moat must take precedence. [20:06] The way I define moat: Why are you difficult to compete with? [26:54] For the last 14 or 15 years I have devoted myself exclusively to my business. [28:00] He had become a creator instead of an accumulator and he had found much more satisfaction in such an accomplishment. [30:40] Writer, Sailor, Soldier, Spy: Ernest Hemingway's Secret Adventures, 1935-1961 by Nicholas Reynolds. (Founders #194) [35:54] You have to admire Julia Tuttle. She is relentlessly persistent. [36:27] Flagler likes to keep his options open and react to new information. [43:25] It was a time in history when men were tempted no longer to regard themselves as the mercy of the fates —but as masters of their environment. [46:08] A Man for All Markets: From Las Vegas to Wall Street, How I Beat the Dealer and the Market by Ed Thorp. (Founders #222 and #93) [46:29] Getting rich and staying rich are two separate skills. [49:11] It is well-documented that Flagler planned his actions carefully. [51:06] He is not at all interested in retiring and is in fact, choosing to run directly towards more difficulties. [51:51] Decoded by Jay Z. (Founders #238) Every hustler knows the value of a feint. It keeps you one step ahead of whoever's listening in. [52:57] During your attempt at doing something difficult you're going to have several points where all of the options in front of you would not be described as good options. [57:47] You realize that you were before a man who has suffered and has never wept, who has undergone intense pain and has never sobbed, who has never bent under stress. [58:12] The only excess I believe I have indulged in has been that of hard work. [58:58]  Hard work, energy, and accomplishment. For Flagler it seemed to be all he knew and all he needed to know. [1:07:16] A story about how not panicking can save your life. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#246 Mark Leonard's Shareholder Letters

What I learned from reading Constellation Software Inc. President's Letters by Mark Leonard. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- [1:10] Business lessons from Mark Leonard by Tren Griffin [2:11] Newsletter: Liberty’s Highlights The Serendipity Engine: Investing & business, science & technology, and the arts. [2:59] I don’t like anyone telling me what to do. I don’t like anyone saying I am an authority figure and you will do it this way. I can’t think of anything that annoys me more. I was stuck by the principal. I challenged teachers. I left home early. I had a bootleg radio license. I built a flamethrower. I did things that weren’t accepted by lots of people. That ability to choose what I think is right is something I prize highly. [4:49] Distant Force: A Memoir of the Teledyne Corporation and the Man Who Created It (Founders #110) and   The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success (Founders #94) [4:53] Teledyne grows bigger by dividing businesses into smaller parts wherever possible. Singleton claims that this keeps his managers creative and not wasteful. [5:12] Our preference is to acquire businesses in their entirety and to own them forever. [8:57]  The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America's Banana King (Founders #37) [9:18] There are times when certain cards sit unclaimed in the common pile, when certain properties become available that will never be available again. A good businessman feels these moments like a fall in the barometric pressure. A great businessman is dumb enough to act on them even when he cannot afford to. [12:20] Customer relationships that endure for more than two decades are valuable. [13:08] The longer we have owned a small software business, the larger and better it has become. [15:32] Jeff Bezos’s Shareholder Letters. All of them! (Founders #71) [23:22] We didn't get to that point with central edicts or grand plans. We just had a hunch that our internal ventures could be better managed, and started measuring them. The people involved in the Initiatives generated the data, and with measurement came adjustment and adaptation. It took 6 years, but we have fundamentally changed the mental models of a generation of our managers and employees. [23:56]  A Man for All Markets: From Las Vegas to Wall Street, How I Beat the Dealer and the Market (Founders #93 and #222) [28:06] Our business units rarely get large. [28:26] This suggests that the size and performance of our business units are almost totally unrelated. I believe that these business units are small for a reason...that the advantages of being agile and tight far outweigh economies of scale. I’m not a proponent of handling our “complexity problem” by creating a bunch of 400 employee business units to replace our 40 employee units. I’m looking for ways of “achieving scale” elsewhere. [29:06] Debt is cheap right now, so it is pretty tempting to use it. Unfortunately, it has a nasty habit of going away when you need it most. [30:42] The Essays of Warren Buffett (Founders #227) [32:51] Book recommendation from Mark: Thinking Fast and Slow [34:53] I love what I'm doing and don't want to stop unless my health deteriorates or the board figures it's time for me to go. [36:42] My personal preference is to instead focus on keeping our business units small, and the majority of the decision making down at the business level. Partly this is a function of my experience with small high performance teams when I was a venture capitalist, and partly it is a function of seeing that most vertical markets have several viable competitors who exhibit little correlation between their profitability and relative scale. (TRUST IN SMALL GROUPS OF SMART PEOPLE) [37:35] There are a number of implications if you share my view: We should a) regularly divide our largest business units into smaller, more focused business units unless there is an overwhelmingly obvious reason to keep them whole, b) operate the majority of the businesses that we acquire as separate units rather than merge them with existing CSI businesses, and c) drive down cost at the head office and Operating Group level. [38:11] I want you to bear with me because I really do think this is a very clear description of what he's building, the advantages the strategy provides, and why he's going to be hard to compete with over the longterm. [40:13] We have 199 business units. We can run a test in 5, 10, 6, 24, whatever it is —we find what works and we can spread it throughout the entire company and spreading best business practices makes those businesses better. The longer it goes, the more businesses we have, the stronger they get over the time. And it's nice you have a checkbook and a phone but I'm way too far ahead— you'll never catch me is essentially what he's saying. [42:00] Copy This!: How I turned Dyslexia, ADHD, and 100 square feet into a company called Kinkos (Founders #181) [43:19] Book recommendation from Mark: The Evolution of Cooperation [44:52] You Don't Know Jack... or Jerry by Robert O. Babcock. Jack Henry and Jerry Hall launched a software company in theh back of a small engine repair shop. Thirty years later, Jack Henry and Associates, Inc., is a thriving operation with over 3,700 employees in close to 50 locations around the United States. [47:22] Book Recommendations from Mark: One Man's Medicine: An Autobiography of Professor Archie Cochrane and Effectiveness and Efficiency, Random Reflections on Health Services by Archie Cochrane The first book is a moving, idiosyncratic and dryly amusing autobiography of a brilliant and erudite outsider that makes you wish you’d known the man firsthand. The second is a stinging critique of a well-meaning but entrenched medical establishment, for their ineffective and dangerous medical practices. [48:23] We spend time on non-randomized observational studies trying to spot business practices that actually add value rather than just adding overhead. [48:34] My favorite part of Mark’s letters [51:09] A huge body of academic research confirms that complexity and coordination effort increases at a much faster rate than head count in a growing organization. [51:50] The business manager needs to be asked why employees and customers wouldn't be better served by splitting that business into smaller units. Our favorite outcome in this sort of situation is that the original business manager runs a large piece of the original business and spins off a new business unit run by one of his or her proteges. [53:39] Something wonderful happens when you spin off a new business unit. [54:16] When you get big you lose entrepreneurship. [54:43] If I were advising my 35 or 40-year-old self on where to go, I would tell him to stay put. Become a master Craftsman in the art of managing your VMS business. It is the most satisfying job in Constellation and will generate more than enough wealth for you to live very comfortably and provide for your family. [55:30] You can't be normal and expect abnormal results. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast