I've read this interview probably 10 times. It's that good. Steve Jobs was 29 when this interview was published, and with remarkable clarity of thought Steve explains the upcoming technological revolution, why the personal computer is the greatest tool humans have ever invented, how the computer compares to past inventions, why software needs to be simplified (You shouldn't have to read a novel to write a novel!) why the future is always exciting and unpredictable, what soul in the game looks like and why his competitors don't have any, why slightly insane people are the ones who make great products, the importance of questioning things and how doing so produces novel insights, why it's dangerous to have layers of middle management between the people running the company and the people doing the work, the importance of hiring troublemakers, why more people should aspire to be like Edwin Land, and how if he every leaves Apple he will always come back. Read the full interview here ----- Ramp gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud by going to Ramp and learning how they can help your business control your costs and save time and money. ----- Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book ---- 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.  ---- Highlights from this episode: We’re living in the wake of the petrochemical revolution of 100 years ago. The petrochemical revolution gave us free energy—free mechanical energy, in this case. It changed the texture of society in most ways. This revolution, the information revolution, is a revolution of free energy as well, but of another kind: free intellectual energy. This revolution will dwarf the petrochemical revolution. We’re on the forefront. A computer is the most incredible tool we’ve ever seen. It can be a writing tool, a communications center, a supercalculator, a planner, a filer and an artistic instrument all in one, just by being given new instructions, or software, to work from. There are no other tools that have the power and versatility of a computer. We have no idea how far it’s going to go The hard part of what we’re up against now is that people ask you about specifics and you can’t tell them. A hundred years ago, if somebody had asked Alexander Graham Bell, “What are you going to be able to do with a telephone?” he wouldn’t have been able to tell him the ways the telephone would affect the world. He didn’t know that people would use the telephone to call up and find out what movies were playing that night or to order some groceries or call a relative on the other side of the globe. That is what Macintosh is all about. It’s the first “telephone” of our industry. Ad campaigns are necessary for competition; IBM’s ads are everywhere. But good PR educates people; that’s all it is. You can’t con people in this business. The products speak for themselves. We didn’t build Mac for anybody else. We built it for ourselves. We were the group of people who were going to judge whether it was great or not. We weren’t going to go out and do market research. We just wanted to build the best thing we could build. When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through. The people in the Mac group wanted to build the greatest computer that has ever been seen.

When Tamara Mellon’s father lent her the seed money to start a high-end shoe company, he cautioned her: “Don’t let the accountants run your business.” Little did he know that over the next fifteen years, the struggle between “financial” and “creative” would become one of the central themes as Mellon’s business. Mellon grew Jimmy Choo into a billion dollar brand and her personal glamour made her an object of global media fascination. Vogue photographed her wedding. Vanity Fair covered her divorce and the criminal trial that followed. The Wall Street Journal reported on her relentless battle between “the suits” and “the creatives" and Mellon’s triumph against a brutally hostile takeover attempt. But despite her eventual fame and fortune, Mellon didn’t have an easy road to success. Her early life was marked by a tumultuous and broken family life, battles with anxiety and depression, and a stint in rehab. Determined not to end up unemployed, penniless, and living in her parents’ basement under the control of her alcoholic mother, Mellon honed her natural business sense and invested in what she knew best—fashion. In creating the shoes that became a fixture on Sex and the City and red carpets around the world, Mellon relied on her own impeccable sense of what the customer wanted—because she was that customer. What she didn’t know at the time was that success would come at a high price—after struggles with an obstinate business partner, a conniving first CEO, a turbulent marriage, and a mother who tried to steal her hard-earned wealth. Now Mellon shares the whole larger-than-life story, with shocking details that have never been presented before. From her troubled childhood to her time as a young editor at Vogue to her partnership with the cobbler Jimmy Choo, to her very public relationships, Mellon offers an honest and gripping account of the episodes that have made her who she is today. In My Shoes is a definitive book for fashion aficionados, aspiring entrepreneurs, and anyone who loves a juicy true story about sex, drugs, money, power, high heels, and overcoming adversity. This episode is what I learned from reading In My Shoes: A Memoir by Tamara Mellon.  ----- Ramp gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud by going to Ramp and learning how they can help your business control your costs and save time and money. ----- Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book ---- 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

At the core of Michael Ovitz's success is his relentless work ethic and commitment to mastering his craft. 50 years ago he founded Creative Artists Agency. CAA starts out as just five young guys in a run down office and eventually becomes the most powerful agency in the world. Ovitz's autobiography explains how that happened. As the Wall Street Journal wrote: When the history of Hollywood is written, few people will have played a larger role than Michael Ovitz.  This episode is what I learned from reading (for the 2nd time!) Who Is Michael Ovitz?: The Rise and Fall (and Rise) of the Most Powerful Man in Hollywood by Michael Ovitz.  ---- Ramp gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud by going to Ramp and learning how they can help your business control your costs and save more.  ---- Vesto: All of your company's financial accounts in one view. Connect and control all of your business bank accounts from one dashboard. Go to Vesto and schedule a demo with the founder Ben. Tell him David sent you.  ---- 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.  ---- Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book ---- 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

What I learned from reading The Mind of Napoleon: A Selection of His Written and Spoken Words edited by J. Christopher Herold.  ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes ---- Follow one of my favorite podcasts Invest Like The Best and listen to episode 326 Alexis Rivas ---- (3:45) A man who combined energy of thought and energy of action to an exceptional degree. (4:45) He knows that men have always been the same, that nothing can change their nature. It is from the past that he will draw his lessons in order to shape the present. (5:15) Destiny must be fulfilled. That is my chief doctrine. (6:05) Napoleon: A Concise Biography by David Bell (Founders #294) (9:25) To aim at world empire seemed to Napoleon a most natural thing. (10:00) To have lived without glory, without leaving a trace of one's existence, is not to have lived at all. (10:55) The greatest improvisation of the human mind is that which gives existence to the nonexistent. (11:45) The best way to understand a person is to listen to that person directly. —  Make Something Wonderful: Steve Jobs in his own words (Founders #299) (12:55) The great majority of men attend to what is necessary only when they feel a need for it—the precise time when it is too late. (16:10) The worst way to live according to Napoleon: When on rising from sleep a man does not know what to do with himself and drags his tedious existence from place to place; when, scanning his future, he sees nothing but dreadful monotony, one day resembling the next; when he asks himself, "Why do I exist?”—then, in my opinion, he is the most wretched of all. (17:45) Instead his (Steve Jobs) ego needs and personal drives led him to seek fulfillment by creating a legacy that would awe people. A dual legacy, actually: building innovative products and building a lasting company. He wanted to be in the pantheon with, indeed a notch above, people like Edwin Land, Bill Hewlett, and David Packard. — Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography by Walter Isaacson. (Founders #214) (19:15) He must know himself. Until then, all endeavors are in vain, all schemes collapse. (20:15) Napoleon on George Washington: Britain refused to acknowledge either him or the independence of his country; but his success obliged them to change their minds and acknowledge both. It is success which makes the great man. (21:15) Washington saw the conflict as a struggle for power in which the colonists, if victorious, destroyed British pretentions of superiority and won control over half of a continent. — Franklin & Washington: The Founding Partnershipby Edward Larson. (Founders #251) (23:15) If you do everything you will win: All great events hang by a single thread. The clever man takes advantage of everything, neglects nothing that may give him some added opportunity; the less clever man, by neglecting one thing, sometimes misses everything. (23:45) Warren Buffett: We are individually opportunity driven. — All I Want To Know Is Where I'm Going To Die So I'll Never Go There: Buffett & Munger – A Study in Simplicity and Uncommon, Common Sense by Peter Bevelin. (Founders #286) (24:15) Imagination rules the world. (25:00) Ambition is a violent and unthinking fever that ceases only when life ceases. (34:52) The corpse of an enemy always smells sweet. (35:30) Roots of Strategy: Book 1 (38:45) Robert Caro profiled two men who seeds were not high (in a tournament) they were without many advantages. And to get all the way to the top you probably had to sacrifice everything to the effort. The meta lesson is if you are not willing to pay that price presume someone else will. If you want something like the presidency (or being a billionaire) you should presume there is someone out there who will devote all their time, money, relationships, sense of ethics, everything in sacrifice of that one goal. Of course that person would win that race.  — Invest Like The Best Sam Hinkie Find Your People  (40:45) I do not want be roadkill on the modern-day Napoleon's path to glory. (43:15) The ancients had a great advantage over us in that their armies were not trailed by a second army of pen pushers. (44:05) A wasted life should be your greatest fear. (46:30) Make use of every possible opportunity of increasing your chances of victory. (48:55) Paul Graham on Be Hard to Kill: The way to make a startup recession-proof is to do exactly what you should do anyway: run it as cheaply as possible. For years I've been telling founders that the surest route to success is to be the cockroaches of the corporate world. The immediate cause of death in a startup is always running out of money. So the cheaper your company is to operate, the harder it is to kill. —  Paul Graham’s essays (Founders #275) (51:30) Winning is the main thing. Keep the main thing, the main thing. ---- Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes ---- “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

What I learned from reading Tiger Woods by Jeff Benedict and Armen Keteyian. ---- Follow one of my favorite podcasts Invest Like The Best and listen to episode 326 Alexis Rivas ---- [3:00] He was someone no one had ever seen or will ever see again. [5:20] 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) [7:15] His output was enormous, much greater than that of nine tenths of other composers. He was a mature artist in most forms at the age of twelve. There was never a month, often scarcely a week, when he did not produce a substantial score. — Mozart: A Life by Paul Johnson. (Founders #240) [7:50] Tiger's opponents were never people; it was always history. [14:05] I've always been a practice player. I believe in it. — Michael Jordan: The Lifeby Roland Lazenby. (Founders #212) [17:00] Grinding It Out: The Making of McDonald's by Ray Kroc. (Founders #293) [18:30] Tiger was filling his mind with words that were intended to make him great. He wrote some of the messages from the self-help cassettes on a sheet of paper that he taped to his bedroom wall: I believe in me I will own my own destiny I smile at obstacles I am first in my resolve I fulfill my resolutions powerfully My strength is great I stick to it, easily, naturally  My will moves mountains I focus and give it my all My decisions are strong I do it with all my heart Tiger listened to those tapes so often that he wore them out. [31:50] People would ask him how did you get so good Tiger? And he would answer, practice, practice, practice. [32:10] 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. [36:45] The Score Takes Care of Itself: My Philosophy of Leadership by Bill Walsh. (Founders #106) [40:15] That’s all training is. Stress. Recover. Improve. You’d think any damn fool could do it. But you don’t. You work too hard and rest too little and get hurt. — Bowerman and the Men of Oregon: The Story of Oregon's Legendary Coach and Nike's Cofounder by Kenny Moore. (Founders #153) [46:15] Money didn't motivate him. Nor did fame. He played for the hardware. He played for the win. [53:45] Robert Caro’s Books ---- Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book ---- “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

What I learned from reading Against the Odds: An Autobiography by James Dyson for the 4th time. You can also find the book on Book Finder.  ---- Follow one of my favorite podcasts Invest Like The Best and listen to episode 293 David Senra: Passion and Pain  ---- Episode Outline:  [4:30] Invention: A Life by James Dyson (Founders #205) [2:41] I am a creator of products, a builder of things, and my name appears on them. That is how I make a living and they are what have made my name at least familiar in a million homes. [11:00] Isambard Kingdom Brunel: The Definitive Biography of The Engineer, Visionary, and Great Briton by L.T.C. Rolt. (Founders #201) [13:10] After the idea there is plenty of time to learn the technology. My first cyclonic vacuum cleaner was built out of cereal packets and masking tape long before I understood how it worked. [14:15] Difference for the sake of it. In everything. Because it must be better. From the moment the idea strikes, to the running of the business. Difference, and retention of total control. [18:00] I would not be dragged into something I didn't want to do. [22:40] They were all running round and round the track like a herd of sheep and not getting any quicker. Difference itself was making me come in first. [23:34] As I grew more and more neurotic about being caught from behind I trained harder to stay in front. To this day it is the fear of failure, more than anything else, which makes me keep working at success. Isambard Kingdom Brunel was unable to think small, and nothing was a barrier to him. The mere fact that something had never been one before presented, to Brunel, no suggestion that the doing of it was impossible. He was fired by an inner strength and self-belief almost impossible to imagine in this feckless age.  While I could never lay claim to the genius of a man like that —I have tried to be as confident in my vision as he was.  And at times in my life when I have encountered difficulty and self-doubt I have looked to his example to fire me on. [30:33] The vision of a single man pursued with dogged determination that was nothing less than obsession. [36:30] The root principle was to do things your way. It didn't matter how other people did it. [41:38] You simply cannot mix your messages when selling something new. A consumer can barely handle one great new idea, let alone two, or even several. [49:30] A direct relationship with the customer is the holy grail. Do not abandon it. [52:00] One of the strains of this book is about control. If you have the intimate knowledge of a product that comes with dreaming it up and then designing it, I have been trying to say, then you will be the better able to sell it and then, reciprocally, to go back to it and improve it. From there you are in the best possible position to convince others of its greatness and to inspire others to give their very best efforts to developing it, and to remain true to it, and to see it through all the way to its optimum point. To total fruition, if you like. [1:02:20] Before I went into production with the dual cyclone I had built 5,127 prototypes. [1:02:30] There is no such thing as a quantum leap. There is only dogged persistence – and in the end you make it look like a quantum leap. [1:03:30] While it is easy, of course, for me to celebrate my doggedness now and say that it is all you need to succeed, the truth is that it demoralized me terribly. I would crawl into the house every night covered in dust after a long day, exhausted and depressed because that day's cyclone had not worked. There were times when I thought it would never work, that I would keep on making cyclone after cyclone, never going forwards, never going backwards, until I died. [1:06:20] I was broke, hungry and depressed. The outlook was very dreary. My doggedness and self-belief in the absence of any real evidence that they were justified was beginning to look more and more like insanity. [1:10:30] Persistent trial and error allows them to wake up one morning after many, many mornings with a world beating product. [1:13:15] I began to consider forgetting the whole thing and doing something else with my life. [1:16:00] The poor buggers were so wrong, to think that designers knew nothing about business, or about marketing, or is about selling. It is the people who make the things that understand them, and understand what the public wants. [1:21:30] Go further. There is nothing wrong with making the consumer laugh. Conventional looks do not make a product more marketable. ---- Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book ---- “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

What I learned from reading Make Something Wonderful: Steve Jobs in his own words. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com You can read, reread, and search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast.  You can also ask SAGE any question and SAGE will read all my notes, highlights, and every transcript from every episode for you.  A few questions I've asked SAGE recently:  What are the most important leadership lessons from history's greatest entrepreneurs? Can you give me a summary of Warren Buffett's best ideas? (Substitute any founder covered on the podcast and you'll get a comprehensive and easy to read summary of their ideas)  How did Edwin Land find new employees to hire? Any unusual sources to find talent? What are some strategies that Cornelius Vanderbilt used against his competitors? Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- Follow one of my favorite podcasts Invest Like The Best and listen to episode 293 David Senra: Passion and Pain  ---- (3:48) He gave an extraordinary amount of thought to how best to use our fleeting time. (4:24) He imagined what reality lacked and set out to remedy it. (7:27) Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview Video and My Notes. (10:02) 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) (13:23) Think of your life as a rainbow arcing across the horizon of this world. You appear, have a chance to blaze in the sky, then you disappear. (14:10) One from Many: VISA and the Rise of Chaordic Organization by Dee Hock. (Founders #260) (15:42) Read Jeff Bezos's shareholder letters in book form: Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos or for free online: Amazon Investor Relations(Founders #282) (19:45) If you want to understand the entrepreneur, study the juvenile delinquent. — Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman by Yvon Chouinard. (Founders #297) (30:47) How important product is based on how much time you spend with it: People are going to be spending two, three hours a day interacting with these machines—longer than they spend in the car. (39:02) Return to the Little Kingdom: Steve Jobs and the Creation of Appleby Michael Moritz. (Founders #76) (40:32) The real big thing is: if you’re going to make something, it doesn’t take any more energy—and rarely does it take more money—to make it really great. All it takes is a little more time. And a willingness to do so, a willingness to persevere until it’s really great. (45:07) Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration by Ed Catmull  (45:31) Steve’s enthusiasm kept him writing check after check to Pixar, ultimately investing some $60 million. (47:47) It is better to have fewer people even if it means doing less. Let's build our company slowly and carefully. (53:36) I’m not so dominant that I can’t listen to creative ideas coming from other people. Successful people listen. Those who don’t listen, don’t survive long. — Driven From Within by Michael Jordan (Founders #213) (54:40) You never achieve what you want without falling on your face a few times in the process of getting there. (1:00:11) There wasn’t a hierarchy of ideas that mapped onto the hierarchy of the organization. (1:03:33) Don’t be a career. The enemy of most dreams and intuitions, and one of the most dangerous and stifling concepts ever invented by humans, is the “Career.” A career is a concept for how one is supposed to progress through stages during the training for and practicing of your working life. There are some big problems here. First and foremost is the notion that your work is different and separate from the rest of your life. If you are passionate about your life and your work, this can’t be so. They will become more or less one. This is a much better way to live one’s life. (1:05:11) Make your avocation your vocation. Make what you love your work. (1:05:58) Think of your life as a rainbow arcing across the horizon of this world. You appear, have a chance to blaze in the sky, then you disappear. (1:09:27) In the Company of Giants: Candid Conversations With the Visionaries of the Digital World by Rama Dev Jager and Rafael Ortiz. (Founders #208) (1:10:52) Much of it is also drive and passion—hard work makes up for a lot. (1:13:28) A risk-taking creative environment on the product side required a fiscally conservative environment on the business side. (1:13:57) You've got to choose what you put your love into really carefully. (1:14:38) A remarkably consistent set of values that Steve held dear: Life is short; don’t waste it. Tell the truth. Technology should enhance human creativity. Process matters. Beauty matters. Details matter. The world we know is a human creation—and we can push it forward. (1:19:24) Steve Jobs speaking to Apple employees (Video)  (1:29:48) Apple is the world’s premier bridge builder between mere mortals and the exploding world of high technology. (1:30:14) Steve’s favorite quote: We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. – Aristotle (1:32:29) The Man Behind the Microchip: Robert Noyce and the Invention of Silicon Valley by Leslie Berlin. (Founders #166) (1:42:27) That’s been the most important lesson I’ve learned in business: that the dynamic range of people dramatically exceeds things you encounter in the rest of our normal lives—and to try to find those really great people who really love what they do.  (1:43:00) Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple's Greatest Productsby Leander Kahney. (Founders #178) (1:47:27) It’s a circus world, and you never know what’s around the next corner. (1:53:40) Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography by Laurie Woolever. (Founders #219) (2:01:00) All glory is fleeting. ---- Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book ---- “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

What I learned from having lunch with Sam Zell and reading Zeckendorf: The Autobiography of The man Who Played a Real-Life Game of Monopoly and Won the Largest Real Estate Empire in History by William Zeckendorf.  ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com You can read, reread, and search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast.  You can also ask SAGE any question and SAGE will read all my notes, highlights, and every transcript from every episode for you.  A few questions I've asked SAGE recently:  What are the most important leadership lessons from history's greatest entrepreneurs? Can you give me a summary of Warren Buffett's best ideas? (Substitute any founder covered on the podcast and you'll get a comprehensive and easy to read summary of their ideas)  How did Edwin Land find new employees to hire? Any unusual sources to find talent? What are some strategies that Cornelius Vanderbilt used against his competitors? Get access to Founders Notes here.  Episode Outline:  [27:31] Start of episode on Zeckendorf’s autobiography [27:44] 26 years of work was now moving down the chute. [28:36] The secret of any great project is to keep it moving, keep it from losing momentum. [34:55] If you want to understand the entrepreneur, study the juvenile delinquent. — Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman by Yvon Chouinard. (Founders #297) [36:21] Zeckendorf: Revisiting the legacy of a master builder [45:08] This ruthless industry has created far more bankruptcies than it has billionaires. — Risk Game: Self Portrait of an Entrepreneur by Francis Greenburger. (Founders #243) [48:49] If you want to know whether you are destined to be a success or a failure in life, you can easily find out. The test is simple and it is infallible: Are you able to save money? If not, drop out. You will lose. You may think not, but you will lose as sure as you live. The seed of success is not in you. — James J. Hill: Empire Builder of the Northwest by Michael P. Malone. [53:20] I brought energy and drive. I became the chief enthusiast. [1:08:42] I was also deeply in debt. Never, except for rare moments, have I ever had my head very far above the financial water and never have I Iet this trouble me. [1:10:51] The importance to me of being on the heights was that in an hour I could achieve what previously would've taken a year or more of effort to perform. [1:11:13] One way to succeed is by aiding and supporting the position of others through new or ingenious ideas or projects. This usefulness to others is in large part the reason for my own success. [1:14:44] Am I Being Too Subtle?: Straight Talk From a Business Rebel by Sam Zell. (Founders #269) [1:15:04] The Invisible Billionaire: Daniel Ludwig by Jerry Shields. (Founders #292) [1:21:28] The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy by David Nasaw  [1:25:52] More businesses die from indigestion than starvation. — The HP Way: How Bill Hewlett and I Built Our Company by David Packard. (Founders #291) [1:29:23] Wisdom is prevention. –Charlie Munger + Be hard to kill. —Paul Graham (Founders #275) ---- Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book ---- “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

What I learned from rereading Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman by Yvon Chouinard. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes ---- Follow Founders Podcast on YouTube  ---- Follow one of my favorite podcasts Invest Like The Best ! ---- [3:45] One of my favorite sayings about entrepreneurship is: 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.” [4:32] The original intent for writing Let My People Go Surfing was for it to be a philosophical manual for the employees of Patagonia. We have always considered Patagonia an experiment in doing business in unconventional ways. [7:48] MeatEater Podcast #188 Yvon Chouinard on Belonging to Nature [7:55] The first part of our mission statement, “Make the best product,” is the cornerstone of our business philosophy. “Make the best” is a difficult goal. It doesn’t mean “among the best” or the “best at a particular price point.” It means “make the best,” period. [9:58] 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. I’d much rather design and sell products so good and unique that they have no competition. [14:32] We were like a wild species living on the edge of an ecosystem: adaptable, resilient, and tough. [14:49] I believe the way towards mastery of any endeavor is to work towards simplicity. The more you know, the less you need. [15:49] The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry [17:59] Complexity is often a sure sign that the functional needs have not been solved. Take the difference between the Ferrari and the Cadillac of the 1960s. The Ferrari’s clean lines suites its high-performance aims. The Cadillac really didn’t have any functional aims. It didn’t have steering, suspension, aerodynamics, or brakes appropriate to its immense horsepower. All it had to do was convey the idea of power, creature comfort, of a living room floating down the highway to the golf course. So, to a basically ugly shape were added all manner of useless chrome: fins at the back, breasts at the front. Once you lose the discipline of functionality as a design guidepost, the imagination runs amok. Once you design a monster, it tends to look like one too. [21:29] Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike by Phil Knight. (Founders #186) [28:02] Becoming Trader Joe: How I Did Business My Way and Still Beat the Big Guys by Joe Coulombe. (Founders #188) [28:55] There are different ways to address a new idea or project. If you take the conservative scientific route, you study the problem in your head or on paper until you are sure there is no chance of failure. However, you have taken so long that the competition has already beaten you to market. The entrepreneurial way is to immediately take a forward step and if that feels good, take another, if not, step back. Learn by doing, it is a faster process. [31:33] Can a company that wants to make the best-quality outdoor clothing in the world be the size of Nike? Can a ten-table, three-star French restaurant retain its third star when it adds fifty tables? The question haunted me throughout the 1980s as Patagonia evolved. [35:47] I was still wondering why I was really in business. [38:17] We had to begin to make all of our decisions as though we would be in business for a hundred years. [39:02] Made in Japan: Akio Morita and Sony by Akio Morita. (Founders #102) [39:13] Jeff Bezos on what he learned from Akio Morita and how it influenced the building of Amazon: "Right after World War II, Akio Morita, the guy who founded Sony, made the mission for Sony that they were going to make Japan known for quality. And you have to remember, this was a time when Japan was known for cheap, copycat products. And Morita didn’t say we’re going to make Sony known for quality. He said we’re going to make Japan known for quality. He chose a mission for Sony that was bigger than Sony. And when we talk about earth’s most customer-centric company, we have a similar idea in mind. We want other companies to look at Amazon and see us as a standard-bearer for obsessive focus on the customer as opposed to obsessive focus on the competitor." [42:13] Keep your company in Yarak: Super alert, hungry but not weak, and ready to hunt. [42:45] Against The Odds: An Autobiography by James Dyson (Founders #200) [44:02] Jay Z: What am I here for? To be second best? I don’t think so. [44:13] The more you know, the less you need. [51:33] Teach, inform, and inspire. Do so relentlessly and the sales will follow. [53:04] I was taught by some wise people that if you manage the top line of your company-your customers, your products, your strategy-then the bottom line will follow. But if you manage the bottom line of the company and forget about the rest, you’ll eventually hit the wall because you'll take your eyes off the prize. — Steve Jobs In the Company of Giants: Candid Conversations With the Visionaries of the Digital World by Rama Dev Jager and Rafael Ortiz. (Founders #208) [56:03] Quality, not price, has the highest correlation with business success. Whenever we are faced with a serious business decision, the answer almost always is to increase quality. [56:59] Huberman Lab Podcast [57:19]  I cannot imagine any company that wants to make the best product of its kind being staffed by people who do not care passionately about the product. [57:39] One of my all time favorite quotes: 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. [58:56] You should not see change as a threat, rather as an opportunity to grow and evolve to a higher level. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes ---- Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book ---- “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

David Rosenthal and Ben Gilbert — of the Acquired podcast — invited me to San Francisco for a discussion on our mutual obsession: spending every waking hour studying the history of entrepreneurship and sharing those lessons on our podcasts.  ---- Follow Acquired in your podcast player here or at Acquired.fm  This episode is brought to you by: Tiny: Tiny is the easiest way to sell your business. Tiny provides quick and straightforward exits for Founders. Get in touch with Tiny by emailing hi@tiny.com.  [3:00] David’s time with Charlie Munger [5:30] Henry Flagler after Standard Oil [8:30] What makes a great biography, and how to capture all sides of complex characters? [11:00] Studying history is a form of leverage to achieve success [13:00] How do we figure out what the true story is for an episode we're doing? [20:30] Silicon Valley should focus more on durability than growth [21:30] How David got into reading biographies and podcasting [25:40] What were each of their influences before starting Acquired and Founders? [35:30] How to suck less over time [37:30] What motivates, Ben, David, and David to get better? [45:00] Dead ends: business model changes, paid podcasts, changing the name to “Adapting”, and Senra's “Autotelic” [51:30] “You’re not advertising to a standing army, you’re advertising to a moving parade” [56:00] Comparison of podcasting business models [1:00:10] Senra’s insane Readwise "healthy twitter" habit [1:04:30] Is it possible for the ultra-wealthy not to mess up their kids? [1:14:30] The fleeting moments you get to spend with your kids [1:17:00] The value of building relationships with best-in-class peers [1:19:30] How the book publishing industry works [1:28:45] How to differentiate yourself as an investor in 2023? [1:38:30] The greatest historical examples as content marketing [2:02:00] The best businesses are cults (and Senra starts one on the episode) [2:07:00] Senra gives feedback to Ben and David on Acquired episode format [2:15:30] Steve Jobs’ 1997 product matrix [2:17:00] The moral imperative to market products that help people [2:23:00] Ray Kroc and Steve Jobs: deeply flawed founders [2:23:30] The founders we idolize are world-builders [2:28:00] When yachts and jets are underpriced assets [2:32:00] How to compete when money is cheap vs. when there are real interest rates [2:39:30] When Ben and David have fixed broken episodes in post-production [2:44:30] Why masters of craft are so interesting to study [2:45:30] Should you listen to advice? [2:51:00] David’s first job detailing cars [2:52:30] The Cuban experience immigrating to Miami [3:01:00] College entrepreneurship programs [3:04:00] Ben’s experience learning UNIX as a kid [3:08:30] David remembers Tim Ferriss guest lecturing in college If you have scrolled this far and still haven't followed Acquired in your podcast player please do so here!  ---- 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

What I learned from reading The Taste of Luxury: Bernard Arnault and the Moet-Hennessy Louis Vuitton Story by Nadege Forestier and Nazanine Ravai. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes ---- Follow one of my favorite podcasts Invest Like The Best ! ---- [1:16] I am the boss. I shall be here on Monday morning and I shall be running the company in person. [4:30] The Taste of Luxury: Bernard Arnault and the Moet-Hennessy Louis Vuitton Story by Nadege Forestier and Nazanine Ravai [5:01] I highly recommend listening to Acquired’s episode on LVMH. It is excellent. [5:16] Business Breakdowns episode LVMH: The Wolf in Cashmere’s Conglomerate [6:16] Napoleon: A Concise Biography by David Bell. (Founders #294) [6:18] Mind of Napoleon: A Selection of His Written and Spoken Words by Napoleon and J. Christopher Herold. [7:20] I’m not so dominant that I can’t listen to creative ideas coming from other people. Successful people listen. Those who don’t listen, don’t survive long. — Driven From Within by Michael Jordan (Founders #213) [9:00] “I am very competitive. I always want to win.” —Bernard Arnault [10:39] What I'm interested is in doing. [11:43] He believed in extreme discretion. [11:56] I Had Dinner With Charlie Munger (Founders #295) [16:17] Beneath his civilized appearance there lurked the spirit of an adventurer. He wanted more. [17:45] He wanted to go far. He had an iron will. At a laboriously won tennis match he said “I may lose once but I never lose twice.” —Bernard Arnault [19:45] Problems are just opportunities in work clothes. [23:30] Arnault remained inflexible. He wanted control. There was no question of his becoming the Willots’ partner. [24:15] Far from discouraging him, this consensus of opinion (that this would lead to failure) acted as a stimulus. [24:25] “I remember people telling me, it does not make sense to put together so many brands. And it was a success, it was a recognized success, and for the last 10 years now, every competitor is trying to imitate. I think they are not successful, but they try.” —Bernard Arnault [30:43] “In business, I think the most important thing is to position yourself for long-term and not be too impatient, which I am by nature, and I have to control myself.” —Bernard Arnault [33:35] He had such an appetite for victory and such a capacity for work that he was bound to succeed. [35:26] “People think of politicians having true power, but that’s less and less true. After all, they are often constrained or being edged into a corner by a whole series of contingencies ... I’m lucky in that I can say, ‘I want my group to be in such and such a situation in 10 or 20 years’ time’ and then formulate a plan to make that happen.” –Bernard Arnault [42:37] Those on the margins often come to control the center. [43:10] Invest Like the Best episode Doug Leone —Lessons From A Titan [48:31] Difference for the sake of it. In everything. Because it must be better. From the moment the idea strikes, to the running of the business. Difference, and retention of total control. — Against The Odds: An Autobiography by James Dyson (Founders #200) [1:01:20] My relationship to luxury goods is really very rational. It is the only area in which it is possible to make luxury profit margins. [1:02:45] Arnault wants to take power everywhere and immediately. [1:07:40] Arnault is an iron fist in an iron glove. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes ---- “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

What I learned from having dinner with Charlie Munger and rereading The Tao of Charlie Munger. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes ---- Follow Founders Podcast on YouTube  ---- Follow one of my favorite podcasts Invest Like The Best ! (5:45) The blueprint he gave me was simple: Forget what you know about buying fair businesses at wonderful prices; instead, buy wonderful businesses at fair prices. (8:48) He has never forgotten the importance of having friends in high places. (9:04) Most people systematically undervalue their time. — Peter Thiel (11:08) Franklin & Washington: The Founding Partnership by Edward Larson. Founders #251) (12:23) Meet You in Hell: Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, and the Bitter Partnership That Changed America by Les Standiford. (Founders #284) (15:02) Charlie took the excess capital out of Blue Chip Stamp and invested it in profitable businesses. (16:56) Charlie started seeing the advantages of investing in better businesses that didn't have big capital requirements and did have lots of free cash that could be reinvested in expanding operations or buying new businesses. (17:38) Go for great. (21:33) In everything I’ve done it really pays to go after the best people in the world. —Steve Jobs (27:15) If you're in a good business just know that it's human nature to mess it up. Don't mess it up. Just stay there and let time do its work. (27:34) One truly great business will make your unborn grandchildren wealthy. (28:08) All I Want To Know Is Where I'm Going To Die So I'll Never Go There: Buffett & Munger – A Study in Simplicity and Uncommon, Common Sense by Peter Bevelin. (Founders #286) (34:39) I did not succeed in life by intelligence. I succeeded because I have a long attention span. (34:54) Charlie Munger on how he made $400 or $500 million by reading Barron’s for 50 years. (35:11) One of the reasons Charlie and Warren have never worried about anyone mimicking their investment style is because no other institution or individual has the discipline are the patience to wait as long as they can.  (35:47) Wisdom is prevention. (36:50) Only play games where you have an edge. — A Man for All Markets: From Las Vegas to Wall Street, How I Beat the Dealer and the Market by Ed Thorp. (Founders #222) (38:31) Wise people step on big and growing troubles early. (44:51) I am continually amazed at the number of people who are presented with an opportunity and pass. There’s your basic dividing line between the people who shoot up in their careers like a rocket ship, and those who don’t — right there. — Marc Andreessen's Blog Archive (Founders #50) (46:28) The most inspiring biography I’ve read so far: Born of This Land: My Life Story by Chung Ju-yung. (Founders #117) (47:11) Invest Like The Best #204 Sam Hinkie Find Your People (42:42) Rober Caro’s Books: The Power Broker The Path to Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson I Means of Ascent: The Years of Lyndon Johnson II Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson III The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson IV (48:46) We just got after it and we stayed after it. — Sam Walton: Made In America by Sam Walton. (Founders #234) (52:39) Some brand names own a piece of consumer's minds and they do not have any direct competition. (55:30) We are individual opportunity driven. (57:08) Size and market domination can create their own kind of durable competitive advantage. (56:15) Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple's Greatest Products by Leander Kahney. (Founders #178) (1:01:57) Extreme specialization is the way to succeed. Most people are way better off specializing than trying to understand the world. (1:04:44) Wise people want to avoid other people who are just total rat poison and there are a lot of them. (1:05:35) Charlie and I have seen so much of the ordinary in business that we can truly appreciate a virtuoso performance. (1:09:00) Am I Being Too Subtle?: Straight Talk From a Business Rebel by Sam Zell. (Founders #269) (1:10:15) Charlie looks at nearly everything through the lens of history. You aren't changing human nature. Things will just keep repeating forever. (1:13:13) There should be more willingness to take the blows of life as they fall. That's what manhood is, taking life as it falls. Not whining all the time and trying to fix it by whining. (1:14:40) Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire by James Wallace and Jim Erickson. (Founders #290) (1:17:00) Arnold Schwarzenegger autobiographies and episodes: Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story by Arnold Schwarzenegger. (Founders #141) Arnold: The Education of a Bodybuilder by Arnold Schwarzenegger. (Founders #193) ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes ---- Follow Founders Podcast on YouTube  ---- Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book ---- “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

What I learned from reading Napoleon: A Concise Biography by David Bell. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes ---- Follow Founders Podcast on YouTube  ---- Follow one of my favorite podcasts Invest Like The Best ! [3:00] He could think quicker and along more individual and original lines than any of them. [4:00] John D: The Founding Father of the Rockefellers by David Freeman Hawke. (Founders #254) [4:14] Miami meetup with Shane Parrish [7:31] His life was enormously important, endlessly fascinating, and connected to some of the most controversial and constantly reinterpreted events in the world history. [8:37] Paul Johnson’s books: Churchill by Paul Johnson. (Founders #225) Mozart: A Life by Paul Johnson. (Founders #240) Socrates: A Man for Our Times by Paul Johnson. (Founders #252) [10:54] Heroes: From Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar to Churchill and de Gaulle by Paul Johnson. (Founders #226) [12:20] He knew the importance of actively crafting his image in all available media. [15:08] Napoleon found comfort and companionship in books [17:02] The revolution was overturning age old hierarchies and giving worldwide prominence to previously obscure figures. [17:24] Napoleon was ruthless. [18:36] Only after that battle did I believe myself to be a superior man. And did the ambition come to me of executing the great things, which so far had been occupying my thoughts only as a fantastic dream. [20:00] Many are the historical opportunities that have been lost for lack of talent or vision. In Napoleon's case, the man met his hour. [20:13] He could see in a moment how to maneuver everything for maximum effect. [21:03] Napoleon was a man of stone and iron. [26:27] Napoleon was something new and the keenest observers understood it. [29:06] I wanted to rule the world, who wouldn't have in my place? [29:26] If papa could see us now. [29:45] Franklin & Washington: The Founding Partnership by Edward Larson. (Founders #251) [32:15] You might as well send a cow in pursuit of a rabbit. The Indians were accustomed to these woods. [35:30] The Empire was increasingly coming to resemble a skyscraper built in haste without a proper foundation. [35:58] Driven: An Autobiography by Larry Miller. (Founders #168) [39:24] The key to victory was to plan and pursue a war exactly contrary to what the enemy wants. [39:49] Hardcore History Ghosts of the Ostfront series [41:08] The distracted do not beat the focused. [42:36] Success is never permanent. The same person that built the empire, destroyed it. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes ---- Follow Founders Podcast on YouTube  ---- Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book ---- “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

What I learned from having an intense and fun 3 hour dinner with Michael Ovitz.  1: Mediocrity is always invisible until passion shows up and exposes it. 2: There's no ceiling on where you can push your profession. 3: Don't be unequally yoked. Pick partners that have the same ambition as you. 4: Read biographies. Know everything about the history of your industry. 5. Have a profound sense of belief. The world is very malleable.  6: There’s opportunity hiding in plain sight. 7: By endurance we conquer.  8: Work 10% less. Optimize for the long term.  9. Surround yourself with people who will tell you the truth. 10: Retirement is lame. ---- Ramp gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud by going to Ramp and learning how they can help your business control your costs and save more.  ---- 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.  ---- Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book ---- 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

What I learned from rereading Grinding It Out: The Making of McDonald's by Ray Kroc. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes ---- Follow Founders Podcast on YouTube  ---- Follow one of my favorite podcasts Invest Like The Best ! [2:00] I have always believed that each man makes his own happiness and is responsible for his own problems. [4:00] I was fascinated by the simplicity and effectiveness of the system they described that night.Each step in producing the limited menu was stripped down to its essence and accomplished with a minimum of effort. [5:00] When I flew back to Chicago that fateful day in 1954, I had a freshly signed contract with the McDonald brothers in my briefcase. I was a battle-scarred veteran of the business wars, but I was still eager to go into action. I was 52 years old. I had diabetes and incipient arthritis. I had lost my gall bladder and most of my thyroid gland in earlier campaigns. But I was convinced that the best was ahead of me. [6:00] It’s not what you do it’s how you do it: Ralph Lauren: The Man Behind the Mystique by Jeffrey Trachtenberg. (Founders #288) Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire by James Wallace and Jim Erickson. (Founders #290) The Invisible Billionaire: Daniel Ludwig by Jerry Shields. (Founders #292) [8:00] I never considered my dreams wasted energy. They were invariably linked to some form of action. [10:00] For me, work was play. [13:00] I vowed that this was going to be my only job. I was going to make my living at it and to hell with moonlighting of any kind. I intended to devote every ounce of my energy to selling, and that's exactly what I did. [14:00] Francis Ford Coppola: A Filmmaker's Life by Michael Schumacher. (Founders #242) [20:00] This was the first phase of grinding it out—building my personal monument to capitalism. I paid tribute, in the feudal sense, for many years before I was able to rise with McDonald's on the foundation I had laid. [21:00] Make every detail perfect and limit the number of details to perfect. [26:00] I was putting every cent I had and all I could borrow into this project. [28:00] Perfection is very difficult to achieve and perfection was what I wanted in McDonald's. Everything else was secondary. [29:00] If my competitor was drowning, I'd put a hose in his mouth. [44:00] 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) [47:00] The advertising campaign we put together was a smash hit. It turned Californians into our parking lots as though blindfolds had been removed from their eyes. [48:00] Authority should go with the job. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes ---- Follow Founders Podcast on YouTube  ---- Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book ---- “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

What I learned from rereading The Invisible Billionaire: Daniel Ludwig by Jerry Shields.  ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes ---- Follow one of my favorite podcasts Invest Like The Best ! ---- [2:00] Obsessed with privacy, Ludwig pays a major public relations firm fat fees to keep his name out of the papers. [4:00]  An associate speaks of his unlimited ingenuity in dreaming up new ways of doing things. [5:00] Ludwig’s most notable characteristic, besides his imagination and pertinacity, is a lifelong penchant for keeping his mouth shut. [5:00] I'm in this business because I like it. I have no other hobbies. [6:00] Holding strongly to an opinion, purpose, or course of action, stubbornly or annoyingly persistent. [8:00] Risk Game: Self Portrait of an Entrepreneur by Francis Greenburger (Founders #243) [10:00] At his peak, he owned more than 200 companies in 50 countries. [23:00] War makes the demand for Ludwig's products and services skyrocket. [25:00] Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire by James Wallace and Jim Erickson. (Founders #290) [28:00] He did not mellow as he grew richer and older. [28:00] Some years later, 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 for his prodigality: "We do not pay to send ironmongery by air mail!" [29:00] Ludwig’s tightfistedness, however, persisted after the Depression, putting him in sharp contrast to such free spenders as Onassis and Niarchos. It also was largely responsible for many of his innovations in the shipbuilding industry. [29:00] Onassis: An Extravagant Life by Frank Brady. (Founders #211) [30:00] Ludwig’s ridding his ships of any feature that did not contribute to profits pleased his own obsessive sense of economy and kept him a step ahead of the competition. When someone asked why he didn't put a grand piano aboard his ships, as Stavros Niarchos did, Ludwig snapped, "You can't carry oil in a grand piano." [31:00] Stay in the game long enough to get lucky. [32:00] 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) [37:00] The yacht was as much a business craft as any of his tankers and probably earned him more money than any of them. [40:00] Like the Rockefeller organization, Ludwig had mastered the practice of keeping his money by transferring it from one pocket, one company to another, while appearing to spend it. [42:00] He had learned something by now. Opportunities exist on the frontiers where most men dare not venture, and it is often the case that the farther the frontier, the greater the opportunity. [43:00] The way to escape competition is to either do something no one else is doing or do it where no one else is doing it. [43:00] Much of Ludwig's success was due to his willingness to venture where more timid entrepreneurs dared not go. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes ---- Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book ---- “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

What I learned from reading The HP Way: How Bill Hewlett and I Built Our Company by David Packard. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by signing up for Founders Notes ---- Follow one of my favorite podcasts Invest Like The Best ! ---- Do our products offer something unique? Customer satisfaction second to none is the only acceptable goal. What I learned from rereading Jeff Bezos' Shareholder Letters for the 3rd time (Founders #282) In Silicon Valley, the ultimate career standard was set by David Packard: start a company in a garage, grow it into the leading innovator in its field, then take it public, then take it into the Fortune 500 (or better yet, the Fortune 50), then become the spokesman for the industry, then go to Washington, and then become an historic global figure. Only Packard had accomplished all of this; he had set the bar, and the Valley had honored his achievement by making him the unofficial "mayor" of Silicon Valley. —The Intel Trinity: How Robert Noyce, Gordon Moore, and Andy Grove Built the World's Most Important Company by Michael Malone  Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography by Walter Isaacson. (Founders #214) Gates read the encyclopedia from beginning to end when he was only seven or eight years old. — Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire by James Wallace and Jim Erickson. (Founders #290) My father wouldn't let me quit. Given equally good players and good teamwork, the team with the strongest will to win will prevail. Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel. (Founders #278) That was a very important lesson for me —that personal communication was often necessary to back up written instructions. Insisting On The Impossible: The Life Of Edwin Land by Victor McElheny  More businesses die from indigestion than starvation. I found, after much trial and error, that applying steady, gentle pressure from the worked best. Bill and I knew we didn't want to be a “me too” company merely copying products already on the market. Netbooks accounted for 20% of the laptop market. But Apple never seriously considered making one. “Netbooks aren’t better than anything,” Steve Jobs said at the time. “They’re just cheap laptops.” Jony proposed that the tablets in his lab could be Apple’s answer to the netbook. —— Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple's Greatest Products by Leander Kahney. (Founders #178) Gains in quality come from meticulous attention to detail, and every step in the manufacturing process must be done as carefully as possible, not as quickly as possible. Exponential growth is based on the principle that the state of change is proportional to the level of effort expended. ---- Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by signing up for Founders Notes ---- “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

What I learned from rereading Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire by James Wallace and Jim Erickson. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes ---- Follow one of my favorite podcasts Invest Like The Best and listen to episode 292 The Business of Gaming with Mitch Lasky and 293 David Senra Passion and Pain ! ---- Gates read the encyclopedia from beginning to end when he was only seven or eight years old. Gates had an obsessive personality and a compulsive need to be the best. Everything Bill did, he did to the max. What he did always went well, well beyond everyone else. You want to maneuver yourself into doing something in which you have an intense interest. —  Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger. Gates devoured everything he could get his hands on concerning computers and how to communicate with them, often teaching himself as he went. A young man with no money and tons of enthusiasm. — The Dream of Solomeo: My Life and the Idea of Humanistic Capitalism by Brunello Cucinelli. (Founders #289) He consumed biographies to understand how the great figures of history thought. The idea that some people were super successful was interesting. What did they know? What did they do? What drove those kinds of successes? Idea Man: A Memoir by the Cofounder of Microsoft by Paul Allen. (Founders #44) “I’m going to make my first million by the time I'm 25.” It was not said as a boast, or even a prediction. He talked about the future as if his success was predestined. Gates and Allen were convinced the computer industry was about to reach critical mass, and when it exploded it would usher in a technological revolution of astounding magnitude. They were on the threshold of one of those moments when history held its breath... and jumped, as it had done with the development of the car and the airplane. They could either lead the revolution or be swept along by it. Bill had a monomaniacal quality. He would focus on something and really stick with it. He had a determination to master whatever it was he was doing. Bill was deciding where he was going to put his energy and to hell with what anyone else thought. Don’t do anything that someone else can do. — Edwin Land You've got to remember that in those days, the idea that you could own a computer, your own computer, was about as wild as the idea today of owning your own nuclear submarine. It was beyond comprehension. There would be no unnecessary overhead or extravagant spending habits with Microsoft. “Pertec kept telling me I was being unreasonable and they could deal with this guy [Gates]. It was like Roosevelt telling Churchill that he could deal with Stalin. Four years in and Microsoft had only 11 employees. Gates sustained Microsoft through tireless salesmanship. For several years he alone made the cold calls and haggled, cajoled, browbeat, and harangued the hardware makers of the emerging personal computer industry, convincing them to buy Microsoft's services and products. He was the best kind of salesman there is: he knew the product, and he believed in it. Moreover, he approached every client with the zealotry of a true believer. When we got up to 30 employees, it was still just me, a secretary, and 28 programmers. I wrote all the checks, answered the mail, took the phone calls. This might be Bill’s most important decision ever: IBM had talked to Gates about a fixed price for an unlimited number of copies of the software Microsoft licensed to IBM. The longer Gates thought about this proposal the more he became convinced it was bad business. Gates had decided to insist on a royalty arrangement with IBM. You have to be uncompromised in your level of commitment to whatever you are doing, or it can disappear as fast as it appeared.  Look around, just about any person or entity achieving at a high level has the same focus. The morning after Tiger Woods rallied to beat Phil Mickelson at the Ford Championship in 2005, he was in the gym by 6:30 to work out. No lights. No cameras. No glitz or glamour. Uncompromised.  — Driven From Within by Michael Jordan and Mark Vancil. (Founders #213) Overdrive: Bill Gates and the Race to Control Cyberspace by James Wallace. (Founders #174) 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 (Founders #155) 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) Gates was intolerant of distractions. ---- Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes ---- “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

What I learned from reading The Dream of Solomeo: My Life and the Idea of Humanistic Capitalism by Brunello Cucinelli. ---- This episode is brought to you by: Tiny: Tiny is the easiest way to sell your business. Quick and straightforward exits for Founders. ---- Follow one of my favorite podcasts Invest Like The Best and listen to episode 293 David Senra Passion and Pain ! [4:00] I am reminded of Machiavelli: during his exile, he too spent his afternoons playing board games and drinking wine, while at night, in the austere silence of his studio, he engaged in solitary, literary conversations with the ancient scholars. [6:00] The true meaning of my life seems to be a spontaneous drive and energy. [7:00] I am driven by an immense desire: that my life, when it reaches its end, will not have been useless. [7:00] Brunello Cucinelli by Om Malik  [8:00] God assigns to all of us a mission to fulfill. Our task is first to discover the nature of our summons, then to follow it. [11:00] We schedule time to think. Most people schedule themselves like a dentist. It's so easy to get so busy that you no longer have time to think- and you pay a huge price for that. —— All I Want To Know Is Where I'm Going To Die So I'll Never Go There: Buffett & Munger – A Study in Simplicity and Uncommon, Common Sense by Peter Bevelin. (Founders #286) [14:00] Try to be your son's teacher until he's ten years old; his father, until he's twenty; and his friend, for the rest of his life. [14:00] The problem is not getting rich, it's staying sane. —Charlie Munger [18:00] 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 [23:00] Postponing the reward increases the appreciation, a fact that has been forgotten in the current culture of impatience. [29:00] I could see the humiliation in my father's eyes. His teary eyes were the source of inspiration for my life. [33:00] I have always been firmly convinced that in order to successfully stand out you need to focus on one single project representing the dream of your life. [36:00] A young man with no money and tons of enthusiasm. [41:00] Ralph Lauren: The Man Behind the Mystique by Jeffrey Trachtenberg. (Founders #288)  [43:00] One thing I never did—which I’m really proud of—was to push any of my kids too hard. I knew I was a fairly overactive fellow, and I didn’t expect them to try to be just like me. — Sam Walton: Made In America by Sam Walton. (Founders #234) [48:00] Invention: A Life by James Dyson. (Founders #205) [49:00] The greatest minds can convey deep and complex thoughts with words that are understandable to everyone. [50:00] Enthusiastically build an extraordinary reality day after day. ---- Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book ---- “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

What I learned from reading Ralph Lauren: The Man Behind the Mystique by Jeffrey Trachtenberg. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes ---- Follow one of my favorite podcasts Invest Like The Best and listen to episode 311 John Fio — Creating Magic for Consumers, episode 307 Jeremiah Lowin: Explaining the New AI Paradigm, and episode 293 The Business of Gaming.  ---- [2:01] When I lumped him together with a handful of other designers during casual conversation, he snapped: “Don't put me with those designers. My business is not compared to anybody else's." [3:00] In practice Ralph Lauren is a tough, intensely ambitious businessman. [3:00] Ralph has always possessed immense self-confidence; it is central to his character, an asset as valuable as his sense of color, fabric, style. [4:00] Coco Chanel: The Legend and the Life by Justine Picardie. (Founders #199) [7:00] Few outsiders understood fully how lucrative the licensing business had become. Ralph would have been a successful designer in his own right. However, he would never have qualified as one of the world's richest men without licensees willing to pay him 5 to 7 percent of sales. [7:00] His privately held fashion empire was on the brink of bankruptcy. Geffen surmised that the company should be transformed from a manufacturing firm to a design, marketing, and licensing company. "You guys stink at manufacturing," he said. "You need to get out of that business." Instead, Geffen continued, the company needed to focus on what it really knew: how to design and market the Calvin Klein brand name. — The Operator: David Geffen Builds, Buys, and Sells The New Hollywood by Tom King [14:00] When my customers come to me, they like to cross the threshold of some magic place; they feel a satisfaction that is perhaps a trace vulgar but that delights them: they are privileged characters who are incorporated into our legend. For them this is a far greater pleasure than ordering another suit.” —Coco Chanel, 1935 [16:00] What he lacked in experience he compensated it for an energy and enthusiasm. [17:00] Differentiation is survival. — Jeff Bezos Jeff Bezos' Shareholder Letters (Founders #282) [19:00] Mediocrity is always invisible until passion shows up and exposes it. [22:00] From the beginning I've been aware of the need to sell everybody. — Becoming Trader Joe: How I Did Business My Way and Still Beat the Big Guys by Joe Coulombe. (Founders #188) [26:00] Difference for the sake of it. In everything. Because it must be better. From the moment the idea strikes, to the running of the business. Difference, and retention of total control. — Against The Odds: An Autobiography by James Dyson (Founders #200) [28:00] Made in Japan: Akio Morita and Sony by Akio Morita. (Founders #102) [32:00] Intransigence is my only weapon. — Charles de Gaulle by Julian Jackson. (Founders #224) [41:00] It's torture being a partner to somebody you don't want to be a partner with. [45:00] On a Thursday night he wins an award for best men’s wear designer. The next day he could not meet his payroll. [49:00] When bills come due, only cash is legal tender. Don't leave home without it. — The Essays of Warren Buffett by Warren Buffett and Lawrence Cunningham. (Founders #227) [54:00] You can make a lot of different mistakes and still recover if you run an efficient operation. Or you can be brilliant and still go out of business if you’re too inefficient. — Sam Walton: Made In America by Sam Walton. [55:00] The thing that set Ralph apart was his single-mindedness of purpose. Everybody else moved from place to place, from trend to trend. He wasn't trendy. He stayed with it. It's the single most important thing about him. To this day there are people walking around saying Ralph Lauren isn't that special, I could have done it. It's the weirdest thing. They couldn't be more wrong. Ralph is the most special guy in the apparel business. [55:00] Graham Duncan on the Tim Ferriss Show ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes ---- Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book ---- “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

What I learned from rereading Rolls-Royce: The Magic of a Name: The First Forty Years of Britain s Most Prestigious Company by Peter Pugh. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes ---- Follow one of my favorite podcasts Invest Like The Best and listen to episode Mitch Lasky—The Business of Gaming ---- [2:31] Henry Royce had known poverty and hardship all his life. The only university he had graduated from was the one of hard knocks. [3:00] Rolls on Royce: I was fortunate enough to make the acquaintance of Mr. Royce and in him I found the man I had been looking for for years. [5:00] A great product has to be better than it has to be. Relentlessness wins because, in the aggregate, unseen details become visible. All those unseen details combine to produce something that's just stunning, like a thousand barely audible voices all singing in tune. — Hackers and Painters by Paul Graham (Founders #277) [6:00] 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) [9:00] This ability to observe, think about and then improve on existing machines (products) was to be a consistent theme throughout Royce’s life. [10:00] Many times our position was so precarious that it seemed hopeless to continue. [12:00] Against The Odds: An Autobiography by James Dyson (Founders #287) [12:00] Some have tried to give the impression that it was almost by chance that Royce became involved in designing a motor car. Royce was not a man to rely on chance. He saw that the motor car had a great future and that it would be an ideal product for his business. [12:00] This part is excellent: There was nothing revolutionary about Royce’s car. He had taken the best of current automobile design and improved on every aspect of it. I do not think that Royce did anything of a revolutionary nature in his work on motor cars. He did, however, do much important development and a considerable amount of redesigning of existing devices so that his motor cars were far and away better than anyone else’s motor cars. He paid great attention to the smallest detail and the result of his personal consideration to every little thing resulted in the whole assembly being of a very high standard of perfection. It is rather to Royce’s thoroughness and attention to even the smallest detail than to any revolutionary invention that his products have the superlative qualities that we all know so well. [13:00] Henry Royce ruled the lives of the people around him, claimed their body and soul, even when they were asleep. [14:00] They didn't understand how important this was to me. —Coco Chanel: The Legend and the Life by Justine Picardie. (Founders #199) [16:00] He's made-and remade-Apple in his own image. Apple is Steve Jobs with ten thousand lives. — Inside Steve’s Brain by Leander Kahney. (Founders #204) [21:00] Thomas Edison on how overregulation crippled the British car industry: The motor car ought to have been British. You first invented it in the 1830s. You have roads only second to those of France. You have hundreds of thousands of skilled mechanics in your midst, but you have lost your trade by stupid legislation and prejudice. [27:00] This is a first: A company so focused on quality that they risked going to prison. Claude Johnson took the bold stand that he would tear up every drawing and go to prison rather than agree to risk inferior skills of other companies. Johnson said that the plan of using other manufacturers was futile and would yield nothing but mountains of scrap. [28:00] Royce admitted it: I prefer to be absolute boss over my own department (even if it was extremely small) rather than to be associated with a much larger technical department over which I had only joint control. [31:00] They worked in monastic seclusion in an office situated in the middle of the village about a quarter of a mile from Royce’s house. To ensure a minimum of distraction the office was for a number of years forbidden the luxury of a telephone. This was the team responsible for the design of every car and all their components from 1919 until Royce died in 1933. In matters concerning the actual model which eventually went into production, Royce’s decision was final. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes ---- “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

What I learned from reading All I Want To Know Is Where I'm Going To Die So I'll Never Go There: Buffett & Munger – A Study in Simplicity and Uncommon, Common Sense by Peter Bevelin.  ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes ---- Follow one of my favorite podcasts Invest Like The Best and listen to episode Mitch Lasky—The Business of Gaming Follow the podcast Gamecraft to learn more about the history of the video game industry.  ---- [2:01] Buffett and Munger have a remarkable ability to eliminate folly, simplify things, boil down issues to their essence, get right to the point, and focus on simple and timeless truths. [3:00] The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness by Naval Ravikant and Eric Jorgenson.  (Founders #191) [4:00] Warren Buffet or Charlie Munger are the very wise grandfather figure that I never had. [5:00] To try to live your life totally free of mistakes is a life of inaction. —Warren Buffett [5:00] The sign above the players' entrance to the field at Notre Dame reads ´Play Like a Champion Today.' I sometimes joke that the sign at Nebraska reads 'Remember Your Helmet.' Charlie and I are 'Remember Your Helmet' kind of guys.' We like to keep it simple. (You must structure your life and business to be able to survive the inevitable bad decisions you’re going to make.) [5:00] Wisdom is prevention. —Charlie Munger [6:00] We make actual decisions very rapidly, but that's because we've spent so much time preparing ourselves by quietly sitting and reading and thinking. —Charlie Munger [7:00] If you get into the mental habit of relating what you're reading to the basic underlying ideas being demonstrated, you gradually accumulate some wisdom. —Charlie Munger [7:00] At Berkshire, we don't have any meetings or committees, and I can think of no better way to become more intelligent than sit down and read. I hate meetings, frankly. I have created something that I enjoy: I happen to enjoy reading a lot, and I happen to enjoy thinking about things. —Warren Buffett [7:00] We both hate to have too many forward commitments in our schedules. We both insist on a lot of time being available to just sit and think. —Charlie Munger [8:00] I need eight hours of sleep. I think better. I have more energy. My mood is better. And think about it: As a senior executive, what do you really get paid to do? You get paid to make a small number of high-quality decisions. — Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos, With an Introduction by Walter Isaacson. (Founders #155) [9:00] I think people that multitask pay a huge price. When you multitask so much, you don't have time to think about anything deeply. You're giving the world an advantage you shouldn't do. Practically everybody is drifting into that mistake. I did not succeed in life by intelligence. I succeeded because I have a long attention span. —Charlie Munger [9:00] Jony Ive on Steve Jobs: Steve was the most remarkably focused person I’ve ever met. (Video) [11:00] It is just that simple. We've had enough good sense when something was working well, keep doing it. The fundamental algorithm of life: repeat what works. —Charlie Munger [13:00] ALL THE BUFFETT AND MUNGER EPISODES: Berkshire Hathaway Letters to Shareholders 1965-2018 by Warren Buffett. (Founders #88)  The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life by Alice Schroeder. (Founders #100) The Tao of Warren Buffett by Mary Buffett & David Clark. (Founders #101)  Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist by Roger Lowenstein. (Founders #182)  A Few Lessons for Investors and Managers From Warren Buffett by Warren Buffett and Peter Bevelin. (Founders #202)  The Essays of Warren Buffett by Warren Buffett and Lawrence Cunningham. (Founders #227)   Tao of Charlie Munger by David Clark (Founders #78)  Charlie Munger: The Complete Investor by Tren Griffin. (Founders #79)  Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger. (Founders #90)  Damn Right: Behind the Scenes with Berkshire Hathaway Billionaire Charlie Munger by Janet Lowe. (Founders #221)  [14:00] Buffett: It's an inversion process. Start out with failure, and then engineer its removal. [15:00] Munger: I figure out what I don't like instead of figuring out what I like in order to get what I like. [15:00] Repetition is the mother of learning. [17:00] Munger: You can see the results of not learning from others' mistakes by simply looking about you. How little originality there is in the common disasters of mankind. (Business failures through repetition of obvious mistakes made by predecessors and so on.) [18:00] Munger: History allows you to keep things in perspective. [18:00] Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again. [19:00] Berkshire was a small business at one time. It just takes time. It is the nature of compound interest. You cannot build it in one day or one week. [20:00] Pretend that every single person you meet has a sign around his or her neck that says, “Make me feel important.” [22:00] Buffett: In almost 60 years of investing we found it practically useless to give advice to anyone. [23:00] Munger: One of my favorite stories is about the little boy in Texas. The teacher asked the class, If there are nine sheep in the pen and one jumps out, how many are left? And everybody got the answer right except this little boy, who said, None of them are left. And the teacher said, You don't understand arithmetic. And he said No, teacher. You don't understand sheep. [25:00] Quite often Henry simply talked about his philosophy of running a corporation and the various financial strategies that he came up with as he sat in his corner office each day, often working at his Apple computer. He was a brilliant business strategist, just as he was a brilliant chess strategist and he came up with many creative ideas, ideas that were sometimes contrary to the currently accepted methods of managing a large corporation that prevailed in those days. “He always tries to work out the best moves," Shannon said, "and maybe he doesn't like to talk too much, because when you are playing a game you don't tell anyone else what your strategy is." — Distant Force: A Memoir of the Teledyne Corporation and the Man Who Created It by Dr. George Roberts. (Founders #110) [28:00] Buffett: The difference between successful people and very successful people is that very successful people say no to almost everything. [29:00] If you want to know whether you are destined to be a success or a failure in life, you can easily find out. The test is simple and it is infallible: Are you able to save money? If not, drop out. You will lose. You may think not, but you will lose as sure as you live. The seed of success is not in you. — James J. Hill: Empire Builder of the Northwest by Michael P. Malone. (Founders #96) [31:00] Buffett: Life tends to snap you at your weakest link. [35:00] Sol Price: Retail Revolutionary & Social Innovator by Robert E. Price (Founders #107) [38:00] Paul Graham’s essays (Founders #275-277) [39:00] I'm very suspect of the person who is very good at one business, who starts thinking they should tell the world how to behave on everything. —Warren Buffett [42:00] The Essays of Warren Buffett by Warren Buffett and Lawrence Cunningham. (Founders #227) [44:00] This life isn't a greenroom for something else. He went for it. —Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography by Laurie Woolever. [44:00] Buffett: We're here on the earth only one time so you ought to be doing something that you enjoy as you go along and you can be enthusiastic about. [48:00] Personal History by Katherine Graham. (Founders #152) [49:00] The problem is not getting rich, it is staying sane. —Charlie Munger [54:00] Learning is not memorizing information. Learning is changing your behavior. Most people can’t learn from the experiences of other people: Charlie and I don't expect to win you over to our way of thinking—we've observed enough human behavior to know the futility of that, but we do want you to be aware of our personal calculus. [57:00] We are individual opportunity driven. Our acquisition technique at Berkshire is simplicity itself: We answer the phone. [1:00:00] A brand is a promise. —Warren Buffett [1:01:00] Obsess over customers. Buffett said this about Amazon in 2012: Amazon could affect a lot of businesses who don't think they will be affected. For Amazon, it is very hard to find unhappy customers. A business that has millions and millions of happy customers can introduce them to new items, it will be a powerhouse and could affect a lot of businesses. [1:03:00] Munger: We should make a list of everything that irritates a customer, and then we should eliminate those defects one by one. [1:04:00] Most companies, when they get rich, get sloppy. [1:05:00] Munger: One of the models in my head is the 'Northern Pike Model. You have a lake full of trout. But if you throw in a few northern pike, pretty soon there aren't many trout left but a lot of northern pike. Wal-Mart in its early days was the northern pike. It figured out how the customer could be better served and just galloped through the world like Genghis Kahn. [1:09:00] Practice! Michael Jordan: The Life by Roland Lazenby. (Founders #212) [1:10:00] Market forecasters will fill your ear, but they will never fill your wallet. [1:11:00] We don't have any new tricks. We just know the old tricks better. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes ---- “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

What I learned from reading American Rascal: How Jay Gould Built Wall Street's Biggest Fortune by Greg Steinmetz. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes ---- [0:01] A series of spectacular financial triumphs had made Gould fabulously rich. At age thirty-six, he was the most notorious businessman in the country. [1:00] Vanderbilt told a newspaper that Gould was "the smartest man in America." Rockefeller, when asked who he thought had the best head for business, answered "Jay Gould" without pausing to think. They  recognized Gould as a master of his craft. No one disputed that he was an extraordinary problem solver, an unparalleled negotiator, an expert communicator, a lightning-fast thinker, and a masterful tactician with a staggering memory. [2:00] Railroads changed America in the nineteenth century much as automobiles changed the country in the twentieth century and the internet has changed the twenty first century. [5:00] American Rascal shows the complex and quirky character of the nineteenth century's greatest robber baron. He was at once praised for his brilliance by Rockefeller and Vanderbilt and condemned for forever destroying American business values by Mark Twain. He lived a colorful life, trading jokes with Thomas Edison, figuring in Thomas Nast's best sketches, paying Boss Tweed's bail, and commuting to work in a 200-foot yacht. [6:00] I consider this part two in a two part series on Jay Gould. Make sure you listen to part 1: Dark Genius of Wall Street: The Misunderstood Life of Jay Gould, King of the Robber Barons by Edward J. Renehan Jr. (Founders #258) [9:00] He read whatever he could get his hands on. Jay was often nowhere to be found. He was off hiding somewhere with his books. [10:00] He would wake up at three to study by firelight. [10:00] My Life and Work by Henry Ford. (Founders #266) [12:35] “As you know. I’m not in the habit of backing out of what I undertake, and I shall write night and day until it is completed.” [13:00] Relentless and self-confident: Gould toyed with the idea of college. He visited Rutgers, Yale, Harvard, and Brown. He concluded college was an expensive indulgence. Why bother with college when he could teach himself from books? [13:00] I am determined to use all my best energies to accomplish this life's highest possibilities. [22:00] The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness by Naval Ravikant and Eric Jorgenson. (Founders #191) [22:00] All I Want To Know Is Where I'm Going To Die So I'll Never Go There: Buffett & Munger – A Study in Simplicity and Uncommon, Common Sense by Peter Bevelin [26:00] Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue by Ryan Holiday. (Founders #31) [30:00] The good ones know more. — Ogilvy on Advertising by David Ogilvy (Founders #82) [37:00] The story of how Gould seized Erie shows his brilliance as a financial strategist, his deep understanding of law, a surprising grasp of human nature, and a mastery of political reality. [41:00] Tycoon's War: How Cornelius Vanderbilt Invaded a Country to Overthrow America's Most Famous Military Adventurer by Stephen Dando-Collins (Founders #55) [42:00] There isn't any secret. I avoid bad luck by being patient. Whenever I'm obliged to get into a fight, I always wait and let the other fellow get tired first. [44:00] James J. Hill: Empire Builder of the Northwest by Michael P. Malone. (Founders #96) [52:00] Edison and Gould shared some traits. Both were born into poverty. Both thought about little beside their obsessions —inventions for Edison, money for Gould. Both worked all the time. Both had spent their childhoods reading anything that came their way. [53:00] Edison: A Biography by Matthew Josephson. (Founders #267) ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes ---- “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

What I learned from rereading Meet You in Hell: Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, and the Bitter Partnership That Changed America by Les Standiford. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes ---- Follow one of my favorite podcasts Invest Like The Best  and check out these great episodes:  #137 Bill Gurley: All Things Business and Investing#88 Sam Hinkie: Data, Decisions, and Basketball#204 Sam Hinkie: Find Your People — [0:01] Frick had been the man Carnegie trusted above all others to manage the affairs of Carnegie Steel. [2:00] Carnegie had delegated the job of holding the line on wages and other demands to Frick—a Patton to Carnegie's FDR. [3:00] The Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie by Andrew Carnegie.  (Founders #283) [5:00] Here's a starter pack of essentials  for Day 1 defense: customer obsession, a skeptical view of proxies, the eager adoption of external trends, and high-velocity decision making. —Jeff Bezos’s Shareholder Letters (Founders #282) [7:00] In less than half a century the United States had been transformed―from a largely agrarian and underdeveloped federation of competing interests, to a relatively cohesive economic juggernaut. The age of the Founding Fathers was over. The Age of the Titans had begun. [12:00] By 1863 Carnegie was earning more than $45,000 a year from this and all his other investments, compared with a mere $2,400 from his railroad salary. Yet he understood that it was the contacts he made and the information he derived from his association with the railroad that made everything else possible. [13:00] More control. Less costs. More profit. [15:00] Technology is just a better way to do something: As a result of the process for transforming iron to steel that bore his name (Bessemer), a quantity of steel that might formerly have taken as long as two weeks to produce could now be made in fifteen minutes. [17:00] Carnegie starts his company during a financial panic. The best time to expand is when no one else dares to take the risk. [20:00] Already the best but still wants to do better: Even his key employees were not spared Carnegie's heavy-handed management style. To almost every positive report Carnegie's response was "Good, but let us do better." [21:00] Cut the prices, scoop the market, watch the costs, and the profits will take care of themselves. [21:00] Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire by James Wallace and Jim Erickson (Founders #140) [22:00] He could make steel more efficiently than any of them. [24:00] Henry Clay Frick: The Life of the Perfect Capitalist by Quentin Skrabec Jr. (Founders #75) [24:00] Like Rockefeller, Henry Clay Frick used a lot of borrowed money to get his start in the coke business. There was a line in one of Rockefeller’s biographies where it said “he was the greatest borrower I’ve ever seen.” [26:00] Frick knew his business down to the ground. [26:00] LIke Carnegie, Frick expands his business during an economic panic. Frick, who would later recall this as one of the most grueling times in his life, proved as undaunted in the face of adversity as Carnegie had been. [34:00] Carneige was accustomed to obedience from his subordinates, but if he expected unquestioned subservience from Henry Frick, he had gravely miscalculated. [36:00] Frick was no puppet, but rather a man willing to take considerable risks in defense of his principles. [37:00] Frick had ambition, a singleness of purpose, and a lack of self—doubt that even Carneige envied. [38:00] Carnegie would repeat the mantra time and again: profits and prices were cyclical, subject to any number of transient forces of the marketplace. Costs, however, could be strictly controlled, and in Carnegie’s view, any savings achieved in the costs of goods were permanent. [39:00] On this issue the two men were of one mind. Frick had made his way in coke by the same reckoning that Carnegie had in rail and steel: if you knew your costs down to the penny, you were always on firm ground. [39:00] Frick had always understood how essential new technologies were in driving costs down. Cost control became nearly an obsession. [47:00] [Frick was shot] Only after he was finished with his day’s work did Frick permit himself to be carried from the office to an ambulance. [49:00] You must not allow anything to discourage you in the least. Even if things do not go well for some time to come, or even if they should get much worse. Just keep at it, doing the best you can. Do not allow the fact that you are not getting along as well as you would like to lead you to put yourself in a compromising position. [1:03:00] Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World by Jill Jonnes. (Founders #83) [1:04:00] J.P. Morgan understood the folly of a long-term battle with the Carnegie Company, a firm that controlled its own sources of raw materials, transport, and manufacture, and that was far more deeply capitalized than his or any other of the upstarts. They might stay in the game for a while, and they might put a dent in Carnegie's armor, but in the end, Carnegie would run them into the ground, every one. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes ---- “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

For over 30 years the Berkshire Hathaway Annual meetings were recorded. Munger and Buffett answered over 1700 questions from shareholders during that period. Alex Morris watched hundreds of hours of these meetings and then he gathered, organized, and edited the most interesting ideas into 450+ pages — all in Buffett and Munger's own words.  I thought it would be fun to rip through a bunch of Munger and Buffett's best ideas very rapidly. It was.  This episode is what I learned from reading Buffett and Munger Unscripted: Three Decades of Investment and Business Insights from the Berkshire Hathaway Shareholder Meetings by Alex Morris. ---- Ramp gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud by going to Ramp and learning how they can help your business control your costs and save more.  ---- Vesto: All of your company's financial accounts in one view. Connect and control all of your business bank accounts from one dashboard. Go to Vesto and schedule a demo with the founder Ben. Tell him David sent you.  ---- 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.  ---- Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book ---- ---- 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

What I learned from rereading The Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie by Andrew Carnegie.  ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes ---- Follow one of my favorite podcasts Invest Like The Best   ---- (1:01) 3 part series on Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick: 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)  Henry Clay Frick: The Life of the Perfect Capitalist by Quentin Skrabec Jr. (Founders #75)  (2:00) What these guys all had in common is they were hell bent on knowing their business down to the last cent. They were obsessed with having the lowest cost structure in their industry. (2:00) Highlights from Meet You in Hell: Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, and the Bitter Partnership That Changed America: —Cut the prices, scoop the market, watch the costs, and the profits will take care of themselves. —Frick knows his business down to the ground. —Frick’s rise from humble beginnings was obviously intriguing to him. It signaled to Carnegie that Frick was another of the fellow “fittest,” and those were the individuals with whom Carnegie sought to align himself. —Carnegie would repeat the mantra time and again: profits and prices were cyclical, subject to any number of transient forces of the marketplace. Costs, however, could be strictly controlled, and in Carnegie’s view, any savings achieved in the costs of goods were permanent. —On this issue the two men were of one mind. Frick had made his way in coke by the same reckoning that Carnegie had in rail and steel: if you knew your costs down to the penny, you were always on firm ground. (6:00) Benjamin Franklin: An American Life by Walter Isaacson. (Founders #115) (7:00) A sunny disposition is worth more than a fortune. Young people should know that it can be cultivated; that the mind like the body can be moved from the shade into sunshine. (7:00) The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life by Alice Schroeder. (Founders #100) (8:00) The most important judge of your life story is yourself. (9:00) 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) (10:00) Invest in technology, the savings compound, it gives you an advantage over slower moving competitors, and can be the difference between a profit and a loss. (17:00) He is working from sunrise to sunset for $1.20 a week and he is ecstatic about being able to help his family avoid poverty.  (18:00) Andrew Carnegie had manic levels of optimism. (20:00) Do not delay. Do it now. It is a great mistake not to seize the opportunity. Having got myself in, I proposed to stay there if I could. (21:00) I felt that my foot was upon the ladder and that I was about to climb. (21:00) Lesson from Andrew Carnegie’s early life: Focus on whatever job is in front of you at this very moment and do the best you can. You can never know what opportunities that will unlock in the future. (24:00) On the miracle of reading and having free access to a 400 volume personal library: In this way the windows were opened in the walls of my dungeon through which the light of knowledge streamed in. Every day's toil and even the long hours of night service were lightened by the book which I carried about with me and read in the intervals that could be snatched from duty. And the future was made bright by the thought that when Saturday came a new volume could be obtained. (26:00) To Colonel James Anderson, Founder of Free Libraries in Western Pennsylvania: He opened his Library to working boys and upon Saturday afternoons acted as librarian, thus dedicating not only his books but himself to the noble work. This monument is erected in grateful remembrance by Andrew Carnegie, one of the "working boys" to whom were thus opened the precious treasures of knowledge and imagination through which youth may ascend. (28:00) Running Down A Dream: How to Succeed and Thrive in a Career You Love by Bill Gurley (36:00) Dark Genius of Wall Street: The Misunderstood Life of Jay Gould, King of the Robber Barons by Edward J. Renehan Jr. (Founders #258) (43:00) This policy is a true secret of success: Uphill work it will be. (46:00) Put all your eggs in one basket and watch that basket. (46:00) The most expensive way to pay for anything is with time. (48:00) The men who have succeeded are men who have chosen one line and stuck to it. It is surprising how few men appreciate the enormous dividends derivable from investment in their own business. (48:00) My advice to young men would be not only to concentrate their whole time and attention on the one business in life in which they engage, but to put every dollar of their capital into it. (51:00) The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance by Ron Chernow. (Founders #139) (52:00) Last Train to Paradise: Henry Flagler and the Spectacular Rise and Fall of the Railroad that Crossed an Ocean by Les Standiford. (Founders #247) ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes ---- “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

What I learned from rereading Jeff Bezos' Shareholder Letters (for the 3rd time!)  Read Jeff's letters in book form: Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos or for free online: Amazon Investor Relations ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes ---- Follow one of my favorite podcasts Invest Like The Best   [2:30] Amazon hopes to create an enduring franchise [3:00] Because of our emphasis on the long term, we may make decisions and weigh trade-offs differently than some companies. [4:00] We will continue to focus relentlessly on our customers. [4:00] We will work hard to spend wisely and maintain our lean culture. We understand the importance of continually reinforcing a cost-conscious culture. [4:00] We set out to offer customers something they simply could not get any other way. [5:00] Word of mouth remains the most powerful customer acquisition tool that we have. [5:00] We are working to build something important, something that matters to our customers, something that we can all tell our grandchildren about. Such things aren't meant to be easy. [6:00] "To read Bezos’ shareholder letters is to get a crash course in running a high-growth internet business from someone who mastered it before any of the playbooks were written." — From CB Insights [7:00] Common themes repeated in Jeff’s letters: More innovation is ahead of us. It is still early. The opportunity —if we execute well — is enormous. We will move quickly. We will endure. Amazon will be a durable, long-lasting company. We will focus on cash flow. Once in a lifetime opportunities will be risky. Jeff gave himself a 30% chance of success— at best. Customer obsession is our North Star. It is what we will bet the company on. We will be BOLD. We will have a frugal, lean culture that Sam Walton would approve of. This will be hard. All valuable things are. We will have to learn along the way. [8:00] Sam Walton: Made In America by Sam Walton. (Founders #234) [11:00] I would love to ask Jeff the question, “If you could only have one word to describe you on your tombstone, what would it be?” My guess is he would pick “relentless.” [16:00] We believe we have reached a "tipping  point," where this platform allows us to launch new ecommerce businesses faster, with a higher quality of customer experience, a lower incremental cost, a higher chance of success, and a faster path to scale and profitability than any other company. (A company that builds companies) [17:00] Made in Japan: Akio Morita and Sony by Akio Morita. (Founders #102) [19:00] We will continue to invest heavily in introductions to new customers. Though it's sometimes hard to imagine with all that has happened in the last five years, this remains Day 1 for ecommerce, and these are the early days of category formation where many customers are forming relationships for the first time. We must work hard to grow the number of customers who shop with us. (He was right about this — what is the lifetime value of an Amazon customer over 17 years?) [21:00] To us, operational excellence implies two things: delivering continuous improvement in customer experience and driving productivity, margin, efficiency, and asset velocity across all our businesses. Often, the best way to drive one of these is to deliver the other. For instance, more efficient distribution yields faster delivery times, which in turn lowers contacts per order and customer service costs. These, in turn, improve customer experience and build brand, which in turn decreases customer acquisition and retention costs. [22:00] Creative Selection: Inside Apple's Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs by Ken Kocienda (Founders #281) [24:00] Jeff Bezos on The Electricity Metaphor for the Web's Future[27:00] Repeat this loop: Focus on cost improvement makes it possible for us to afford to lower prices, which drives growth. Growth spreads fixed costs across more sales, reducing cost per unit, which makes possible more price reductions. Customers like this, and it's good for shareholders. Please expect us to repeat this loop. [29:00] The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon by Brad Stone. (Founders #179) [35:00] My Life and Work by Henry Ford. (Founders #266) [40:00] Jeff Bezos is unapologetically extreme. He is already the best and still wants to be better. [41:00] This part is incredible— on the need for good judgement and why data may lead you to make the wrong decision: Our quantitative understanding of elasticity is short-term. We can estimate what a price reduction will do this week and this quarter. But we cannot numerically estimate the effect that consistently lowering prices will have on our business over five years or ten years or more. Our judgment is that relentlessly returning efficiency improvements and scale economies to customers in the form of lower prices creates a virtuous cycle that leads over the long term to a much larger dollar amount of free cash flow, and thereby to a much more valuable Amazon. [43:00] Don’t build an undifferentiated commodity business. — Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel. (Founders #278) [44:00] Differentiation is survival. [49:00] Missionaries build better products. [50:00] Long-term thinking levers our existing abilities and lets us do new things we couldn't otherwise contemplate. It supports the failure and iteration required for invention, and it frees us to pioneer in unexplored spaces. Seek instant gratification-or the elusive promise of it-and chances are you'll find a crowd there ahead of you. Long-term orientation interacts well with customer obsession. If we can identify a customer need and if we can further develop conviction that that need is meaningful and durable, our approach permits us to work patiently for multiple years to deliver a solution. [52:00] Problems are just opportunities in work clothes. [53:00] Similar idea said two different ways: Jeff Bezos: The financial results for 2009 reflect the cumulative efforts of 15 years of customer experience improvements. Peter Thiel: If you focus on near-term growth above all else, you miss the most important question you should be asking: will this business still be around a decade from now? [55:00] The most radical and transformative of inventions are often those that empower others to unleash their creativity—to pursue their dreams. [57:00] A dreamy business offering has at least four characteristics. —Customers love it —It can grow to very large size —It has strong returns on capital —It's durable in time-with the potential to endure for decades. When you find one of these get married. [1:03:00] Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected. — Inside Steve’s Brain by Leander Kahney. (Founders #204) [1:03:00] I believe high standards are teachable. High standards are contagious.  —Jeff Bezos [1:04:00] Leaders have relentlessly high standards. Many people may think these standards are unreasonably high. [1:07:00] The key point here is that you can improve results through the simple act of teaching scope-that a great memo probably should take a week or more. [1:10:00] Differentiation is Survival and the Universe Wants You to be Typical In what ways does the world pull at you in an attempt to make you normal? How much work does it take to maintain your distinctiveness? To keep alive the thing or things that make you special? We all know that distinctiveness – originality – is valuable. What I’m asking you to do is to embrace how much energy it takes to maintain that distinctiveness. The world wants you to be typical – in a thousand ways, it pulls at you. Don’t let it happen. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes ---- “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

What I learned from rereading Creative Selection: Inside Apple's Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs by Ken Kocienda. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes ---- Follow one of my favorite podcasts Invest Like The Best   [2:01] We're going to relentlessly chase perfection, knowing full well we will not catch it, because perfection is not attainable. But we are going to relentlessly chase it because, in the process, we will catch excellence. [2:01] I'm not remotely interested in being just good. [3:00] Gentlemen, this is the most important play we have. It's the play we must make go. It's the play that we will make go. It's the play that we will run again, and again, and again. [4:00] In any complex effort, communicating a well-articulated vision for what you're trying to do is the starting point for figuring out how to do it. [4:00] A significant part of attaining excellence in any field is closing the gap between the accidental and intentional, to achieve not just a something, or even an everything, but a specific and well-chosen thing. [6:00] Every day at Apple was like going to school, a design-focused, high-tech, product-creation university. [8:00] A story about Steve’s clarity of thought. [9:00] Although Steve's opinions and moods could be hard to anticipate, he was utterly predictable when it came to his passion for products. He wanted Apple products to be great. [11:00] The decisiveness of Steve Jobs. [16:00] Steve wasn't merely interested in paying lip service to this goal. He demanded action. Steve found the time to attend a demo review so he could see it. His involvement kept the progress and momentum going. [17:00] Put yourself in your customer’s shoes. Hack away the unessential. [17:00] People do not care about your product as much as you do. You have to make it simple and easy to use right from the start. [18:00] Steve Jobs believed that stripping away nonessential features made products easier for people to learn from the start and easier to use over time. [19:00] Insanely Simple: The Obsession That Drives Apple's Success by Ken Segall [22:00] Don’t rest on your laurels. Steve said: “I think if you do something and it turns out pretty good, then you should go do something else wonderful, not dwell on it for too long. Just figure out what's next.” [24:00] The sooner we started making creative decisions the more time there was to refine and improve those decisions. (The sooner you start the more time you will have to get it right.) [26:00] The simple transaction of buying a song, and of handing over a credit card number to Apple in order to so, became part of what Steve had begun calling “the Apple experience." As a great marketer, Steve understood that every interaction a customer had with Apple could increase or decrease his or her respect for the company. As he put it, a corporation "could accumulate or withdraw credits" from its reputation, which is why he worked so hard to ensure that every single interaction a customer might have with Apple-from using a Mac to calling customer support to buying a single from the iTunes store and then getting billed for it-was excellent. —— Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader by Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli (Founders #265) [29:00] Studying great work from the past provides the means of comparison and contrast and lets us tap into the collective creativity of previous generations. The past is a source of the timeless and enduring. [29:00] Design is how it works. —Steve Jobs [31:00] Hackers and Painters by Paul Graham (Founders #275, 276, 277) [34:00] Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple's Greatest Products by Leander Kahney. (Founders #178) [37:00] Our clarity of purpose kept us on track. [38:00] Concentrating keenly on what to do helped us block out what not to do. [40:00] Steve Jobs on the importance of working at the intersection of liberal arts and technology: “The reason that Apple is able to create products like the iPad is because we've always tried to be at the intersection of technology and liberal arts, to be able to get the best of both, to make extremely advanced products from a technology point of view, but also have them be intuitive, easy to use, fun to use, so that they really fit the users. The users don't have to come to them, they come to the user.” [42:00] Steve Jobs provided his single-minded focus on making great products, and his vision motivated me. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes ---- “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

What I learned from reading Copy This!: How I turned Dyslexia, ADHD, and 100 square feet into a company called Kinkos by Paul Orfalea. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes ---- Follow Invest Like The Best in your favorite podcast player here Two episodes I recommend:  Paul Orfalea - It's About the Money episode 299 David Senra - Passion & Pain episode 292  [5:23] I've never met a more circular, out-of-the-box thinker. It's often exhausting trying to keep up with him. [6:21] I graduated from high school eighth from the bottom of my class of 1,200. Frankly, I still have no idea how those seven kids managed to do worse than I did. [9:29] I also have no mechanical ability to speak of. There isn't a machine at Kinko's I can operate. I could barely run the first copier we leased back in 1970. It didn't matter. All I knew was that was I could sell what came out of it. [11:24] Building an entirely new sort of business from a single Xerox copy machine gave me the life the world seemed determined to deny me when I was younger. [14:04] The A students work for the B students, the C students run the companies, and the D students dedicate the buildings. [24:02] I learned to turn a lot of busywork over to other people. That's an important skill. If you don't develop it, you'll be so busy, busy, busy that you can't get a free hour, not to mention a free week or month, to sit back and think creatively about where you want to be heading and how you are going to get there. [25:07] There's no better way to stay "on" your business than to think creatively and constantly about your marketing: how you are marketing, who you are marketing to, and, always, how you could be doing a better job at it. You'd be amazed what kind of business you can generate by a seemingly simple thing like handing out flyers. [27:18] The phone rang. It was one of our store managers calling to ask me how to handle a bounced check. I held the receiver away from my face and looked at it, flabbergasted. If every store manager needed my help to deal with a bounced check, then we really had problems.[40:55] I never walked in the back door used by coworkers. I walked in the front door so I could see things from the customer's perspective. [49:06] You had to remember he'd been picking up the best ideas from all around the country. [55:14] I believe in getting out of as much work as I possibly can. [55:45] By now, you’d have to be as bad a reader as I am not to figure out that I have a dark side. You rarely hear people talk about their dark sides, especially business leaders, which is a shame because successful businesses aren't usually started by laid-back personalities. I don't hide the fact that I have a problem with anger. [1:04:37] I'll give you an example of a corporate view of money. We used to sell passport photos at Kinko's and we advertised the service in the local Yellow Pages. It would cost us 75 cents to make a passport photo. I calculated that price jumped by $1 to $1.75 when you added in the cost of the Yellow Pages ads. We'd sell those photos for $13 a piece. You think this is a nice business? Shortly after we sold a controlling stake in Kinko's, the new budget people came in and, to make their numbers, they got rid of the Yellow Pages ads. They saw it as an advertising expense and didn't take into account how it affected the rest of our business. I used to go to the office and think, "Are they deliberately trying to be idiots?" These straight-A types drove me nuts. Then, like a self-fulfilling prophecy, we abandoned our passport business. That is corporate dyslexia. There is a lot of corporate dyslexia going on out there. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes ---- “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

What I learned from reading Starting At Zero: His Own Story by Jimi Hendrix.  ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes ----[0:01] He was also a compulsive writer, using hotel stationery, scraps of paper, cigarette cartons, napkins—anything that came to hand. [0:01] Decoded by Jay Z. (Founders #238) [1:00] He always claimed that for him life and music were inseparable. [5:00] I liked to be different. [5:00] The Autobiography of Bob Dylan Chronicles: Volume One by Bob Dylan. (Founders #259) [6:00] Bob Dylan:  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. 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. [7:00] Anthony Bourdain on Jimi Hendrix: I often compare the experience of going to Japan for the first time, going to Tokyo for the first time, to what Eric Clapton and Pete Townsend must have gone through, the reigning guitar gods of England, what they must have gone through the week that Jimi Hendrix came to town. You hear about it, you go see it.A whole window opens up into a whole new thing.And you think what does this mean? What do I have left to say? What do I do now? [12:00] The first guitarist I was aware of was Muddy Waters. I heard one of his records when I was a little boy, and it scared me to death.  Wow! What was all that about? [15:00] I loved my music, man. You see, I wasn't ever interested in any other things, just the music. I was trying to play like Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters. Trying to learn everything and anything. [16:00] My first gig was at an armory, a National Guard place, and we earned thirty-five cents apiece and three hamburgers. [16:00] It was so hard for me at first. I knew about three songs, and when it was time for us to play onstage I was all shaky, so I had to play behind the curtains. I just couldn't get up in front. And then you get so very discouraged. You hear different bands playing around you, and the guitar player always seems like he's so much better than you are. Most people give up at this point, but it's best not to. Just keep on; just keep on. Sometimes you are going to be so frustrated you'll hate the guitar, but all of this is just a part of learning. If you stick with it you're going to be rewarded. If you're very stubborn you can make it.[18:00] I had very strange feelings that I was here for something and I was going to get a chance to be heard. I got the guitar together because that was all I had. Oh Daddy, one of these days I'm gonna be big and famous. I'm gonna make it, man! [20:00] It was pretty tough at first. I lived in very miserable circumstances. I slept where I could and when I needed to eat, I had to steal it. [24:00] I lived in very miserable circumstances. Sleeping among the garbage cans between them tall tenements was hell. Rats runnin' all across your chest, cockroaches stealin' your last candy bar from your very pockets. I even tried to eat orange peel and tomato paste. People would say, "If you don't get a job you'll just starve to death." But I didn't want to take a job outside music. [27:00] I don't wanna play backup on somebody else's team. I have my own ideas that I have to bring to life, and I'm willing to sacrifice my comfort to do so. [31:00] Obsess over customers. [33:00] I don't give a damn so long as I have enough to eat and to play what I want to play. That's enough for me. I consider ourselves to be some of the luckiest cats alive, because we're playing just what we want to play and people seem to like that. [37:00] A lesson from Charlie Munger: Look at the behavior of people you dislike, or you don't respect, and do the opposite. [39:00] Once you've made a name for yourself you are all the more determined to keep it up. [44:00] James Dyson’s 2nd autobiography: Invention: A Life by James Dyson. (Founders #205) [49:00] We call our music Electric Church Music because it's like a religion to us. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes ---- “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

What I learned from reading What I Learned Before I Sold to Warren Buffett: An Entrepreneur's Guide to Developing a Highly Successful Company by Barnett Helzberg Jr. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes ---- [5:00]  Then, right there on the sidewalk I told one of the most astute businessmen in America why he ought to consider buying our family's 79-year-old jewelry business. "I believe that our company matches your criteria for investment, I said. To which he replied, simply, "Send me the information. It will be confidential.” My conversation with Buffett lasted no more than half a minute. [8:00] My dream buyer for the family business all along was Warren Buffet. [11:00] "This can be the fastest deal in history," Buffett said. "But what about due diligence?" I asked, surprised at how fast the negotiations were moving. Most suitors demand to see every scrap of paper you've ever generated and to interview every top manager. That wasn't Buffett's way. "I can smell these things, Buffett said. "This one smells good.” [12:00] First A Dream by Jim Clayton. (Founders #91) [13:00] Buffett on his management technique: “Managers run their own shows. They don't have to report to central management. When we get somebody who is a .400 hitter we don't start telling them how to swing.” [14:00] I was always taught that many, many people were out there developing ideas I could use. I have found that to be true throughout my life. These thoughts and ideas have all been borrowed or stolen from many wise people. Think of the world as your garden of marvelous people and ideas with unlimited picking rights for you. [17:00] Cable Cowboy: John Malone and the Rise of the Modern Cable Business by Mark Robichaux. (Founders #268) [23:00] Despite missteps, entrepreneurs are a special breed who do not give up on the larger goals. [24:00] It's not hard to express the quality we're looking for in metaphors. The best is probably a running back. A good running back is not merely determined, but flexible as well. They want to get downfield, but they adapt their plans on the fly. — Relentlessly Resourceful by Paul Graham [25:00] Entrepreneurs are driven to succeed. They possess an almost naive belief that nothing can stand in their way, they are mentally deaf to those who belittle their chances, they love to compete, and they have the skills of broken field runners who take the bumps and bruises along the way, change course when necessary, and stay focused on the goal. If this is not you, don't try to fool yourself. It's not worth it. Thinking you can start your own business or wanting to be your own boss, just because you hate your job, when you really have no desire or stamina to go it on your own, is courting disaster. Where there is no real will, there is no way. Some people are more  enamored by the concept than the reality. They would rather contemplate the beauty of the mountain from the base. The entrepreneur wants to climb the mountain first, briefly appreciate the gorgeous vistas from the summit, and then find the next mountain. If you possess this obsession of seeing your own creative notions succeed and are willing to pay the price, then you have no choice but to pursue the life of an entrepreneur. [29:00] He taught us to concern ourselves only with those things over which we have control. I thought he was unique in this until I realized this is one of the key common traits of highly successful people. Those folks are never victims; they take what comes and handle the situation. The rest is a waste of time. [30:00] Upgrade the herd annually: "You make more money closing bad stores than opening new ones.” His philosophy made sense. We decided we would rather spend time and effort on a $4.5 million store that could ultimately achieve annual sales of $6 million than on a lower-volume store with less potential. [32:00] Focus is your lever to success. Do not underestimate the incredible amount of mental discipline it takes to focus yourself and your teammates. Wonderful alternatives and seductive opportunities abound and temptations to go in multiple directions are unlimited. Commit yourself to be the best, define what that means, and focus on the head of that pin like no one in your industry. [32:00] Estee Lauder was a master at doing things don’t scale. — Estée Lauder: A Success Storyby Estée Lauder. (Founders #217) [33:00] To be successful, have your heart in your business, and your business in your heart. —Thomas Watson The Maverick and His Machine: Thomas Watson Sr. and The Making of IBM by Kevin Maney (Founders #87) [38:00] Only a fool tests the depth of the water with both feet. —African Proverb [40:00] Some of our partners created an inhospitable climate for customers. Some posted negative signs. At one store a manager hung a sign in red warning customers that they would be charged a steep fee if they bounced a  check. It said, "The bank doesn't make copies and we don't cash checks." That really got me boiling. I jumped up on the counter and ripped it down as customers and coworkers looked on, amazed. That may sound extreme, but I needed to make the point in a memorable way. I didn't want signs like that staring our customers in the face. I told our coworkers that the occasional hit we took for a bounced check cost far less than what we lost-and couldn't quantify-by creating a subtly hostile atmosphere. — Copy This!: How I turned Dyslexia, ADHD, and 100 square feet into a company called Kinkos by Paul Orfalea. [42:00] Nearly any action or communication means far more when done urgently. Trust only movement. [42:00] One person with a belief is equal to a force of ninety-nine who have only interests. —John Stuart Mill [43:00] None of this works if you can’t trust your own judgement. [46:00] This reservoir of knowledge and human experience creates tremendous opportunities and advantages for you as an entrepreneur. You are heir to the discoveries of many entrepreneurs who skinned their shins trying something new. It is likely other  entrepreneurs before you have experienced the same challenges and problems, and found ways to surmount them. [47:00] You have the experiences of thousands of experts and mentors at your fingertips. [47:00] The incredible, wonderful, and unavoidable truth is that seeking the help of others can put you light years ahead of other people who beat their heads against the wall trying to reinvent the wheel [48:00] I’ve never found anybody that didn’t want to help me if I asked them for help. I called up Bill Hewlett when I was 12 years old. He answered the phone himself. I told him I wanted to build a frequency counter. I asked if he had any spare parts I could have. He laughed. He gave me the parts. And he gave me a summer job at HP working on the assembly line putting together frequency counters. I have never found anyone who said no, or hung up the phone. I just ask. Most people never pick up the phone and call. And that is what separates the people who do things, versus the people who just dream about them. You have to act. —Steve Jobs [53:00] "Max kept repeating, 'As hire As. Bs hire Cs. So the first B you hire takes the whole company down." — The Founders: The Story of Paypal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley by Jimmy Soni. [54:00] “The greatest thing you can do for your competition—hiring poorly.” —Bill Gates [59:00] I wish that I had known sooner that if you miss a child's play or performance or sporting event, you will have forgotten a year later the work emergency that caused you to miss it. But the child won't have forgotten that you weren't there. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes ---- “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

What I learned from rereading Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes ---- [4:01] Jobs's return to Apple 12 years later shows how the most important task in business-the creation of new valuecannot be reduced to a formula and applied by professionals. [5:00] A really important sentence to understand one of the main points in Peter’s book: Apple's value crucially depended on the singular vision of a particular person. [5:00] A unique founder can make authoritative decisions, inspire strong personal loyalty, and plan ahead for decades. [6:00] Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue and Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future (Founders #31) [7:00] Properly understood, any new and better way of doing things is technology. [8:00] By creating new technologies we rewrite the plan of the world. [9:00] The paradox of teaching entrepreneurship is that such a formula necessarily cannot exist; because every innovation is new and unique, no authority can prescribe in concrete terms how to be innovative. The single most powerful pattern I have noticed is that successful people find value in unexpected places, and they do this by thinking about business from first principles instead of formulas. [10:00] The minute that you understand that you can poke life and actually something will pop out the other side, that you can change it, you can mold it. That's maybe the most important thing. It's to shake off this erroneous notion that life is there and you're just gonna live in it, versus embrace it, change it, improve it, make your mark upon it. —Steve Jobs [11:00] Brilliant thinking is rare, but courage is in even shorter supply than genius. [13:00] A startup is the largest group of people you can convince of a plan to build a different future. A new company's most important strength is new thinking. [14:00] What follows is not a manual or a record of knowledge but an exercise in thinking. Because that is what a startup has to do: question received ideas and rethink business from scratch. [14:00] The Founders: The Story of Paypal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley by Jimmy Soni. (Founders #233) [17:00] Their casual way of conducting affairs did not appeal to me. — Random Reminiscences of Men and Events by John D. Rockefeller (Founders #148) [18:00] My number one repeated learning in life: There Are No Adults. Everyone's making it up as they go along. Figure it out yourself, and do it. —Naval Ravikant [19:00] Bill Gurley’s answer to the question For people who were there, does this feel like dot-com bust level unwiding yet? Yes.  Link to tweet [21:00] Peter’s 4 principles for founders: 1. It is better to risk boldness than triviality. 2. A bad plan is better than no plan. 3. Competitive markets destroy profits. 4. Sales matters just as much as product. [22:00] The most contrarian thing of all is not to oppose the crowd but to think for yourself. [22:00] By “monopoly,” we mean the kind of company that’s so good at what it does that no other firm can offer a close substitute. [24:00] Every business is successful exactly to the extent that it does something others cannot. [25:00] Durability has always been a first rate virtue in Charlie’s eyes. — Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger. (Founders #90) [27:00] If you focus on near-term growth above all else, you miss the most important question you should be asking: will this business still be around a decade from now? [27:00] There is no shortcut to monopoly [28:00] A substantive advantage makes your product difficult or impossible to replicate. [30:00] The perfect target market for a startup is a small group of particular people concentrated together and served by few or no competitors. [32:00] Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect. [32:00] Victory awaits him who has everything in order. [33:00] 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. —Explore/Create My Life in Pursuit of New Frontiers, Hidden Worlds, and the Creative Spark by Richard Garriott. [35:00] Instead of pursuing many-sided mediocrity and calling it "wellroundedness," a definite person determines the one best thing to do and then does it. She strives to be great at something substantive— to be a monopoly of one. [36:00] Long-term planning is often undervalued by our indefinite short-term world. [39:00] Monopoly businesses capture more value than millions of undifferentiated competitors. [40:00] Most startups fail and most venture funds fail with them. [43:00]  You cannot trust a world that denies the power law to accurately frame your decisions for you, so what's most important is rarely obvious. It might even be a secret. [44:00] I also believed then, as I do now after more than fifty years as a money manager, that the surest way to get rich is to play only those games or make those investments where I have an edge. — A Man for All Markets: From Las Vegas to Wall Street, How I Beat the Dealer and the Market by Ed Thorp. (Founders #222) [45:00] Schlep Blindness by Paul Graham   [46:00] Great companies can be built on open but unsuspected secrets about how the world works. [47:00] Conspiracy: A True Story of Power, Sex, and a Billionaire's Secret Plot to Destroy a Media Empire by Peter Thielby Ryan Holiday [48:00] The best entrepreneurs know this: every great business is built around a secret that's hidden from the outside. [51:00] Keith Rabois on Peter Theil insisting on focus [54:00] Superior sales and distribution by itself can create a monopoly, even with no product differentiation. The converse is not true. [56:00] Advertising doesn’t exist to make you buy a product right away; it exists to embed subtle impressions that will drive sales later. Anyone who cannot acknowledge its likely effect on himself is doubly deceived. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes ---- “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

What I learned from reading Hackers and Painters: Big Ideas From The Computer Age by Paul Graham  ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- [4:00] How To Make Wealth by Paul Graham  [4:01] Wealth is stuff we want: food, clothes, houses, cars, gadgets, travel to interesting places, and so on. You can have wealth without having money. If you had a magic machine that could on command make you a car or cook you dinner or do your laundry, or do anything else you wanted, you wouldn't need money. Whereas if you were in the middle of Antarctica, where there is nothing to buy, it wouldn't matter how much money you had.[6:00] All a company is is a group of people working together to do something people want. [7:00] It turns out, though, that there are economies of scale in how much of your life you devote to your work. In the right kind of business, someone who really devoted himself to work could generate ten or even a hundred times as much wealth as an average employee. [8:00] And the people you work with had better be good, because it's their work that yours is going to be averaged with. [9:00] In the Company of Giants: Candid Conversations With the Visionaries of the Digital World by Rama Dev Jager and Rafael Ortiz.  (Founders #208) [10:00] A very able person who does care about money will ordinarily do better to go off and work with a small group of peers. [10:00] Paul Graham’s Essays (Founders #275) [11:00] What is technology? It's technique. It's the way we all do things. [12:00] Sam Walton got rich not by being a retailer, but by designing a new kind of store. [12:00] Sam Walton epiosdes #150 Sam Walton: The Inside Story of America's Richest Man by Vance H. Trimble. #234 Sam Walton: Made In America by Sam Walton. [13:00] Use difficulty as a guide not just in selecting the overall aim of your company, but also at decision points along the way. At Viaweb one of our rules of thumb was run upstairs. Suppose you are a little, nimble guy being chased by a big, fat, bully. You open a door and find yourself in a staircase. Do you go up or down? I say up. The bully can probably run downstairs as fast as you can. Going upstairs his bulk will be more of a disadvantage. Running upstairs is hard for you but even harder for him. [14:00] So few businesses really pay attention to making customers happy. [15:00] What people will give you money for depends on them, not you. [16:00] Hackers and Painters by Paul Graham [20:00] The other way makers learn is from examples. For a painter, a museum is a reference library of techniques. For hundreds of years it has been part of the traditional education of painters to copy the works of the great masters, because copying forces you to look closely at the way a painting is made. [21:00] Relentelssness wins. A great product has to be better than it has to be. [21:00] Relentlessness Wins: Many painters might have thought, this is just something to put in the background to frame her head. No one will look that closely at it. Not Leonardo. How hard he worked on part of a painting didn't depend at all on how closely he expected anyone to look at it. He was like Michael Jordan. Relentless. Relentlessness wins because, in the aggregate, unseen details become visible. [22:00] All those unseen details combine to produce something that's just stunning, like a thousand barely audible voices all singing in tune. [24:00] The right way to collaborate, I think, is to divide projects into sharply defined modules, each with a definite owner, and with interfaces between them that are as carefully designed and, if possible, as articulated as programming languages. [25:00] It turns out that looking at things from other people's point of view is practically the secret of success. [25:00] You only get one life. You might as well spend it working on something great. [26:00] The Other Road Ahead by Paul Graham  [26:00] Subscribe to listen to Founders Daily (my new daily podcast) [29:00] Use your product yourself all the time. [29:00] Mind The Gap by Paul Graham [29:00] When people care enough about something to do it well, those who do it best tend to be far better than everyone else. There's a huge gap between Leonardo da Vinci and second-rate contemporaries. [32:00] Technology will certainly increase the gap between the productive and the unproductive. [33:00] So we should expect to see ever-increasing variation in individual productivity as time goes on. [34:00] Paul Graham’s answer to how big of a difference can a single developer or a small team make? The answer is increasingly much. Increasingly much. Achrimedes said if he had a lever long enough he could move the world. Well nowawadys from your bedroom —thanks to all the infrastucture that exists — a combination of open source and services like AWS — the lever is enourmoulsy long. You could be sitting in your bedroom programming … a single person … and if you make something that people like and is novel it can really have a huge effect. That is very exiciting. You guys may take this for granted but anybody who is as old as me realizes how that was not the case 20 years ago. It will be interesting to see how far it goes because it is certainly not over yet. (How far can it go?) Always further than people expect. [37:00] Beating The Averages by Paul Graham  [37:00] Paul Graham on Econtalk: I found that the interesting parts of programming you can’t make scientific. [Startups are the same.] What makes a programmer good at programming is more like what makes a painter good at painting. It is something a little less organized. It is taste. A sense of design. A certain knack. [40:00] In business, there is nothing more valuable than a technical advantage your competitors don't understand. [40:00] A startup should give its competitors as little information as possible. [41:00] Taste For Makers by Paul Graham [42:00] Whatever job people do, they naturally want to do better. [43:00] It's surprising how much different fields' ideas of beauty have in common. The same principles of good design crop up again and again. [44:00] If something is ugly, it can't be the best solution. [46:00] In most fields the appearance of ease seems to come with practice. Perhaps what practice does is train your unconscious mind to handle tasks that used to require conscious thought. [48:00] "It is my opinion," Ferrari once wrote, "that there are innate gifts that are a peculiarity of certain regions and that, transferred into industry, these propensities may at times acquire an exceptional importance... In Modena, where I was born and set up my own works, there is a species of psychosis for racing cars." — Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari, and Their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans by A.J. Baime. (Founders #97) [50:00] The recipe for great work is: very exacting taste, plus the ability to gratify 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

What I learned from reading Paul Graham’s essays. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- [4:01] You don't want to start a startup to do something that everyone agrees is a good idea, or there will already be other companies doing it. You have but that you know isn't to do something that sounds to most other people like a bad idea. [5:20] The independent-minded are often unaware how different their ideas are from conventional ones, at least till they state them publicly. [6:20] Founders find themselves able to speak more freely with founders of other companies than with their own employees. [7:40] There are intellectual fashions too, and you definitely don't want to participate in those. Because unfashionable ideas are disproportionately likely to lead somewhere interesting. The best place to find undiscovered ideas is where no one else is looking. [8:30] How much does the work you're currently doing engage your curiosity? If the answer is "not much," maybe you should change something. [9:00] How To Think For Yourself by Paul Graham [9:00] How To Work Hard by Paul Graham [10:00] Hackers and Painters by Paul Graham [11:00] Paul on Twitter: "Maybe better founders could have..." Presumably Patrick knows what he means by that, but in case it's not clear, he's describing the empty set. If Patrick and John Collison had to work long hours to build something great, you will too. Link to tweet [13:00] Less is more but you have to do more to get to less. — Rick Rubin: In the Studio by Jake Brown. (Founders #245) [13:00] If great talent and great drive are both rare, then people with both are rare squared. [14:30] Can’t Hurt Me by David Goggins [15:30] Aliens, Jedis, & Cults [16:30] How To Do What You Love by Paul Graham [19:00] Fear's a powerful thing. I mean it's got a lot of firepower. If you can figure out a way to wrestle that fear to push you from behind rather than to stand in front of you, that's very powerful. I always felt that I had to work harder than the next guy, just to do as well as the next guy. And to do better than the next guy, I had to just kill. And you know, to a certain extent, that's still with me in how I work, you know, I just go in. —Jimmy Iovine [20:00] Many problems have a hard core at the center, surrounded by easier stuff at the edges. Working hard means aiming toward the center to the extent you can. Some days you may not be able to; some days you'll only be able to work on the easier, peripheral stuff. But you should always be aiming as close to the center as you can without stalling. [22:00] Find work that feels like play. —The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness by Naval Ravikant and Eric Jorgenson. (Founders #191) [23:00] A deep interest in a topic makes people work harder than any amount of discipline can. [23:00] Mozart: A Life by Paul Johnson. (Founders #240) [25:00] Working hard is not just a dial you turn up to 11. It's a complicated, dynamic system that has to be tuned just right at each point. You have to understand the shape of real work, see clearly what kind you're best suited for, aim as close to the true core of it as you can, accurately judge at each moment both what you're capable of and how you're doing, and put in as many hours each day as you can without harming the quality of the result. This network is too complicated to trick. But if you're consistently honest and clearsighted, it will automatically assume an optimal shape, and you'll be productive in a way few people are. [26:00] How to Lose Time and Money by Paul Graham [30:00] Schlep Blindness by Paul Graham [31:00] A company is defined by the schleps it will undertake. And schleps should be dealt with the same way you'd deal with a cold swimming pool: just jump in. Which is not to say you should seek out unpleasant work per se, but that you should never shrink from it if it's on the path to something great. [33:00] What I’ve Learned From Users by Paul Graham [34:00] The first thing that came to mind was that most startups have the same problems. No two have exactly the same problems, but it's surprising how much the problems remain the same, regardless of what they're making. Once you've advised 100 startups all doing different things, you rarely encounter problems you haven't seen before. [34:00] Today I talked to a startup doing so well that they had no current problems that needed solving. Profitable, growing ~20x a year (not a typo), only 9 employees. This is so rare that I didn't know what to do. We ended up talking about problems they might have in the future. I advised them never to raise another round, so to get equity you're going to have to get hired there. So learn to program. Link to tweet [35:00] But knowing (nearly) all the problems startups can encounter doesn't mean that advising them can be automated, or reduced to a formula. [37:00] 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. —Steve Jobs [39:00] That was another big surprise: how often founders don't listen to us. [39:00] Damn Right: Behind the Scenes with Berkshire Hathaway Billionaire Charlie Munger by Janet Lowe. (Founders #221) [40:00] The reason startups are so counterintuitive is that they're so different from most people's other experiences. No one knows what it's like except those who've done it. [42:00] Speed defines startups. Focus enables speed. YC improves focus. [42:00] Alexander combined an excessive tolerance of fatigue with an intolerence for slowness. Alexander the Great: The Brief Life and Towering Exploits of History's Greatest Conqueror--As Told By His Original Biographers (Founders #232) [43:00] However good you are, good colleagues make you better. Indeed, very ambitious people probably need colleagues more than anyone else, because they're so starved for them in everyday life. [45:00] Leading By Design: The Ikea Story (Founders #104) ---- 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

What I learned from reading Paul Graham’s essays. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- [4:52] My father told me I could be whatever I wanted when I grew up, so long as I enjoyed it. [5:49] Do what you love doesn't mean, do what you would like to do most this second. [7:41] To be happy I think you have to be doing something you not only enjoy, but admire. You have to be able to say, at the end, wow, that's pretty cool. [8:00] You should not worry about prestige. This is easy advice to give. It’s hard to follow. [10:22] You have to make a conscious effort to keep your ideas about what you want from being contaminated by what seems possible. [12:18] Whichever route you take, expect a struggle. Finding work you love is very difficult. Most people fail. [16:46] How To Do What You Love by Paul Graham  [16:34] What Doesn’t Seem Like Work by Paul Graham  [17:16] If something that seems like work to other people doesn't seem like work to you, that's something you're well suited for. [17:42] Michael Jordan said what looked like hard work to others was play to him. Michael Jordan: The Life by Roland Lazenby. (Founders #212) and Driven From Within by Michael Jordan and Mark Vancil. (Founders #213) [20:53] How Not to Die by Paul Graham  [23:00] All that matters is to survive. The rest is just words. — Charles de Gaulle by Julian Jackson (Founders #224) [24:49] You have to assume that running a startup can be demoralizing. That is certainly true. I've been there, and that's why I've never done another startup. [27:31] If a startup succeeds, you get millions of dollars, and you don't get that kind of money just by asking for it. You have to assume it takes some amount of pain. [28:17] So I'll tell you now: bad shit is coming. It always is in a startup. The odds of getting from launch to liquidity without some kind of disaster happening are one in a thousand. So don't get demoralized. When the disaster strikes, just say to yourself, ok, this was what Paul was talking about. What did he say to do? Oh, yeah. Don't give up. [28:45] Why to Start a Startup in a Bad Economy by Paul Graham  [30:23] If we've learned one thing from funding so many startups, it's that they succeed or fail based on the qualities of the founders. [31:15] If you're worried about threats to the survival of your company, don't look for them in the news. Look in the mirror. [34:10] The cheaper your company is to operate, the harder it is to kill. [35:43] Relentlessly Resourceful by Paul Graham  [35:43] I finally got being a good startup founder down to two words: relentlessly resourceful. [37:20] If I were running a startup, this would be the phrase I'd tape to the mirror. "Make something people want" is the destination, but "Be relentlessly resourceful" is how you get there. [37:40] The Anatomy of Determination by Paul Graham  [37:45] David’s Notes: A Conversation with Paul Graham [39:50] After a while determination starts to look like talent. [42:12] Ambitious people are rare, so if everyone is mixed together randomly, as they tend to be early in people's lives, then the ambitious ones won't have many ambitious peers. When you take people like this and put them together with other ambitious people, they bloom like dying plants given water. Probably most ambitious people are starved for the sort of encouragement they'd get from ambitious peers, whatever their age. [43:21] One of the best ways to help a society generally is to create events and institutions that bring ambitious people together. (Founders Podcast Conference?) [45:21] What Startups Are Really Like by Paul Graham  [49:00] The Entire History of Silicon Valley by John Coogan [49:50] Meet You In Hell: Andrew Carnegie Henry Clay Frick, and the Bitter Partnership That Transformed America by Les Standiford. (Founders #73) [55:08] You need persistence because everything takes longer than you expect. A lot of people (founders) were surprised by that. [57:18] Estee Lauder was a master at doing things that don’t scale. Estée Lauder: A Success Storyby Estée Lauder. (Founders #217) [58:45] What makes companies fail most of the time is poor execution by the founders. A lot of times founders are worried about competition. YC has founded 1900+ companies. 1 was killed by competitors. You have the same protection against competitors that light aircraft have against crashing into other light aircraft. Do you know what the protection is? Space is large. [1:01:00] Paul on what he would do if he was strating a company today:  If I were a 22 year starting a startup I would certainly apply to YC. Which is not that surprising, since it was designed to be what I wish I'd had when I did start one. But (assuming I got in) I would not get sucked into raising a huge amount on Demo Day. I would raise maybe $500k, keep the company small for the first year, work closely with users to make something amazing, and otherwise stay off SV's radar. Ideally I'd get to profitability on that initial $500k. Later I could raise more, if I felt like it. Or not. But it would be on my terms. At every point in the company's growth, I'd keep the company as small as I could. I'd always want people to be surprised how few employees we had. Fewer employees = lower costs, and less need to turn into a manager. When I say small, I mean small in employees, not revenues. [1:05:07] Against The Odds: An Autobiography by James Dyson (Founders #200) [1:07:00] A Word To The Resourceful by Paul Graham  [1:08:07] We found the startups that did best were the ones with the sort of founders about whom we'd say "they can take care of themselves." The startups that do best are fire-and-forget in the sense that all you have to do is give them a lead, and they'll close it, whatever type of lead it is. [1:09:00] Understanding all the implications of what someone tells you is a subset of resourcefulness. It's conversational resourcefulness. [1:11:00] Do Things That Don’t Scale by Paul Graham  [1:11:00] Startups take off because the founders make them take off. [1:16:00] The question to ask about an early stage startup is not "is this company taking over the world?" but "how big could this company get if the founders did the right things?" And the right things often seem both laborious and inconsequential at the time. [1:16:00] Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire by James Wallace and Jim Erickson (Founders #140) [1:21:00] The world is complicated. It is noisy. We are not going to get a chance to get people to remember much about us. No company is. So we have to be really clear about what we want them to know about us. —Steve Jobs [1:22:00] Any strategy that omits the effort is suspect. [1:23:00] The need to do something unscalably laborious to get started is so nearly universal that it might be a good idea to stop thinking of startup ideas as scalars. Instead we should try thinking of them as pairs of what you're going to build, plus the unscalable thing(s) you're going to do initially to get the company going. Now that there are two components you can try to be imaginative about the second as well as the first. Founders need to work hard in two dimensions. ---- 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

Jerry Jones rolled the dice until his knuckles bled. He started working at 7 years old. Jerry could sell, sell, sell. He sold fruit at his father’s grocery store in grade school and sold shoes out of the trunk of his car in college. After failing to sell pizza franchises he tried real estate and insurance. He never met a high risk deal he didn’t like. Jerry got pitched a deal to drill for oil that everyone else had already said no to. Jerry said yes. That well made $4 million. He hit again on the next 14 wells. Jerry decided to drill for natural gas next. He drills 200 wells. He hit on 199 of them. He sells that company for $175 million. He has $90 million in the bank. He buys the Dallas Cowboys for $140 million. 75 other people had the opportunity to buy the team and said no. He empties his bank account and borrows $50 million at steep interest rates. The year before Jerry bought the team the Cowboys lost $9 million. Financial advisors told Jerry that the Cowboys were ridiculously overpriced and that he was committing financial suicide. Within a few years the team is printing $30 million a year in profit. The Dallas Cowboys are worth $10 billion today.  This episode is what I leaned from reading King of the Cowboys: The Life and Times of Jerry Jones by Jim Dent.  ---- Ramp gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud by going to Ramp and learning how they can help your business control your costs and save more.  ---- Vesto: All of your company's financial accounts in one view. Connect and control all of your business bank accounts from one dashboard. Go to Vesto and schedule a demo with the founder Ben. Tell him David sent you.  ---- 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.  ---- Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book ---- ---- 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Your father goes bankrupt. You work for 50 cents a day to try to help your family survive the Great Depression. At 19 you see an opportunity where others see nothing. You start “a little fuel delivery business” with one used truck. Five years later you have 10 trucks. World War II breaks out and you serve as the fuel supply officer for General Patton. You come back to America and apply what the war taught you about logistics and moving fuel efficiently. You expand from fuel delivery to storage, refining, and open gas stations in 16 states. You take your company public. You merge with an oil exploration firm. You build the largest refinery in the Western Hemisphere. You buy the New York Jets. You built your “little fuel delivery business” into a multibillion-dollar, multinational, vertically integrated energy behemoth. You are Leon Hess, founder of the Hess family dynasty. This episode is what I learned from reading Hess: The Last Oil Baron by Tina Davis and Jessica Resnick-Ault. ---- Ramp gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud by going to Ramp and learning how they can help your business control your costs and save more.  ---- Vesto: All of your company's financial accounts in one view. Connect and control all of your business bank accounts from one dashboard. Go to Vesto and schedule a demo with the founder Ben. Tell him David sent you.  ---- 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.  ---- Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book ---- ---- 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

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

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

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