Founders

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 deepl

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 th

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

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 give

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

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 cop

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

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 i

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 ab

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

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 dynam

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 addr

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 some

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

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

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 the

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 t

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 exi

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

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 t

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

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 s

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

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

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

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

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

What I learned from reading Explore/Create My Life in Pursuit of New Frontiers, Hidden Worlds, and the Creative Spark by Richard Garriott. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- [6:49] Richard Garriott’s house [7:39] Past episodes on video game creators Sid Meier's Memoir!: A Life in Computer Games by Sid Meier (Founders#195) Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture by David Kushner (Founders #21) [9:31] I was lucky to learn early on that a deep understanding of the world around you makes you its master. [9:52] The world is a very malleable place. If you know what you want, and you go for it with maximum energy and drive and passion, the world will often reconfigure itself around you much more quickly and easily than you would think. — The Pmarca Blog Archive Ebook by Marc Andreessen (Founders #50) [10:08] Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact. And that is everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it. You can influence it. You can build your own things that other people can use. —Steve Jobs [10:33] The tagline of his company: We create worlds. [13:13] My heroes are people who took epic journeys into the unknown often at substantial personal risk. I am simply following the path that they carved into history. [13:33] Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing (Founders #144) [13:49] Two books coming soon: Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know by Ranulph Fiennes Shackleton: The Biography by Ranulph Fiennes [14:57] By endurance we conquer. —Ernest Shackleton [17:01] Insisting On the Impossible : The Life of Edwin Land by Victor McElheny [17:45] In his acceptance speech, Land chose to pay tribute to the process of invention by analogy to the basic American sense of adventure and exploration: We are becoming a country of scientists, but however much we become a country of scientists, we will always remain first of all that same group of adventurous transcontinental explorers pushing our way from wherever it is comfortable into some more inviting, unknown and dangerous region. Now those regions today are not geographic, they are not the gold mines of the west; they are the gold mines of the intellect. And when the great scientists, and the innumerable scientists of today, respond to that ancient American urge for adventure, then the form that adventure takes is the form of invention; and when an invention is made by this new tribe of highly literate, highly scientific people, new things open up. . . . Always those scientific adventurers have the characteristic, no matter how much you know, no matter how educated you are in science, no matter how imaginative you are, of leading you to say, “I’ll be darned, who ever thought that such a domain existed?” —Edwin Land in A Triumph of Genius: Edwin Land, Polaroid, and the Kodak Patent War by Ronald K. Fierstein (#134) [17:55] I misspoke. The word should have been ancestors! Not descendants :( [21:40] The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller. —Steve Jobs [22:00] Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making by Tony Fadell [25:09] One of my favorite sentences in the book. Every storyteller is familiar with the pleasure that comes from sitting with your friends around a fire, pouring a few drinks, and weaving a yarn. This was man's first form of entertainment, and when done well is still his best. [26:09] Finding The Next Steve Jobs: How to Find, Keep, and Nurture Talent by Nolan Bushnell (Founders #36) [34:10] The owner of the store told me, "Richard, this game you've created that we're all playing is obviously a more compelling reason to have one of these machines than anything that's out there. We really need to be selling this on the store wall." Selling? Wow, what an interesting idea. [35:30] This was a state-of-the-art operation then. We hung them up in the store and in the first week sold about twelve copies at $20 each. I would estimate that at the time, there were probably fewer than a couple of dozen people anywhere in the world creating computer games, and not one of us could have imagined we were creating an industry that in less than three decades would become the largest and most successful entertainment industry in history, that a game would gross more in a few weeks than the most successful movie in history had earned in decades. [37:46] California Pacific's version of Akalabeth was priced at $34, of which I received $5; and they sold thirty thousand copies. I had earned $150,000, more than twice my father's yearly salary as an astronaut. It was a phenomenal amount of money, enough to buy a house. It was so much money that it didn't really sink in; it all seemed like some kind of fantasy. We all thought it was a fluke. It was great that someone wanted to pay me for doing what I was already doing. [38:59] The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life a

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

What I learned from rereading The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America's Banana King by Rich Cohen. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- [0:47] This story can shock and infuriate us, and it does. But I found it invigorating, too. It told me that the life of the nation was written not only by speech-making grandees in funny hats but also by street-corner boys, immigrant strivers, crazed and driven, some with one good idea, some with thousands, willing to go to the ends of the earth to make their vision real. [4:56] Tycoon's War: How Cornelius Vanderbilt Invaded a Country to Overthrow America's Most Famous Military Adventurer by Stephen Dando-Collins (Founders #55) [6:00] Unlike Vanderbilt's other adversaries William Walker was not afraid of Cornelius when he should have been. [8:21] The immigrants of that era could not afford to be children. [8:42] The Adventures of Herbie Cohen: World's Greatest Negotiator by Rich Cohen [8:54] He was driven by the same raw energy that has always attracted the most ambitious to America, then pushed them to the head of the crowd. Grasper, climber-nasty ways of describing this kid, who wants what you take for granted. From his first months in America, he was scheming, looking for a way to get ahead. You did not need to be a Rockefeller to know the basics of the dream: Start at the bottom, fight your way to the top. [10:01] There is no problem you can't solve if you understand your business from A to Z. [13:08] Sam spotted an opportunity where others saw nothing. [14:17] As far as he was concerned, ripes were considered trash only because Boston Fruit and similar firms were too slow-footed to cover ground. It was a calculation based on arrogance. I can be fast where others have been slow. I can hustle where others have been satisfied with the easy pickings of the trade. [14:42] The kid on the streets is getting a shot at a dream. He sees the guy who gets rich and thinks, yep, that'll be me. He ignores the other stories going around. // There's no way to quantify all that on a spreadsheet, but it's that dream of being the exception, the one who gets rich and gets out before he gets got that's the key to a hustler's motivation. —Decoded by Jay Z. (Founders #238) [22:36] He was pure hustle. [24:15] Preston later spoke of Zemurray with admiration. He said the kid from Russia was closer in spirit to the banana pioneers than anyone else working. "He's a risk taker," Preston explained, “he's a thinker, and he's a doer.” [26:33] They don't write books about people that stopped there. [28:48] Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller by Ron Chernow (Founders #248) and John D: The Founding Father of the Rockefellers by David Freeman Hawke. (#254) [30:22] He seemed to strive for the sake of striving. [30:44] If you're on a mans side you stay on that mans side or you're no better than a goddamn animal. [31:11] The world is a mere succession of fortunes made and lost, lessons learned and forgotten and learned again. [35:41] A man whose commitment could not be questioned, who fed his own brothers to the jungle. [36:00] The Forgotten Highlander: An Incredible WWII Story of Survival in the Pacificby Alistair Urquhart. [37:02] Why the Founders of United Fruit were the Rockefellers of bananas. [43:23] He kept quiet because talking only drives up the price. [44:19] There are times when certain cards sit unclaimed in the common pile, when certain properties become available that will never be available again. A good businessman feels these moments like a fall in the barometric pressure. A great businessman is dumb enough to act on them even when he cannot afford to. [49:30] He believed in the transcendent power of physical labor—that a man can free his soul only by exhausting his body. [58:04] He disdained bureaucracy and hated paperwork. So seldom did he dictate a letter that he requires no full-time secretary. [1:00:01] He was respected because he understood the trade. By the time he was 40 he had served in every position. There was not a job he could not do nor a task he could not accomplish. He considered it a secret of his success. [1:01:02] Rick Rubin: In the Studio by Jake Brown. (Founders #245) [1:04:00] Zemurray was the founder, forever on the attack, at work, in progress, growing by trial and error. [1:06:44] Here was a self-made man, filled with the most dangerous kind of confidence: he had done it before and believed he could do it again. This gave him the air of a berserker, who says, If you're going to fight me, you better kill me. If you’ve ever known such a person, you will recognize the type at once. If he does not say much, it's because he considers small talk a weakness. Wars are not won by running your mouth. I'm describing a once essential American type that has largely vanished. Men who channeled all their love and fear into the business, the factory, the plantation, the shop. [1:07:44] Founder Mentality

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

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

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

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

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

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

What I learned from reading I, Steve: Steve Jobs In His Own Words by George Beahm. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- [1:05] On Steve Jobs #5 Steve Jobs: The Biography#19 Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader#76 Return To The Little Kingdom: Steve Jobs and The Creation of Apple#77 Steve Jobs & The NeXT Big Thing#204 Inside Steve Jobs' Brain#214 Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography#235 To Pixar And Beyond: My Unlikely Journey with Steve Jobs to Make Entertainment History Bonus Episodes on Steve Jobs Insanely Simple: The Obsession That Drives Apple's Success (Between #112 and #113)Creative Selection: Inside Apple's Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs (Between #110 and #111) On Jony Ive and Steve Jobs #178 Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple's Greatest Products On Ed Catmull and Steve Jobs #34 Creativity Inc: Overcoming The Unseen Forces That Stand In The Way of True Inspiration On Steve Jobs and several other technology company founders #157 The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution #208 In the Company of Giants: Candid Conversations With the Visionaries of the Digital World [3:13] We're not going to be the first to this party, but we're going to be the best. [4:54] Company Focus: We do no market research. We don't hire consultants. We just want to make great products. [5:06] The roots of Apple were to build computers for people, not for corporations. The world doesn't need another Dell or Compaq. [5:52] Nearly all the founders I’ve read about have a handful of ideas/principles that are important to them and they just repeat and pound away at them forever. [7:00] You can oftentimes arrive at some very elegant and simple solutions. Most people just don't put in the time or energy to get there. [8:09] I think of Founders as a tool for working professionals. And what that tool does is it gets ideas from the history of entrepreneurship into your brain so then you can use them in your work. It just so happens that a podcast is a great way to achieve that goal. [8:48] Tim Ferriss Podcast #596 with Ed Thorp [8:50] A Man for All Markets: From Las Vegas to Wall Street, How I Beat the Dealer and the Market by Ed Thorp. (Founders 222) [10:43] In most people's vocabularies, design means veneer. It's interior decorating. It's the fabric of the curtains and the sofa. But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design. Design is the fundamental soul of a man-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service. [12:05] The Essential Difference: The Lisa people wanted to do something great. And the Mac people want to do something insanely great. The difference shows. [14:21] Sure, what we do has to make commercial sense, but it's never the starting point. We start with the product and the user experience. [15:57] Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader by Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli. (Founders #19) [16:41] We had a passion to do this one simple thing. [16:51] And that's really important because he's saying I wasn't trying to build the biggest company. I wasn't trying to build a trillion dollar company. It wasn't doing any of that. Those things happen later as a by-product of what I was actually focused on, which is just building the best computer that I wanted to use. [17:14] In the Company of Giants: Candid Conversations With the Visionaries of the Digital World by Rama Dev Jager and Rafael Ortiz. (Founders #208 ) [17:41] It comes down to trying to expose yourself to the best things that humans have done and then try to bring those things in to what you're doing. Picasso had a saying: good artists copy, great artists steal. And we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas. [20:29] Our belief was that if we kept putting great products in front of customers, they would continue to open their wallets. [21:06] A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age by Jimmy Soni and Rob Goodman (Founders #95) “A very small percentage of the population produces the greatest proportion of the important ideas. There are some people if you shoot one idea into the brain, you will get half an idea out. There are other people who are beyond this point at which they produce two ideas for each idea sent in.” [22:29] Edwin land episodes: Insisting On The Impossible: The Life of Edwin Land and Instant: The Story of Polaroid (Founders #40) The Instant Image: Edwin Land and The Polaroid Experience by Mark Olshaker. (Founders #132) Land’s Polaroid: A Company and The Man Who Invented It by Peter C. Wensberg. (Founders #133) A Triumph of Genius: Edwin Land, Polaroid, and the Kodak Patent War by Ronald K. Fierstein. (Founders #134) [25:01] Macintosh was basically this relatively small company in Cupertino, California, taking on the goliath, IBM, and saying "Wa

What I learned from reading Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller by Ron Chernow. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- [2:15] Rockefeller trained himself to reveal as little as possible [4:22] Once Rockefeller set his mind to something he brought awesome powers of concentration to bear. [4:44] My whole life has been spent trying to teach people that intense concentration for hour after hour can bring out in people resources they didn’t know they had. —Edwin Land [9:00] When playing checkers or chess, he showed exceptional caution, studying each move at length, working out every possible countermove in his head. "I'll move just as soon as I get it figured out," he told opponents who tried to rush him. "You don't think I'm playing to get beaten, do you?" [9:20] To ensure that he won, he submitted to games only where he could dictate the rules. Despite his slow, ponderous style, once he had thoroughly mulled over his plan of action, he had the power of quick decision. [14:49] When John was child, Bill would urge him to leap from his high chair into his waiting arms. One day he dropped his arms letting his astonished son crash to the floor. Remember, Bill lectured him, never trust anyone completely. Not even me. [15:32] The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst by David Nasaw (Founders #145) He didn't care what people thought of him and despised society. [16:13] Rockefeller analyzed work, broke it down into component parts, and figured out how to perform it most economically. [18:49] He was a confirmed exponent of positive thinking. [19:10] Rockefeller was the sort of stubborn person who only grew more determined with rejection. [25:14] Rockefeller wasn't one to dawdle in an unprofitable concern. His career had few wasted steps, and he never vacillated when the moment ripened for advancement. [26:20] He's constantly praising adversity in early life as giving him strength to deal with all the stuff he had to deal with later on his life. [26:49] Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print, and Power by James McGrath Morris. (Founders #135) He was so industrious that he became a positive annoyance to others who felt less inclined to work. [27:17] Your future hangs on every day that passes. [36:13] If it is of critical importance to your business you have to do it yourself. [36:42] In-N-Out Burger: A Behind-the-Counter Look at the Fast-Food Chain That Breaks All the Rules by Stacy Perman. (Founders #244) [38:36] He would never experience a single year of loss. [39:30] Two quotes from Charlie Munger: The wise ones bet heavily when the world offers them that opportunity. They bet big when they have the odds. And the rest of the time, they don't. It's just that simple. Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger. (Founders #90) You should remember that good ideas are rare—when the odds are greatly in your favor, bet heavily. Tao of Charlie Munger: A Compilation of Quotes from Berkshire Hathaway's Vice Chairman on Life, Business, and the Pursuit of Wealth With Commentary by David Clark (Founders #78) [41:03] He's gonna to have a massive advantage over other people who only wanted to book short-term profits. [42:01] The Clarks were the first of many business partners to underrate the audacity of the quietly calculating Rockefeller, who bided his time as he figured out how to get rid of them. [44:27] He's super frugal on one end of the spectrum. Extremely frugal! Not going to let his business waste a penny. But he's also —on the very other end of the spectrum— willing to spend and to borrow and to go big. I will borrow every single dollar the banks will give me. He is the weird combination of extreme frugality and extreme boldness. [46:08] Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue by Ryan Holiday (Founders 31) On that day his partners “woke up and saw for the first time that my mind had not been idle while they were talking so big and loud,” he would say later. They were shocked. They’d seen their empire dismantled and taken from them by the young man they had dismissed. Rockefeller had wanted it more. [47:13] On that day his partners “woke up and saw for the first time that my mind had not been idle while they were talking so big and loud,” he would say later. They were shocked. They’d seen their empire dismantled and taken from them by the young man they had dismissed. Rockefeller had wanted it more. [47:37] He would never again feel his advancement blocked by shortsighted, mediocre men. [48:16] From this point forward, there would be no zigzags or squandered energy, only a single-minded focus on objectives that would make him both the wonder and terror of American business. [48:38] Random Reminiscences of Men and Events by John D. Rockefeller. (Founders #148) We devoted ourselves exclusively to the oil business and its products. That company never went into outside ventures, but kept to the enormous task of perfe

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

What I learned from reading Constellation Software Inc. President's Letters by Mark Leonard. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- [1:10] Business lessons from Mark Leonard by Tren Griffin [2:11] Newsletter: Liberty’s Highlights The Serendipity Engine: Investing & business, science & technology, and the arts. [2:59] I don’t like anyone telling me what to do. I don’t like anyone saying I am an authority figure and you will do it this way. I can’t think of anything that annoys me more. I was stuck by the principal. I challenged teachers. I left home early. I had a bootleg radio license. I built a flamethrower. I did things that weren’t accepted by lots of people. That ability to choose what I think is right is something I prize highly. [4:49] Distant Force: A Memoir of the Teledyne Corporation and the Man Who Created It (Founders #110) and The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success (Founders #94) [4:53] Teledyne grows bigger by dividing businesses into smaller parts wherever possible. Singleton claims that this keeps his managers creative and not wasteful. [5:12] Our preference is to acquire businesses in their entirety and to own them forever. [8:57] The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America's Banana King (Founders #37) [9:18] There are times when certain cards sit unclaimed in the common pile, when certain properties become available that will never be available again. A good businessman feels these moments like a fall in the barometric pressure. A great businessman is dumb enough to act on them even when he cannot afford to. [12:20] Customer relationships that endure for more than two decades are valuable. [13:08] The longer we have owned a small software business, the larger and better it has become. [15:32] Jeff Bezos’s Shareholder Letters. All of them! (Founders #71) [23:22] We didn't get to that point with central edicts or grand plans. We just had a hunch that our internal ventures could be better managed, and started measuring them. The people involved in the Initiatives generated the data, and with measurement came adjustment and adaptation. It took 6 years, but we have fundamentally changed the mental models of a generation of our managers and employees. [23:56] A Man for All Markets: From Las Vegas to Wall Street, How I Beat the Dealer and the Market (Founders #93 and #222) [28:06] Our business units rarely get large. [28:26] This suggests that the size and performance of our business units are almost totally unrelated. I believe that these business units are small for a reason...that the advantages of being agile and tight far outweigh economies of scale. I’m not a proponent of handling our “complexity problem” by creating a bunch of 400 employee business units to replace our 40 employee units. I’m looking for ways of “achieving scale” elsewhere. [29:06] Debt is cheap right now, so it is pretty tempting to use it. Unfortunately, it has a nasty habit of going away when you need it most. [30:42] The Essays of Warren Buffett (Founders #227) [32:51] Book recommendation from Mark: Thinking Fast and Slow [34:53] I love what I'm doing and don't want to stop unless my health deteriorates or the board figures it's time for me to go. [36:42] My personal preference is to instead focus on keeping our business units small, and the majority of the decision making down at the business level. Partly this is a function of my experience with small high performance teams when I was a venture capitalist, and partly it is a function of seeing that most vertical markets have several viable competitors who exhibit little correlation between their profitability and relative scale. (TRUST IN SMALL GROUPS OF SMART PEOPLE) [37:35] There are a number of implications if you share my view: We should a) regularly divide our largest business units into smaller, more focused business units unless there is an overwhelmingly obvious reason to keep them whole, b) operate the majority of the businesses that we acquire as separate units rather than merge them with existing CSI businesses, and c) drive down cost at the head office and Operating Group level. [38:11] I want you to bear with me because I really do think this is a very clear description of what he's building, the advantages the strategy provides, and why he's going to be hard to compete with over the longterm. [40:13] We have 199 business units. We can run a test in 5, 10, 6, 24, whatever it is —we find what works and we can spread it throughout the entire company and spreading best business practices makes those businesses better. The longer it goes, the more businesses we have, the stronger they get over the time. And it's nice you have a checkbook and a phone but I'm way too far ahead— you'll never catch me is essentially what he's saying. [42:00] Copy This!: How I turned Dyslexia, ADHD, and 100 square feet into a company called Kinkos (Foun

What I learned from reading Rick Rubin: In the Studio by Jake Brown. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- Rick Rubin on Lex Fridman Podcast #275 Rick Rubin on The Peter Attia Drive Podcast #57 Shangri-La Documentary Rick’s podcast Broken Record [1:39] Decoded by Jay Z. (Founders #238) [3:19] Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. [3:31] His goal is to record music in its most basic and purest form. No extra bells and whistles. All wheat, no chaff. [5:42] Dr. Land was saying: “I could see what the Polaroid camera should be. It was just as real to me as if it was sitting in front of me before I had ever built one.” And Steve said: “Yes, that’s exactly the way I saw the Macintosh.” He said if I asked someone who had only used a personal calculator what a Macintosh should be like they couldn’t have told me. There was no way to do consumer research on it so I had to go and create it and then show it to people and say now what do you think?” Both of them had this ability to not invent products, but discover products. Both of them said these products have always existed — it’s just that no one has ever seen them before. We were the ones who discovered them. The Polaroid camera always existed and the Macintosh always existed — it’s a matter of discovery. [7:31] My goal is to just get out of the way and let the people I'm working with be the best versions of themselves. [7:50] Berkshire Hathaway Letters to Shareholders 1965-2018 by Warren Buffett (Founders #88) [11:26] In-N-Out Burger: A Behind-the-Counter Look at the Fast-Food Chain That Breaks All the Rules by Stacy Perman. (Founders #244) [14:13] “Designing a product is keeping 5,000 things in your brain and fitting them all together in new and different ways.” —Steve Jobs [16:00] Less is more but you have to do more to get to less. [16:25] Against The Odds: An Autobiography by James Dyson and reading A History of Great Inventions by James Dyson. (Founders #200) [17:56] Rubin's most valuable quality is his own confidence. [20:57] If we're going to do this, let's aim for greatness. You have to believe what you were doing is the most important thing in the world. [21:29] Damn Right: Behind the Scenes with Berkshire Hathaway Billionaire Charlie Munger by Janet Lowe. (Founders #221) “Everybody engaged in complicated work needs colleagues. Just the discipline of having to put your thoughts in order with somebody else is a very useful thing.” [24:24] On being a reducer —not a producer: Often in the studio there will be the idea to add layers to make it seem bigger. Sometimes the more things you add, the smaller it gets. A lot of it is counterintuitive. You need to discover it in practice. [27:10] I want to play loud. I want to be heard. And I want all to know I'm not one of the herd. [36:16] There were no stars in rap music. It was really just a work of passion. Everyone who was doing it was doing it because they loved it, not because anyone thought it was a career. [38:12] Krush Groove YouTube link [38:47] Russell really cared about finding new ways to expose their music to a bigger audience. [39:03] Bloomberg by Michael Bloomberg. (Founders #228) [44:19] A handmade product at scale. [48:23] Rap music as recorded work was just eight years old. [50:06] Q: Do you have an engine of constant dissatisfaction. Self criticism that I could have done better? A: No. I’m pleased with the work that we did. Excited to keep working. It’s fun. I don’t know what else I’d do with myself. I like making things, it’s fun. I feel like it’s my reason to be on the planet so I just keep doing it. If it could be better I would have kept working on it. If it could be better it’s not done. I’ve done everything I can to make it the best it can be. I can’t do more than that so there is nothing to be critical of. It is almost like a diary entry. Everything we make is a reflection in a moment in time. Could be a day, could be a year. [52:54] These things that we don't understand and cannot explain happen regularly. [58:33] To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. [58:58] He's living in four different centuries at once. [1:01:02] I believe in you so much, I'm going to make you believe in you. [1:03:07] Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire by James Wallace and Jim Erickson (Founders #140) 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. [1:05:35] The newest sounds have a tendency to sound old when the next new sound comes along. But a grand piano sounded great 50 years ago and will sound great 50 years from now. I try to make reco

What I learned from reading In-N-Out Burger: A Behind-the-Counter Look at the Fast-Food Chain That Breaks All the Rules by Stacy Perman. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- [2:03] This is an absorbing case study on how a family business came to be at the center of its own cheerful cult. [2:42] Aliens, Jedi, & Cults: A Mental Model for Potential [5:05] Stripe gave me a mental model for potential. An alien founder assembles a group of Jedi to start a cult and go on a mission together. [5:28] The developers raving about Stripe formed the cult. [6:37] If you are searching for a project with potential, watch out for the alien founder, Jedi team, and cult following of people on a messianic mission. [7:58] A few years ago I started notice that people were getting Tesla tattoos. It is very hard to ever short something where people are tattooing the brand on their body. — Josh Wolfe [8:38] Becoming Trader Joe: How I Did Business My Way and Still Beat the Big Guys (Founders #188) Word of mouth is the most effective advertising of all. I have been known to say that there's no better business to run than a cult. Trader Joe's became a cult of the overeducated and underpaid, partly because we deliberately tried to make it a cult once we got a handle on what we were actually doing, and partly because we kept the implicit promises with our clientele. [9:12] List of David Ogilvy podcasts: Ogilvy on Advertising (Founders #82) Confessions of an Advertising Man (Founders #89) The King of Madison Avenue: David Ogilvy and the Making of Modern Advertising(Founders #169) The Unpublished David Ogilvy (Founders #189) [9:17] Word of mouth is the most effective advertising of all. In and Out has that, Tesla has that, Stripe has that, Bitcoin has that, Trader Joe's has that, Apple has that. [10:35] 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) The best startups might be considered slightly less extreme kinds of cults. The biggest difference is that cults tend to be fanatically wrong about something important. People at a successful startup are fanatically right about something those outside it have missed. [11:33] In and Out was fanatically right about something that companies like McDonald’s, Wendy's and others, missed. [11:43] The most important sentence in the book: "Keep it real simple. Do one thing and do it the best you can.” [12:55] The family owned, fiercely independent chain has remained virtually unchanged since its inception in 1948. [14:53] It is known as the anti-chain with the cult-like mystique. The anti-chain is a perfect way to describe In and Out’s approach to building their business. [19:48] Harry's drive and tenacity were propelled by the uncertainty of watching his parents labor to provide for his family. Harry grew into a disciplined fellow with a strong sense of responsibility. [27:50] The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon (Founders #179) [28:15] Sol Price: Retail Revolutionary & Social Innovator (Founders #107) [28:55] I have always said that competition just makes you stronger. You shouldn't be afraid of the competition. They make you stay on top of your game. They keep you on your toes. [29:23] You don't ever cut corners when it comes to the quality of your product. [30:23] There is no cult-like following for shitty products. [33:21] This dude is obsessed with simplicity. [33:44] Insanely Simple: The Obsession That Drives Apple's Success Never underestimate the degree to which people crave clarity and respond positively to it. [36:26] If he was alive today and you could ask him for advice I think he would just say do it yourself. [37:18] This is an important distinction —and I think also how you get to a cult-like following—he's not interesting in being the biggest, he's interested in being the best. [38:34] If you’re efficient, you’re doing it the wrong way. The right way is the hard way. The show was successful because I micromanaged it—every word, every line, every take, every edit, every casting. That’s my way of life. [39:47] He refused to sacrifice quality for the sake of profits. [40:05] From the start, In-N-Out ran a customer-driven shop. [41:00] Authentic: A Memoir by the Founder of Vans (Founders #216) [44:07] He believed in paying for quality and that included wages. [44:31] Why would you skimp on the level of quality people you work with? That's insane to me — it just makes no sense at all. [44:48] Les Schwab Pride In Performance: Keep It Going! [45:42] Embrace hard work, ignore fads, identify what's important to you, and repeat it for decades. [46:39] The Sugar King of Havana: The Rise and Fall of Julio Lobo, Cuba's Last Tycoon(Founders #237) [50:00] Catering to the car-reliant customer, Harry focused on putting his drive-throughs right next to off-ramps of the fast-expanding freeway system. The growing Southern

What I learned from reading Risk Game: Self Portrait of an Entrepreneur by Francis Greenburger. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- [1:26] I can be extremely stubborn when I have a hunch about something. [3:31] I knew all too well that markets can turn on a dime. [5:40] Money that had once flowed freely dried up over night. [6:41] I always listened to other people's ideas because that is how you happen upon the good ones. [6:46] Logic is no match for bureaucracy. [7:33] This ruthless industry has created far more bankruptcies than it has billionaires. Saying no is the most important judgment that you make. [9:00] Time to Make the Donuts: The Founder of Dunkin Donuts Shares an American Journey (Founders #231) [9:09] Sometimes the best lessons that you learn in life are from what you discover in the weaknesses of otherwise very good people. [15:54] My father was terrible with money. His knack of mismanaging it, losing it, or not making it in the first place was an incredible source of stress within our family. [19:09] The constant question mark that was my parents's checkbook balance made a lasting impression. [24:31] His pride in my abilities formed the basis of the self-confidence that allowed me to start businesses, sell books, make crazy friends, and love women at an age when most others were busy with their homework. [29:40] The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America's Banana King (Founders #37) [30:12] I see opportunity where others saw nothing. [31:34] He doesn't dilly-dally. This guy moves fast. It's not like I proved it once, let me try two or three times. He is like it worked once, it's gotta work over and over again, and he immediately starts to scale it. [37:40] Don’t interrupt the compounding: I was skating on razor thin margins that a busted toilet could threaten. But I prefer to remain on the edge as I kept my buildings running rather than sell any of them before they grew to the much higher value that I had a hunch they would one day achieve. [40:45] The idea that builds his empire: By co-oping I would be dealing with tens of thousands of dollars in sales, rather than hundreds of dollars in rents. [41:58] Once something works don't dilly dally. Go as fast as you possibly can. [43:08] Lots of folks thought what I was doing was insane. [43:17] I knew something that the market had not yet fully embraced. [47:06] My advice to those with expanding businesses is that they must first make a decision about how they want to allocate their time and structure their business so that the balance reflects that. [49:33] Children require attention and involvement. This takes you out of your self orientation and makes you invest in another person who can only pay you in one currency: Love. [50:09] If anyone had asked me in 1990 what the chances of my business survival was I would have said 1 in 100. I still consider it a miracle that we didn't go bankrupt. [53:12] The main lesson is never delay discomfort. Waiting or ignoring a problem never solves it. Just run towards it. [55:36] Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future (Founders #30) [56:27] Every parent’s worst nightmare. [1:06:25] Disaster usually rises when short-term profit takes precedence over lasting value creation. [1:08:21] I don't pick investments. I pick jockeys, not horses. [1:10:31] Tuxedo Park: A Wall Street Tycoon and The Secret Palace of Science That Changed The Course of World War II (Founders #143) [1:10:52] The Richest Woman in America: Hetty Green in the Gilded Age (Founders #103) [1:13:52] Real security comes from adaptability. [1:13:59] Independent thinking in its simplest forms means not assuming that the status quo was the best answer, the right answer, or the most effective answer. ---- 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 Francis Ford Coppola: A Filmmaker's Life by Michael Schumacher. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- [2:49] You can always understand the son by the story of his father. The story of the father is embedded in the son. [5:33] I had spent a lifetime with a frustrated, and often unemployed man, who hated anybody who was successful. [7:01] And he said, “Yeah, but there can only be one genius in the family. And since I'm already that, what chance do you have? “What kind of father says something like that to his son? [8:21] He is incredibly talented and incredibly pretentious. He doesn't know what he's doing half the time and the other half of the time he's brilliant. [9:46] There is no speed limit. The standard pace is for chumps. [10:04] Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print, and Power (Founders #135) [11:54] George Lucas: A Life (Founders #35) [12:45] Steven Spielberg: A Biography (Founders #209) [14:10] Coppola displayed a remarkable ability to do whatever was necessary to get the job done. [16:30] I had an overwhelming urge to make films. [19:11] I deliberately worked all night so when he'd arrive in the morning he would see me slumped over the editing machine. [20:36] Say yes first, learn later. [21:00] My peculiar approach to cinema is I like to learn by not knowing how the hell to do it. I’m forced to discover how to do it. [23:10] His willingness to seize the moment was one of the main characteristics separating him from his other fellow students and aspiring filmmakers. [30:44] The Founders: The Story of Paypal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley (Founders #233) [37:43] You have to control the money or you don't have control. [38:53] At his absolute lowest point comes his greatest opportunity. [41:59] It only takes a couple of these gigantic flops to permanently erase any positive financial outcome that you had previously. [44:55] Either control your emotions or other people are going to control you. [47:35] In many cases, the people we study are dead. We can't talk to them, but they can still counsel us through their life stories. [50:00] Excellence took time and patience. [51:56] Even in the vortex of the storm some outstanding work was being accomplished. Something strong and powerful was being forged in struggle. [52:46] Vito Corleone had shown a rough-hewn old-world wisdom, the kind gained through experience rather than from a textbook. [56:29] A great story about loyalty and friendship. If you have a friend like this, hold onto them. [1:03:32] Martin Sheen on working for Coppola: I have a lot of mixed feelings about Francis. I'm very fond of him personally. The thing I love about him most is that he never, like a good general, asks you to do anything he wouldn't do. He was right there with us, lived there in shit and mud up to his ass, suffered the same diseases, ate the same food. I don't think he realizes how tough he is to work for. God, is he tough. But I will sail with that son of a bitch anytime. [1:04:58] I always had a rule. If I was going away for more than 10 days I’d take my kids out of school. [1:08:31] If you don't have this fundamental alignment between who you are and the work you do —and how you do that work —there's going to be some level of misery unhappiness if you don't resolve that conflict. [1:12:22] Half the people thought it was a masterpiece and half the people thought it was a piece of shit. [1:23:01] On the death of his son: I realized that no matter what happened, I had lost. No matter what happened, it would always be incomplete. [1:25:38] I want to be free. I don't want producers around me telling me what to do. The real dream of my life is a place where people can live in peace and create what they want. ---- 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 Birdmen: The Wright Brothers, Glenn Curtiss, and the Battle to Control the Skies by Lawrence Goldstone. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- [1:07] The Wright Brothers (Founders #239) [3:47] Avoid any activity that distracts you from improving the quality of your product and the quality of your business. [5:58] Completely self-taught, he made spectacular intellectual leaps to solve a series of intractable problems that had alluded some of history's most brilliant men. [9:46] The Wright-Curtiss feud was at its core a study of the unique strengths and flaws of personality that define a clash of brilliant minds. Neither Glenn Curtiss nor Wilbur Wright ever came to understand his own limits, that luminescent intelligence in one area of human endeavor does not preclude gross incompetence in another. And because genius often requires arrogance, both men continuously repeated their blunders. [13:38] P.T. Barnum: An American Life (Founders #137) [13:49] John Moisant had three failed attempts to overthrow the government of El Salvador. [17:44] Master of Precision: Henry Leland (Founders#128) [19:32] Sacrifices must be made. [20:18] The science of flight has attracted the greatest minds in history—Aristotle, Archimedes, Leonardo, and Newton, —but achieving the goal stumped all of them. [23:19] If you go back a few hundred years, what we take for granted today would seem like magic-being able to talk to people over long distances, to transmit images, flying, accessing vast amounts of data like an oracle. These are all things that would have been considered magic a few hundred years ago. —Elon Musk [23:57] If the process was to move forward with any efficiency, experimenters would need some means to separate what seemed to work from what seemed not to–data and results would have to be shared. The man who most appreciated that need was someone who, while not producing a single design that resulted in flight, was arguably the most important person to participate in its gestation. [28:46] He found his first breakthrough by doing the exact opposite of his competitor. [30:08] The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst (Founders #145) [39:04] His passion was speed. He had tremendous endurance, he was never a quitter, and he would do anything to win. [42:25] My Life in Advertising by Claude Hopkins (Founders #170) [43:46] No lead is insurmountable if you stop running before you've reached the finish line. [47:03] Reluctant Genius: The Passionate Life and Inventive Mind of Alexander Graham Bell (Founders #138) [47:05] The Hour of Fate: Theodore Roosevelt, J.P. Morgan, and the Battle to Transform American Capitalism (Founders #142) Mornings on Horseback: The Story of an Extraordinary Family, a Vanished Way of Life and the Unique Child Who Became Theodore Roosevelt (Founders #156) The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey (Founders #175) [47:40] Never underestimate your opponent. It’s all downside, no upside. Churchill (Founders #225) [57:05] He saw competition as a destructive, inefficient force and favored large-scale combination as the cure. Once, when the manager of the Moet and Chandon wine company complained about industry problems, J.P. suggested he buy up the entire champagne country. — The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance (Founders #139) [1:00:05] Find people who are great at selling your product and hire them. [1:06:55] He was driven by an uncontrollable desire for adventure and wealth, and almost an adolescent need to be seen as a swashbuckling hero. [1:07:45] John was left desperate for an outlet for his obsessive audacity. [1:13:57] The McCormick's were used to making terms, not acquiescing to them. [1:19:15] Wilbur never seemed to grasp that his crusade to destroy his nemesis could destroy him. [1:20:00] I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something. —Steve Jobs ---- 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

What I learned from reading Mozart: A Life by Paul Johnson. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- [1:52] Churchill by Paul Johnson (Founders #225) [2:15] A life of constant hard work, lived at the highest possible level of creative concentration. [3:05] Mozart worked relentlessly. [3:56] He started earlier than anyone else and was still composing on his deathbed. [5:34] He soon came to the conclusion that he had fathered a genius— and being a highly religious man, that he was responsible for a gift of God to music. [7:05] I think the idea here is if you truly believe that what you're doing is good for the world— and you approach it with the same kind of religious zeal— you have a massive advantage over a competitor that doesn't have the same missionary mindset. [8:09] My Turn: A Life of Total Football by Johan Cruyff (Founders #218) [8:42] Leading By Design: The Ikea Story (Founders #104) [9:09] He loved humor, and laughter was never far away in Mozart's life, together with beauty—and the unrelenting industry needed to produce it. [13:36] Decoded by Jay Z (Founders #238) [15:36] Russ ON: Delusional Self-Confidence & How To Start Manifesting Your Dream Life and Steve Stoute & Russ Explain Why Every Creator Should Consider Themselves A Business [19:46] You don't tell Babe Ruth how to hold a bat. [20:43] I will take your demand and I'll use it as a constraint to increase my creativity. [21:27] The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America's Banana King (Founders #37) [22:37] You need to tell potential customers what work and effort goes into the product that you produce because they will have a deeper appreciation for what you do. [24:52] Inside Steve’s Brain (Founders #204) [25:06] He's made and remade Apple in his own image. Apple is Steve Jobs with 10,000 lives. [25:30] Mozart wanted to talk to A players. [26:32] The Pmarca Blog Archive Ebook by Marc Andreessen (Founders #50) [26:57] You should only work in industries where— for the important companies of that industry —the founders are still in charge at those companies. [31:13] As a child and teenager Mozart was the most hardworking and productive composer in musical history. [34:17] Find something that is being done on a basic level and then realize its potential by re-imagining it. [36:13] It was all hard, intense application of huge knowledge and experience, sometimes illuminated by flashes of pure genius. [36:40] Imagine being so good at what you do that the ruler of your country has to pass a law to get people to stop clapping. [40:15] It is no use asking what if Mozart had had an ordinary, normal father. Mozart without his father is inconceivable, and there is no point in considering it. Just as Mozart himself was a unique phenomenon, so Leopold was a unique father, and the two created each other. [41:00] There's a sense in which Mozart's entire life is a gigantic improvisation. [41:21] From the age of twenty Mozart never went a month without producing something immortal-something not merely good, but which the musical repertoire would be really impoverished without. [43:03] Designing a product is keeping 5,000 things in your brain, and fitting them all together in new and different ways to get what you want. —Steve Jobs [43:39] Mozart's beauty prevents one from grasping his power. [43:39] Sam Walton: The Inside Story of America's Richest Man (Founders #150) and Sam Walton: Made In America (Founders #234) [45:31] Never despair! ---- 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

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

What I learned from rereading The Wright Brothers by David McCullough. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- [3:40] Relentlessly Resourceful by Paul Graham [4:11] 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. [5:35] Everybody engaged in complicated work needs colleagues. Just the discipline of having to put your thoughts in order with somebody else is a very useful thing. —Charlie Munger [6:44] No bird soars in a calm. [10:30] Neither ever chose to be anything other than himself. [11:36] Wilbur was a little bothered by what others might be thinking or saying. [11:46] What the two had in common above all was a unity of purpose and unyielding determination. [15:09] Every mind should be true to itself —should think, investigate and conclude for itself. [17:53] My Life in Advertising (Founders #170) [19:33] Overdrive: Bill Gates and the Race to Control Cyberspace (Founders #174) [19:39] Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire (Founders #140) [23:56] I wish to avail myself of all that is already known. [30:32] Like the inspiring lectures of a great professor, the book had opened his eyes and started him thinking in ways he never had. [34:29] In no way did any of this discourage or deter Wilbur and Orville Wright, any more than the fact that they had had no college education, no formal technical training, no experience working with anyone other than themselves, no friends in high places, no financial backers, no government subsidies, and little money of their own. Or the entirely real possibility that at some point, like Otto Lilienthal, they could be killed. [36:07] When once this idea has invaded the brain it possesses it exclusively. [38:23] 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 [41:47] You wanted to start a company. You knew that it was going to be hard. What are you complaining for? [42:17] Jay Z: Decoded (Founders #238) [42:56] They had their whole heart and soul in what they were doing. [46:28] You should follow your energy. [53:49] The Wright brothers have blinders on mentality. They don't care what other people say. They just say I'm working at this. I don't care what other people think. [54:16] The brothers proceeded entirely on their own and in their own way. [58:21] This is the blueprint they are using: Test. Iterate. Test. Iterate. Work long hours. Concentrate and ignore the naysayers. [1:00:31] Wilbur was always ready to jump into an argument with both sleeves rolled up. He believed in a good scrap. He believed it brought out new ways of looking at things and helped round off corners. [1:00:57] Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire (Founders #180) [1:02:26] Pour gasoline on promising sparks. [1:04:14] It is very bad policy to ask one flying machine man, about the experiments of another, because every flying machine man thinks that his method is the correct one. [1:08:46] Stephen King On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (Founders #210) [1:10:26] They were always thinking of the next thing to do. They didn't waste much time worrying about the past. [1:11:05] 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 (Founders #213) [1:12:56] They would have to learn to accommodate themselves to the circumstances. [1:20:42] The best dividends on labor invested have invariably come from seeking more knowledge rather than more power. [1:27:37] He went his way always in his own way. [1:31:45] A man who works for the immediate present and its immediate rewards is nothing but a fool. ---- 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