alexander graham bell

What I learned from reading Roots of Strategy by Thomas R. Phillips and Napoleon and Modern War by Napoleon and Col. Lanza. 

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(0:01) Napoleon fought more battles than Alexander, Hannibal, and Caesar combined.

(5:00) The Mind of Napoleon: A Selection of His Written and Spoken Words edited by J. Christopher Herold. (Founders #302)

(7:00) Insull: The Rise and Fall of A Billionaire Utility Tycoon by Forrest McDonald. (Founders #336)

(8:00) No one should believe more in your business than you do. If this is not the case you are in the wrong business.

(11:00) If you do everything you will win.

(13:00) Napoleon episodes: 

Napoleon: A Concise Biography by David Bell. (Founders #294) 

The Mind of Napoleon: A Selection of His Written and Spoken Words edited by J. Christopher Herold. (Founders #302) 

(14:00) What is the bigger number, five or one? One. One army, a real army, united behind one leader, with one purpose. A fist instead of 5 fingers. — Robert Baratheon in Game of Thrones (YouTube)

(17:00) Keep your forces united. Be vulnerable at no point. Bear down with rapidity upon important points. These are the principles which insure victory.

(17:00) Read over and over again the campaigns of Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar, Gustavus, Turenne, Eugene and Frederic. Make them your models. This is the only way to become a great general and to master the secrets of the art of war. With your own genius enlightened by this study, you will reject all maxims opposed to those of these great commanders. [If Napoleon was alive you know he’d listen to Founders podcast]

(20:00) The Tao of Charlie Munger by Charlie Munger and David Clark (Founders #295)

(20:00) Advance orders tend to stifle initiative. A commander should be left free to adapt himself to circumstances as they occur.

(23:00) The art of war consists in a well organized and conservative defense, coupled with an audacious and rapid offensive.

(26:00) Ten people who yell make more noise than ten thousand who keep silent.

(29:00) Long orders, which require much time to prepare, to read and to understand are the enemies of speed. Napoleon could issue orders of few sentences which clearly expressed his intentions and required little time to issue and to understand.

(31:00) A great leader will resort to audacity.

(32:00) “Alexander the Great thought, decided, and above all, moved swiftly. He appreciated the importance of speed and the terrifying surprises speed made possible. His enemies were always stunned and shocked by his arrival. He invented the blitzkrieg.”  — Heroes: From Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar to Churchill and de Gaulle by Paul Johnson. (Episode #226)

(34:00) It is no harm to be too strong; it may be fatal to be too weak.

(41:00) Napoleon on single threaded leadership: Once a campaign has been decided upon there should be no hesitation in appointing one commander to assure its success. When authority is divided, opinions and actions differ, and confusion and delay arises. A single chief proceeds with vigor; he is not delayed by necessity to confer.

(42:00) Posess obstinate will.

(43:00) Experience must be supplemented by study. No man's personal experience can be so inclusive as to warrant his disregarding the experiences of others. (This is a great reason why you should invest in a subscription to Founders Notes ) 

(44:00) It is profitable to study the campaigns of the great masters.

(47:00) Skill consists in converging a mass of fire upon a single point. He that has the skill to bring a sudden, unexpected concentration of artillery to bear upon a selected point is sure to capture it. (A lesson from Peter Thiel: Don’t divide your attention: focusing on one thing yields increasing returns for each unit of effort.)

(49:00) All great captains have been diligent students [of history].

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

What I learned from reading Pieces of the Action by Vannevar Bush.

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Outline: 

Pieces of the Action offers his hard-won lessons on how to operate and manage effectively within complex organizations and drive ambitious, unprecedented programs to fruition.

Stripe Press Books:

The Dream Machine by M. Mitchell Waldrop

The Making of Prince of Persia: Journals 1985-1993 by Jordan Mechner.] 

Endless Frontier: Vannevar Bush, Engineer of the American Century by G. Pascal Zachary

— Any exploration of the institutions that shape how we do research, generate discoveries, create inventions, and turn ideas into innovations inevitably leads back to Vannevar Bush.

— No American has had greater influence in the growth of science and technology than Vannevar Bush.

— That’s why I'm going to encourage you to order this book —because when you pick it up and you read it —you're reading the words of an 80 year old genius. One of the most formidable and accomplished people that has ever lived— laying out what he learned over his six decade long career.

— A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age by Jimmy Soni and Rob Goodman (Founders #95)

— Bootstrapping: Douglas Engelbart, Coevolution, and the Origins of Personal Computing by Thierry Bardini

— I don’t know what Silicon Valley will do when it runs out of Doug Engelbart’s ideas. —  The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution by Walter Isaacson. (Founders #157)

— Bush points out that tipping points often rest with far-seeing, energetic individuals. We can be those individuals.

— I went into this book with little more than a name and came out with the closest thing to a mentor someone you've never met can be.

— We are not the first to face problems, and as we face them we can hold our heads high. In such spirit was this book written.

The essence of civilization is the transmission of the findings of each generation to the next.

This is not a call for optimism, it is a call for determination.

It is pleasant to turn to situations where conservatism or lethargy were overcome by farseeing, energetic individuals.

People are really a power law and that the best ones can change everything. —Sam Hinkie

There should never be, throughout an organization, any doubt as to where authority for making decisions resides, or any doubt that they will be promptly made.

You can drive great people by making the speed of decision making really slow. Why would great people stay in an organization where they can't get things done? They look around after a while, and they're, like, "Look, I love the mission, but I can't get my job done because our speed of decision making is too slow." — Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos by Jeff Bezos and Walter Isaacson.(Founders #155)

Rigid lines of authority do not produce the best innovations.

Research projects flowered in pockets all around the company, many of them without Steve's blessing or even awareness.

They'd come to Steve's attention only if one of his key managers decided that the project or technology showed real potential.

In that case, Steve would check it out, and the information he'd glean would go into the learning machine that was his brain. Sometimes that's where it would sit, and nothing would happen. Sometimes, on the other hand, he'd concoct a way to combine it with something else he'd seen, or perhaps to twist it in a way to benefit an entirely different project altogether.

This was one of his great talents, the ability to synthesize separate developments and technologies into something previously unimaginable. —Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader by Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli (Founders #265)

He was so industrious that he became a positive annoyance to others who felt less inclined to work.  —Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print, and Power by James McGrath Morris. (Founders #135)

Tuxedo Park: A Wall Street Tycoon and The Secret Palace of Science That Changed The Course of World War II by Jennet Conant. (Founders #143)

If a man is a good judge of men, he can go far on that skill alone.

All the past episodes mentioned by Vannevar Bush in this book:

General Leslie Groves: The General and the Genius: Groves and Oppenheimer—The Unlikely Partnership that Built the Atom Bomb by James Kunetka. (Founders #215)

J. Robert Oppenheimer: The General and the Genius: Groves and Oppenheimer—The Unlikely Partnership that Built the Atom Bomb by James Kunetka. (Founders #215)

Alfred Lee Loomis: Tuxedo Park: A Wall Street Tycoon and The Secret Palace of Science That Changed The Course of World War II by Jennet Conant. (Founders #143)

J.P. Morgan: The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance by Ron Chernow. (Founders #139)

The Hour of Fate: Theodore Roosevelt, J.P. Morgan, and the Battle to Transform American Capitalism by Susan Berfield. (Founders #142)

Orville Wright: The Wright Brothers by David McCullough. (Founders #239)

Birdmen: The Wright Brothers, Glenn Curtiss, and the Battle to Control the Skies by Lawrence Goldstone. (Founders #241)

Edwin Land: Land's Polaroid: A Company and the Man Who Invented It by Peter C. Wensberg. (Founders #263)

Instant: The Story of Polaroid by Christopher Bonanos. (Founders #264)

Henry J. Kaiser: Builder in the Modern American West by Mark Foster. (Founders #66)

Professional Amateur: The Biography of Charles Franklin Kettering by Thomas Boyd (Founders #125)

Reluctant Genius: The Passionate Life and Inventive Mind of Alexander Graham Bellby Charlotte Gray. (Founders #138)

Difficulties are often encountered in bringing an invention into production and use.

An invention has some of the characteristics of a poem.It is said that a poet may derive real joy out of making a poem, even if it is never published, even if he does not recite it to his friends, even if it is not a very good poem. No doubt, one has to be a poet to understand this.In the same way, an inventor can derive real satisfaction out of making an invention, even if he never expects to make a nickel out of it, even if he knows it is a bit foolish, provided he feels it involves ingenuity and insight. An inventor invents because he cannot help it, and also because he gets quiet fun out of doing so. Sometimes he even makes money at it, but not by himself. One has to be an inventor to understand this. One evening in Dayton, I dined alone with Orville Wright. During a long evening, we discussed inventions we had made that had never amounted to anything. He took me up to the attic and showed me models of various weird gadgets. I had plenty of similar efforts to tell him about, and we enjoyed ourselves thoroughly. Neither of us would have thus spilled things except to a fellow practitioner, one who had enjoyed the elation of creation and who knew that such elation is, to a true devotee, independent of practical results.So it is also, I understand, with poets.

Against The Odds: An Autobiography by James Dyson (Founders #200)

When picking an industry to enter, my favorite rule of thumb is this: Pick an industry where the founders of the industry—the founders of the important companies in the industry—are still alive and actively involved. — The Pmarca Blog Archive Ebook by Marc Andreessen. (Founders #50)

If a company operates only under patents it owns, and infringes on no others, its monopoly should not be disturbed, and the courts so hold. An excellent example is Polaroid Corporation. Founded by Edwin Land, one of the most ingenious men I ever knew (and also one of the wisest), it has grown and prospered because of his inventions and those of his team.

I came to the realization that they knew more about the subject than I did. In some ways, this was not strange. They were concentrating on it and I was getting involved in other things.

P.T. Barnum: An American Life by Robert Wilson. (Founders #137)

We make progress, lots of progress, in nearly every intellectual field, only to find that the more we probe, the faster our field of ignorance expands.

All the books from Stripe Press

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“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 Explore/Create My Life in Pursuit of New Frontiers, Hidden Worlds, and the Creative Spark by Richard Garriott.

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[6:49] Richard Garriott’s house

[7:39] Past episodes on video game creators

Sid Meier's Memoir!: A Life in Computer Games by Sid Meier (Founders#195)

Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture by David Kushner (Founders #21)

[9:31] I was lucky to learn early on that a deep understanding of the world around you makes you its master.

[9:52] The world is a very malleable place. If you know what you want, and you go for it with maximum energy and drive and passion, the world will often reconfigure itself around you much more quickly and easily than you would think. — The Pmarca Blog Archive Ebook by Marc Andreessen (Founders #50)

[10:08] Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact. And that is everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it. You can influence it. You can build your own things that other people can use. —Steve Jobs

[10:33] The tagline of his company: We create worlds.

[13:13] My heroes are people who took epic journeys into the unknown often at substantial personal risk. I am simply following the path that they carved into history.

[13:33] Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing (Founders #144)

[13:49] Two books coming soon:

Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know by Ranulph Fiennes

Shackleton: The Biography by Ranulph Fiennes

[14:57] By endurance we conquer. —Ernest Shackleton

[17:01] Insisting On the Impossible : The Life of Edwin Land by Victor McElheny

[17:45] In his acceptance speech, Land chose to pay tribute to the process of invention by analogy to the basic American sense of adventure and exploration: We are becoming a country of scientists, but however much we become a country of scientists, we will always remain first of all that same group of adventurous transcontinental explorers pushing our way from wherever it is comfortable into some more inviting, unknown and dangerous region. Now those regions today are not geographic, they are not the gold mines of the west; they are the gold mines of the intellect. And when the great scientists, and the innumerable scientists of today, respond to that ancient American urge for adventure, then the form that adventure takes is the form of invention; and when an invention is made by this new tribe of highly literate, highly scientific people, new things open up. . . . Always those scientific adventurers have the characteristic, no matter how much you know, no matter how educated you are in science, no matter how imaginative you are, of leading you to say, “I’ll be darned, who ever thought that such a domain existed?” —Edwin Land in A Triumph of Genius: Edwin Land, Polaroid, and the Kodak Patent War by Ronald K. Fierstein (#134)

[17:55] I misspoke. The word should have been ancestors! Not descendants :(

[21:40] The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller. —Steve Jobs

[22:00] Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making by Tony Fadell

[25:09] One of my favorite sentences in the book. Every storyteller is familiar with the pleasure that comes from sitting with your friends around a fire, pouring a few drinks, and weaving a yarn. This was man's first form of entertainment, and when done well is still his best.

[26:09] Finding The Next Steve Jobs: How to Find, Keep, and Nurture Talent by Nolan Bushnell (Founders #36)

[34:10] The owner of the store told me, "Richard, this game you've created that we're all playing is obviously a more compelling reason to have one of these machines than anything that's out there. We really need to be selling this on the store wall."

Selling? Wow, what an interesting idea.

[35:30] This was a state-of-the-art operation then. We hung them up in the store and in the first week sold about twelve copies at $20 each. I would estimate that at the time, there were probably fewer than a couple of dozen people anywhere in the world creating computer games, and not one of us could have imagined we were creating an industry that in less than three decades would become the largest and most successful entertainment industry in history, that a game would gross more in a few weeks than the most successful movie in history had earned in decades.

[37:46] California Pacific's version of Akalabeth was priced at $34, of which I received $5; and they sold thirty thousand copies.

I had earned $150,000, more than twice my father's yearly salary as an astronaut. It was a phenomenal amount of money, enough to buy a house.

It was so much money that it didn't really sink in; it all seemed like some kind of fantasy.

We all thought it was a fluke.

It was great that someone wanted to pay me for doing what I was already doing.

[38:59] The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America's Banana King by Rich Cohen (Founders #255)

[41:55] By then I knew enough about the computer game industry to understand that it wasn't actually an industry; it was an association of companies run by people who had no more experience than I did and who popped up, published a few games, then disappeared. So my brother Robert and I decided to start our own company.

[43:21] The leader's habits become everyone's habits.

[47:00] It would have been almost impossible to be more wrong. That was one of my first big lessons in: "What I think is not necessarily right and perhaps not what everybody else thinks.”

[49:04] Dune Director Denis Villeneuve Breaks Down the Gom Jabbar Scene

[53:32] The belief system of the founder is the language of the company. That is why it is usually written down and repeated over and over again.

[54:03] Imitation precedes creation. —Stephen King On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King. (Founders #210)

[1:05:59] This is going to be one of the most successful games they ever make and he had to fight just to get them to let him do this.

[1:07:42] The EA marketing team had projected lifetime sales of Ultima Online at 30,000 units—which they thought was wildly optimistic. We put it on the Internet Within a week or so 50,000 people had signed up to pay $5 for the disc.

[1:08:46]  The Pmarca Blog Archive Ebook by Marc Andreessen (Founders #50)

[1:09:40] One thing is for sure. People are very, very willing to spend real money on all types of virtual items.

[1:10:18] A lesson on human nature: People began to covet these items— like property and magic swords— but were not willing to put in the time to earn the gold needed to buy them.

[1:12:01] The art of business was to stay in business long enough to give yourself the best chance to get a big hit.

[1:15:55] The creative joy we'd once shared in developing a game had been replaced by the prosaic demands of running a business. It was hard to believe how much had changed; only a few years earlier our people would happily work all night and love every minute of it, and now we had become a sweatshop.

[1:17:17] I left the office, drove to a grocery store parking lot, and wept for several hours.

It was the end of my personal Camelot. This was no game, this was my life. It had been painful for me to fire other people, but as I had just learned, that was nothing compared to being fired myself. I got blindsided by a deep and complex range of feelings.

I  felt like a failure; I was angry and depressed and confused.

It was a hurt that lasted a long time and, frankly, I don't think I ever fully got over it.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ”

— Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

What I learned from reading The Father of Spin: Edward L. Bernays and the Birth of Public Relations by Larry Tye.

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[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.

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“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 Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America's Banana King by Rich Cohen.

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[0:47] This story can shock and infuriate us, and it does. But I found it invigorating, too. It told me that the life of the nation was written not only by speech-making grandees in funny hats but also by street-corner boys, immigrant strivers, crazed and driven, some with one good idea, some with thousands, willing to go to the ends of the earth to make their vision real.

[4:56] Tycoon's War: How Cornelius Vanderbilt Invaded a Country to Overthrow America's Most Famous Military Adventurer by Stephen Dando-Collins (Founders #55)

[6:00] Unlike Vanderbilt's other adversaries William Walker was not afraid of Cornelius when he should have been.

[8:21] The immigrants of that era could not afford to be children.

[8:42] The Adventures of Herbie Cohen: World's Greatest Negotiator by Rich Cohen

[8:54] He was driven by the same raw energy that has always attracted the most ambitious to America, then pushed them to the head of the crowd. Grasper, climber-nasty ways of describing this kid, who wants what you take for granted. From his first months in America, he was scheming, looking for a way to get ahead. You did not need to be a Rockefeller to know the basics of the dream: Start at the bottom, fight your way to the top.

[10:01] There is no problem you can't solve if you understand your business from A to Z.

[13:08]  Sam spotted an opportunity where others saw nothing.

[14:17] As far as he was concerned, ripes were considered trash only because Boston Fruit and similar firms were too slow-footed to cover ground. It was a calculation based on arrogance. I can be fast where others have been slow. I can hustle where others have been satisfied with the easy pickings of the trade.

[14:42] The kid on the streets is getting a shot at a dream. He sees the guy who gets rich and thinks, yep, that'll be me. He ignores the other stories going around.  // There's no way to quantify all that on a spreadsheet, but it's that dream of being the exception, the one who gets rich and gets out before he gets got that's the key to a hustler's motivation. —Decoded by Jay Z. (Founders #238)

[22:36] He was pure hustle.

[24:15] Preston later spoke of Zemurray with admiration. He said the kid from Russia was closer in spirit to the banana pioneers than anyone else working. "He's a risk taker," Preston explained, “he's a thinker, and he's a doer.”

[26:33] They don't write books about people that stopped there.

[28:48] Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller by Ron Chernow (Founders #248) and John D: The Founding Father of the Rockefellers by David Freeman Hawke. (#254)

[30:22] He seemed to strive for the sake of striving.

[30:44] If you're on a mans side you stay on that mans side or you're no better than a goddamn animal.

[31:11] The world is a mere succession of fortunes made and lost, lessons learned and forgotten and learned again.

[35:41] A man whose commitment could not be questioned, who fed his own brothers to the jungle.

[36:00] The Forgotten Highlander: An Incredible WWII Story of Survival in the Pacificby Alistair Urquhart.

[37:02] Why the Founders of United Fruit were the Rockefellers of bananas.

[43:23] He kept quiet because talking only drives up the price.

[44:19] There are times when certain cards sit unclaimed in the common pile, when certain properties become available that will never be available again. A good businessman feels these moments like a fall in the barometric pressure. A great businessman is dumb enough to act on them even when he cannot afford to.

[49:30] He believed in the transcendent power of physical labor—that a man can free his soul only by exhausting his body.

[58:04] He disdained bureaucracy and hated paperwork. So seldom did he dictate a letter that he requires no full-time secretary.

[1:00:01] He was respected because he understood the trade. By the time he was 40 he had served in every position. There was not a job he could not do nor a task he could not accomplish. He considered it a secret of his success.

[1:01:02] Rick Rubin: In the Studio by Jake Brown. (Founders #245)

[1:04:00] Zemurray was the founder, forever on the attack, at work, in progress, growing by trial and error.

[1:06:44] Here was a self-made man, filled with the most dangerous kind of confidence: he had done it before and believed he could do it again. This gave him the air of a berserker, who says, If you're going to fight me, you better kill me. If you’ve ever known such a person, you will recognize the type at once. If he does not say much, it's because he considers small talk a weakness. Wars are not won by running your mouth. I'm describing a once essential American type that has largely vanished. Men who channeled all their love and fear into the business, the factory, the plantation, the shop.

[1:07:44] Founder Mentality vs Big Company Mentality: When this mess of deeds came to light, United Fruit did what big bureaucracy-heavy companies always do: hired lawyers and investigators to search every file for the identity of the true owner. This took months. In the meantime, Zemurray, meeting separately with each claimant, simply bought the land from them both. He bought it twice paid a little more, yes, but if you factor in the cost of all those lawyers, probably still spent less than United Fruit and came away with the prize.

[1:09:04] His philosophy: Get up first, work harder, get your hands in the dirt and blood in your eyes.

[1:13:02] For every move there is a counter move. For every disaster there is a recovery. He never lost faith in his own agency.

[1:13:57] A man focused on the near horizon of costs can sometimes lose sight of the far horizon of potential windfall.

[1:16:22] You gentlemen have been fucking up this business long enough. I'm going to straighten it out.

[1:19:03] In a time of crisis the mere evidence of activity can be enough to get things moving.

[1:19:42] Zemurray was never heard to bitch or justify. He was a member of a generation that lived by the maxim: Never complain, never explain.

[1:23:08] The Father of Spin: Edward L. Bernays and the Birth of Public Relations by Larry Tye

[1:24:14] He should link his private interest to a public cause.

[1:25:32] In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses, who harness old social forces and contrive new ways to bind and guide the world.

[1:28:28] Sam's defining characteristic was his belief in his own agency, his refusal to despair. No story is without the possibility of redemption; with cleverness and hustle, the worst can be overcome. I can't help but feel that we would do well by emulating Sam Zemurray–not the brutality or the conquest, but the righteous anger that sent the striver into the boardroom of laughing elites, waving his proxies, shouting, "You gentlemen have been fucking up this business long enough. I'm going to straighten it out.

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Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com

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“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 John D: The Founding Father of the Rockefellers by David Freeman Hawke.

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[0:07] He transmitted messages in code and secrecy covered all of his operations.

[0:39]  Rockefeller compared himself to Napoleon.

[2:20] He could think quicker and along more individual and original lines than any of them.

[2:35] It is always hard to successfully control what you don't understand.

[3:32] Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller by Ron Chernow. (Founders #248)

[7:27] By the time I was a man — long before it —I had learned the underlying principles of business and the rules of business as well as many men acquire them by the time they are 40. I needed no one to advise me about the nature of transactions with which I had been carrying on since childhood.

[8:59] Random Reminiscences of Men and Events by John D. Rockefeller. (Founders #148)

[10:55] You should try to expose yourself to experiences that are slightly ahead of your skillset or understanding and you should do so constantly.

[13:48] A veteran of long-distance provider MCI, Price came to Amazon in 1999. He blundered early by suggesting in a meeting that Amazon executives who traveled frequently should be permitted to fly business-class. Bezos often said he wanted his colleagues to speak their minds, but at times it seemed he did not appreciate being personally challenged. “You would have thought I was trying to stop the Earth from tilting on its axis,” Price says, recalling that moment with horror years later. “Jeff slammed his hand on the table and said, ‘That is not how an owner thinks! That’s the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard.’ — The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon by Brad Stone (Founders #179)

[18:42] He saw that posted rates, supposedly fixed, could also be negotiated. All was not as it seemed on the outside.

[20:45] He was the greatest borrower I ever saw.

[22:12] What if the president of a bank refused to make me a loan? That was nothing. That made no difference to me; simply meant that I must look elsewhere until I got what I wanted.

[26:07] Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire by James Wallace and Jim Erickson (Founders #140)

[26:41] Lost from view is the Rockefeller that Cleveland knew in the 1860s— a vigorous, alert gentleman with a quiet, but extraordinary personality.

[29:10] Small egos do not build giant companies.

[30:23] When Money Was In Fashion: Henry Goldman, Goldman Sachs, and the Founding of Wall Street by June Breton Fisher. (Founders #255)

[33:10] The customer-experience path we've chosen requires us to have an efficient cost structure. The good news for shareowners is that we see much opportunity for improvement in that regard. Everywhere we look we find what experienced Japanese manufacturers would call muda, or waste.* I find this incredibly energizing. I see it as potential-years and years of variable and fixed productivity gains and more efficient, higher velocity, more flexible capital expenditures. — Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos (Founders #155)

[34:54] Other refiners groused about these restrictions, but in general they accepted them as facts to live with. Rockefeller refused to do so.

[38:55] Last Train to Paradise: Henry Flagler and the Spectacular Rise and Fall of the Railroad that Crossed an Ocean by Les Standiford. (Founders #247)

[40:15] You don’t want turnover on your core product team. Knowledge compounds. Don’t interrupt the compounding. — Softwar: An Intimate Portrait of Larry Ellison and Oracle by Matthew Symonds (Founders #124)

[47:47] 1. You raise money so you can increase production. 2. Use your increased production to get better rates on transportation than other refiners. 3. Use your increased profits —because you have better transportation —to buy your competitors. 4. You continue to find secret sources of income.

[55:23] Most simply doubted that Rockefeller's plan would work. John, it cannot be done, they said.

[56:13] It was ruthless efficiency and hyper competence.

[1:00:07] Rockefeller loves secret allies.

[1:00:31] The secret ownership of other companies was so well preserved that often a refiner enraged by Standard’s ruthless tactics would refuse its offer to buy him out and sell instead to a local competitor—unaware that he had in fact sold out to Standard.

[1:02:01] He believed that Standard Oil stock is the most valuable thing in the world to own and always bought more of it.

[1:05:57] Check out how Rockefeller turns an expense into a profit center: Standard purchased a half interest in Chess, Carley & Company, the largest distributor of refined oil to the South and Southwest. Together they purchased a number of the newly introduced bulk tank cars. Chess-Carley shipped turpentine from southern pine forests to Cleveland, where the cars were emptied and the turpentine was sold in the local market. The tank cars were then filled with kerosene and sent back to Louisville for distribution. In a single swoop the huge expense of shipment by barrels had been eliminated.

[1:09:22] He proceeded in the same steady, methodical way that a farmer plowed a field.

[1:13:47] The danger Potts and the Pennsylvania railroad posed to his creation convinced Rockefeller that the time had come to pick a fight with the world's largest industrial corporation.

[1:23:20] Rockefeller would have horse-drawn carriages drive up and down the streets and sell oil directly.

[1:28:28] I think it is fair to say that the strong men who were competitors in the oil refining business, the aggressive men in the best financial condition, and the most intelligent, indeed the class of men who would be most likely to survive in the competitive struggle, were the men who were most likely to take up our idea of cooperation.

[1:33:09] Dark Genius of Wall Street: The Misunderstood Life of Jay Gould, King of the Robber Barons by Edward J. Renehan Jr.

[1:35:38] Jay Gould was the single most unsettling force ever to appear on the American industrial scene.

[1:36:22] Among wheelers and dealers of his day Gould had no peer.

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“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 When Money Was In Fashion: Henry Goldman, Goldman Sachs, and the Founding of Wall Street by June Breton Fisher.

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[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.”

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“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 Socrates: A Man for Our Times by Paul Johnson.

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[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.

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“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 Franklin & Washington: The Founding Partnership by Edward Larson.

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[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)

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers. ”— Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

What I learned from reading The Richest Man Who Ever Lived: The Life and Times of Jacob Fugger by Greg Steinmetz.

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[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.

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“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

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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! 

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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

What I learned from reading I, Steve: Steve Jobs In His Own Words by George Beahm.

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Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com

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[1:05]

On Steve Jobs

#5 Steve Jobs: The Biography
#19 Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader
#76 Return To The Little Kingdom: Steve Jobs and The Creation of Apple
#77 Steve Jobs & The NeXT Big Thing
#204 Inside Steve Jobs' Brain
#214 Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography
#235 To Pixar And Beyond: My Unlikely Journey with Steve Jobs to Make Entertainment History

Bonus Episodes on Steve Jobs

Insanely Simple: The Obsession That Drives Apple's Success (Between #112 and #113)
Creative Selection: Inside Apple's Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs (Between #110 and #111)

On Jony Ive and Steve Jobs

#178 Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple's Greatest Products

On Ed Catmull and Steve Jobs

#34 Creativity Inc: Overcoming The Unseen Forces That Stand In The Way of True Inspiration

On Steve Jobs and several other technology company founders

#157 The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution

#208 In the Company of Giants: Candid Conversations With the Visionaries of the Digital World

[3:13] We're not going to be the first to this party, but we're going to be the best.

[4:54] Company Focus: We do no market research. We don't hire consultants. We just want to make great products.

[5:06] The roots of Apple were to build computers for people, not for corporations. The world doesn't need another Dell or Compaq.

[5:52] Nearly all the founders I’ve read about have a handful of ideas/principles that are important to them and they just repeat and pound away at them forever.

[7:00] You can oftentimes arrive at some very elegant and simple solutions. Most people just don't put in the time or energy to get there.

[8:09] I think of Founders as a tool for working professionals. And what that tool does is it gets ideas from the history of entrepreneurship into your brain so then you can use them in your work. It just so happens that a podcast is a great way to achieve that goal.

[8:48] Tim Ferriss Podcast #596 with Ed Thorp

[8:50] A Man for All Markets: From Las Vegas to Wall Street, How I Beat the Dealer and the Market by Ed Thorp. (Founders 222)

[10:43] In most people's vocabularies, design means veneer. It's interior decorating. It's the fabric of the curtains and the sofa. But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design. Design is the fundamental soul of a man-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service.

[12:05] The Essential Difference: The Lisa people wanted to do something great. And the Mac people want to do something insanely great. The difference shows.

[14:21] Sure, what we do has to make commercial sense, but it's never the starting point. We start with the product and the user experience.

[15:57] Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader by Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli. (Founders #19)

[16:41] We had a passion to do this one simple thing.

[16:51] And that's really important because he's saying I wasn't trying to build the biggest company. I wasn't trying to build a trillion dollar company. It wasn't doing any of that. Those things happen later as a by-product of what I was actually focused on, which is just building the best computer that I wanted to use.

[17:14] In the Company of Giants: Candid Conversations With the Visionaries of the Digital World by Rama Dev Jager and Rafael Ortiz.  (Founders #208 )

[17:41] It comes down to trying to expose yourself to the best things that humans have done and then try to bring those things in to what you're doing. Picasso had a saying: good artists copy, great artists steal. And we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.

[20:29] Our belief was that if we kept putting great products in front of customers, they would continue to open their wallets.

[21:06]  A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age by Jimmy Soni and Rob Goodman (Founders #95) “A very small percentage of the population produces the greatest proportion of the important ideas. There are some people if you shoot one idea into the brain, you will get half an idea out. There are other people who are beyond this point at which they produce two ideas for each idea sent in.”

[22:29] Edwin land episodes:

Insisting On The Impossible: The Life of Edwin Land and Instant: The Story of Polaroid (Founders #40)

The Instant Image: Edwin Land and The Polaroid Experience by Mark Olshaker. (Founders #132)

Land’s Polaroid: A Company and The Man Who Invented It by Peter C. Wensberg. (Founders #133)

A Triumph of Genius: Edwin Land, Polaroid, and the Kodak Patent War by Ronald K. Fierstein. (Founders #134)

[25:01] Macintosh was basically this relatively small company in Cupertino, California, taking on the goliath, IBM, and saying "Wait a minute, your way is wrong. This is not the way we want computers to go. This is not the legacy we want to leave. This is not what we want our kids to be learning. This is wrong and we are going to show you the right way to do it and here it is and it is so much better.

[27:47] Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple's Greatest Productsby Leander Kahney. (
(Founders #178)

[29:00] Enzo Ferrari: Power, Politics, and the Making of an Automobile Empire by Luca Dal Monte (Founders #98)

[34:39] On meeting his wife, Laurene: I was in the parking lot, with the key in the car, and I thought to myself: If this is my last night on earth, would I rather spend it at a business meeting or with this woman? I ran across the parking lot, asked her if she'd have dinner with me. She said yes, we walked into town, and we've been together ever since.

[37:26] It's not about pop culture, and it's not about fooling people, and it's not about convincing people that they want something they don't. We figure out what we want. And I think we're pretty good at having the right discipline to think through whether a lot of other people are going to want it, too. That's what we get paid to do.

[41:29] Constellation Software Inc. President's Letters by Mark Leonard. (Founders #246)

[42:30] Made in Japan: Akio Morita and Sony by Akio Morita. (Founders #102)

[44:36] Victory in our industry is spelled survival.

[45:21] Once you get into the problem you see that it's complicated, and you come up with all these convoluted solutions. That's where most people stop, and the solutions tend to work for a while. But the really great person will keep going, find the underlying problem, and come up with an elegant solution that works on every level.

[48:15] Churchill by Paul Johnson (Founders #225)

[48:25] I would trade all my technology for an afternoon with Socrates.

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“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 Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller by Ron Chernow. 

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[2:15]  Rockefeller trained himself to reveal as little as possible

[4:22] Once Rockefeller set his mind to something he brought awesome powers of concentration to bear.

[4:44] My whole life has been spent trying to teach people that intense concentration for hour after hour can bring out in people resources they didn’t know they had. —Edwin Land

[9:00] When playing checkers or chess, he showed exceptional caution, studying each move at length, working out every possible countermove in his head. "I'll move just as soon as I get it figured out," he told opponents who tried to rush him. "You don't think I'm playing to get beaten, do you?"

[9:20] To ensure that he won, he submitted to games only where he could dictate the rules. Despite his slow, ponderous style, once he had thoroughly mulled over his plan of action, he had the power of quick decision.

[14:49] When John was child, Bill would urge him to leap from his high chair into his waiting arms. One day he dropped his arms letting his astonished son crash to the floor. Remember, Bill lectured him, never trust anyone completely. Not even me.

[15:32] The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst by David Nasaw (Founders #145) He didn't care what people thought of him and despised society.

[16:13] Rockefeller analyzed work, broke it down into component parts, and figured out how to perform it most economically.

[18:49] He was a confirmed exponent of positive thinking.

[19:10] Rockefeller was the sort of stubborn person who only grew more determined with rejection.

[25:14] Rockefeller wasn't one to dawdle in an unprofitable concern. His career had few wasted steps, and he never vacillated when the moment ripened for advancement.

[26:20] He's constantly praising adversity in early life as giving him strength to deal with all the stuff he had to deal with later on his life.

[26:49] Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print, and Power by James McGrath Morris. (Founders #135) He was so industrious that he became a positive annoyance to others who felt less inclined to work.

[27:17] Your future hangs on every day that passes.

[36:13] If it is of critical importance to your business you have to do it yourself.

[36:42] In-N-Out Burger: A Behind-the-Counter Look at the Fast-Food Chain That Breaks All the Rules by Stacy Perman. (Founders #244)

[38:36] He would never experience a single year of loss.

[39:30] Two quotes from Charlie Munger:

The wise ones bet heavily when the world offers them that opportunity. They bet big when they have the odds. And the rest of the time, they don't. It's just that simple. Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger. (Founders #90)

You should remember that good ideas are rare—when the odds are greatly in your favor, bet heavily. Tao of Charlie Munger: A Compilation of Quotes from Berkshire Hathaway's Vice Chairman on Life, Business, and the Pursuit of Wealth With Commentary by David Clark (Founders #78)

[41:03] He's gonna to have a massive advantage over other people who only wanted to book short-term profits.

[42:01]  The Clarks were the first of many business partners to underrate the audacity of the quietly calculating Rockefeller, who bided his time as he figured out how to get rid of them.

[44:27] He's super frugal on one end of the spectrum. Extremely frugal! Not going to let his business waste a penny. But he's also —on the very other end of the spectrum— willing to spend and to borrow and to go big. I will borrow every single dollar the banks will give me. He is the weird combination of extreme frugality and extreme boldness.

[46:08]  Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue by Ryan Holiday (Founders 31)  On that day his partners “woke up and saw for the first time that my mind had not been idle while they were talking so big and loud,” he would say later. They were shocked. They’d seen their empire dismantled and taken from them by the young man they had dismissed. Rockefeller had wanted it more.

[47:13] On that day his partners “woke up and saw for the first time that my mind had not been idle while they were talking so big and loud,” he would say later. They were shocked. They’d seen their empire dismantled and taken from them by the young man they had dismissed. Rockefeller had wanted it more.

[47:37] He would never again feel his advancement blocked by shortsighted, mediocre men.

[48:16] From this point forward, there would be no zigzags or squandered energy, only a single-minded focus on objectives that would make him both the wonder and terror of American business.

[48:38] Random Reminiscences of Men and Events by John D. Rockefeller. (Founders #148) We devoted ourselves exclusively to the oil business and its products. That company never went into outside ventures, but kept to the enormous task of perfecting its own organization.

[55:02] He always kept plentiful cash reserves. He won many bidding contests simply because his war chest was deeper.

[55:46] Alexander the Great: The Brief Life and Towering Exploits of History's Greatest Conqueror--As Told By His Original Biographers by Arrian, Plutarch, and Quintus Curtius Rufus. (Founders #232)

[1:05:37] Twenty-nine-year-old John D. Rockefeller demanded that seventy four-year-old Commodore Vanderbilt, the emperor of the railroad world, come to him. This refusal to truckle, bend, or bow to others, this insistence on dealing with other people on his own terms, time, and turf, distinguished Rockefeller throughout his career.

[1:11:07] The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance by Ron Chernow. (Founders #139)

[1:14:16] This is the investment opportunity of a lifetime and they're running in the opposite direction.

[1:23:37] His master plan was to be implemented in a thousand secret, disguised, and indirect ways.

[1:26:37] I have ways of making money you know nothing about.

[1:30:59] You don't have any ambition to drive fast horses, do you?

[1:32:59] Risk Game: Self Portrait of an Entrepreneur by Francis Greenburger. (Founders #243)

[1:34:42] He was now living a fantasy of extravagant wealth and few people beyond the oil business had ever even heard of him.

[1:35:33] Big Brown: The Untold Story of UPS by Greg Niemann. (Founders #192)

[1:36:00] American high society in the 20th century would be loaded with descendants of those refiners who opted for stock.

[1:39:02]  Enzo Ferrari: Power, Politics, and the Making of an Automobile Empire by Luca Dal Monte (Founders #98)

[1:39:30] Success comes from keeping the ears open and the mouth closed.

[1:40:22] Do not many of us who fail to achieve big things, fail because we lack concentration-the art of concentrating the mind on the thing to be done at the proper time and to the exclusion of everything else?

[1:42:31] Copy This!: How I turned Dyslexia, ADHD, and 100 square feet into a company called Kinkos by Paul Orfalea. (Founders #181)

[1:42:40] Part of the Standard Oil gospel was to train your subordinate to do your job. As Rockefeller instructed a recruit, "Has anyone given you the law of these offices? No? It is this: nobody does anything if he can get anybody else to do it. As soon as you can, get some one whom you can rely on, train him in the work, sit down, cock up your heels, and think out some way for the Standard Oil to make some money.” True to this policy, Rockefeller tried to extricate himself from the intricate web of administrative details and dedicate more of his time to broad policy decisions.

[1:49:50] He entered retirement just at the birth of the American automobile industry. The automobile would make John D. Rockefeller far richer in retirement than at work.

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“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 Last Train to Paradise: Henry Flagler and the Spectacular Rise and Fall of the Railroad that Crossed an Ocean by Les Standiford.

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[1:14] The building of the railroad across the ocean was a colossal piece of work born of the same impulse that made individuals believe that pyramids could be raised cathedrals, erected and continents Tamed the highway

[1:31] All that remains of an error where men still lived, who believed that with enough will and energy and money that anything could be accomplished.

[2:13] Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr by Ron Chernow (Founders #16)

[2:35] Meet You in Hell: Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, and the Bitter Partnership That Changed America by Les Standiford. (Founders #73)

The Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie by Andrew Carnegie (Founders #74)

Henry Clay Frick: The Life of the Perfect Capitalist by Quentin Skrabec Jr. (Founders #75)

[5:51] The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin (Founders #62)

[6:24] Benjamin Franklin: An American Life by Walter Isaacson. (Founders #115) “This industry visible to our neighbors began to give us character and credit," Franklin noted. One of the town's prominent merchants told members of his club, "The industry of that Franklin is superior to anything I ever saw of the kind; I see him still at work when I go home from club, and he is at work again before his neighbors are out of bed." Franklin became an apostle of being-and, just as important, of appearing to be-industrious. Even after he became successful, he made a show of personally carting the rolls of paper he bought in a, wheelbarrow down the street to his shop, rather than having a hired hand do it.

[8:54] Ogilvy on Advertising (Founders #82) Set yourself to becoming the best-informed person in the agency on the account to which you are assigned. If, for example, it is a gasoline account, read books on oil geology and the production of petroleum products. Read the trade journals in the field. Spend Saturday mornings in service stations, talking to motorists. Visit your client’s refineries and research laboratories. At the end of your first year, you will know more about the oil business than your boss, and be ready to succeed him.

[10:50] The Essays of Warren Buffett by Warren Buffett and Lawrence Cunningham. (Founders #227) Over the years, a number of very smart people have learned the hard way that a long string of impressive numbers multiplied by a single zero always equals zero. That is not an equation whose effects I would like to experience personally.

[13:20] Rockefeller did not believe in diversification. He said they had no outside interest. That it is an immense task building a successful company. It's silly to go out and diversify into other lines or to make other investments. Focus on your business!

[13:53] Their chief binding passion: The desire to make large sums of money.

[14:13] Random Reminiscences of Men and Events by John D. Rockefeller. (Founders #148)

[19:44] Warren Buffett on MOATs: On a daily basis, the effects of our actions are imperceptible; cumulatively, though, their consequences are enormous. When our long-term competitive position improves as a result of these almost unnoticeable actions, we describe the phenomenon as "widening the moat." When short-term and long-term conflict, widening the moat must take precedence.

[20:06] The way I define moat: Why are you difficult to compete with?

[26:54] For the last 14 or 15 years I have devoted myself exclusively to my business.

[28:00] He had become a creator instead of an accumulator and he had found much more satisfaction in such an accomplishment.

[30:40] Writer, Sailor, Soldier, Spy: Ernest Hemingway's Secret Adventures, 1935-1961 by Nicholas Reynolds. (Founders #194)

[35:54] You have to admire Julia Tuttle. She is relentlessly persistent.

[36:27] Flagler likes to keep his options open and react to new information.

[43:25] It was a time in history when men were tempted no longer to regard themselves as the mercy of the fates —but as masters of their environment.

[46:08] A Man for All Markets: From Las Vegas to Wall Street, How I Beat the Dealer and the Market by Ed Thorp. (Founders #222 and #93)

[46:29] Getting rich and staying rich are two separate skills.

[49:11] It is well-documented that Flagler planned his actions carefully.

[51:06] He is not at all interested in retiring and is in fact, choosing to run directly towards more difficulties.

[51:51] Decoded by Jay Z. (Founders #238) Every hustler knows the value of a feint. It keeps you one step ahead of whoever's listening in.

[52:57] During your attempt at doing something difficult you're going to have several points where all of the options in front of you would not be described as good options.

[57:47] You realize that you were before a man who has suffered and has never wept, who has undergone intense pain and has never sobbed, who has never bent under stress.

[58:12] The only excess I believe I have indulged in has been that of hard work.

[58:58]  Hard work, energy, and accomplishment. For Flagler it seemed to be all he knew and all he needed to know.

[1:07:16] A story about how not panicking can save your life.

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“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 Constellation Software Inc. President's Letters by Mark Leonard.

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[1:10] Business lessons from Mark Leonard by Tren Griffin

[2:11] Newsletter: Liberty’s Highlights The Serendipity Engine: Investing & business, science & technology, and the arts.

[2:59] I don’t like anyone telling me what to do. I don’t like anyone saying I am an authority figure and you will do it this way. I can’t think of anything that annoys me more. I was stuck by the principal. I challenged teachers. I left home early. I had a bootleg radio license. I built a flamethrower. I did things that weren’t accepted by lots of people. That ability to choose what I think is right is something I prize highly.

[4:49] Distant Force: A Memoir of the Teledyne Corporation and the Man Who Created It (Founders #110) and   The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success (Founders #94)

[4:53] Teledyne grows bigger by dividing businesses into smaller parts wherever possible. Singleton claims that this keeps his managers creative and not wasteful.

[5:12] Our preference is to acquire businesses in their entirety and to own them forever.

[8:57]  The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America's Banana King (Founders #37)

[9:18] There are times when certain cards sit unclaimed in the common pile, when certain properties become available that will never be available again. A good businessman feels these moments like a fall in the barometric pressure. A great businessman is dumb enough to act on them even when he cannot afford to.

[12:20] Customer relationships that endure for more than two decades are valuable.

[13:08] The longer we have owned a small software business, the larger and better it has become.

[15:32] Jeff Bezos’s Shareholder Letters. All of them! (Founders #71)

[23:22] We didn't get to that point with central edicts or grand plans. We just had a hunch that our internal ventures could be better managed, and started measuring them. The people involved in the Initiatives generated the data, and with measurement came adjustment and adaptation. It took 6 years, but we have fundamentally changed the mental models of a generation of our managers and employees.

[23:56]  A Man for All Markets: From Las Vegas to Wall Street, How I Beat the Dealer and the Market (Founders #93 and #222)

[28:06] Our business units rarely get large.

[28:26] This suggests that the size and performance of our business units are almost totally unrelated. I believe that these business units are small for a reason...that the advantages of being agile and tight far outweigh economies of scale. I’m not a proponent of handling our “complexity problem” by creating a bunch of 400 employee business units to replace our 40 employee units. I’m looking for ways of “achieving scale” elsewhere.

[29:06] Debt is cheap right now, so it is pretty tempting to use it. Unfortunately, it has a nasty habit of going away when you need it most.

[30:42] The Essays of Warren Buffett (Founders #227)

[32:51] Book recommendation from Mark: Thinking Fast and Slow

[34:53] I love what I'm doing and don't want to stop unless my health deteriorates or the board figures it's time for me to go.

[36:42] My personal preference is to instead focus on keeping our business units small, and the majority of the decision making down at the business level. Partly this is a function of my experience with small high performance teams when I was a venture capitalist, and partly it is a function of seeing that most vertical markets have several viable competitors who exhibit little correlation between their profitability and relative scale. (TRUST IN SMALL GROUPS OF SMART PEOPLE)

[37:35] There are a number of implications if you share my view: We should

a) regularly divide our largest business units into smaller, more focused business units unless there is an overwhelmingly obvious reason to keep them whole,

b) operate the majority of the businesses that we acquire as separate units rather than merge them with existing CSI businesses, and

c) drive down cost at the head office and Operating Group level.

[38:11] I want you to bear with me because I really do think this is a very clear description of what he's building, the advantages the strategy provides, and why he's going to be hard to compete with over the longterm.

[40:13] We have 199 business units. We can run a test in 5, 10, 6, 24, whatever it is —we find what works and we can spread it throughout the entire company and spreading best business practices makes those businesses better. The longer it goes, the more businesses we have, the stronger they get over the time. And it's nice you have a checkbook and a phone but I'm way too far ahead— you'll never catch me is essentially what he's saying.

[42:00] Copy This!: How I turned Dyslexia, ADHD, and 100 square feet into a company called Kinkos (Founders #181)

[43:19] Book recommendation from Mark: The Evolution of Cooperation

[44:52] You Don't Know Jack... or Jerry by Robert O. Babcock.

Jack Henry and Jerry Hall launched a software company in theh back of a small engine repair shop. Thirty years later, Jack Henry and Associates, Inc., is a thriving operation with over 3,700 employees in close to 50 locations around the United States.

[47:22] Book Recommendations from Mark: One Man's Medicine: An Autobiography of Professor Archie Cochrane and Effectiveness and Efficiency, Random Reflections on Health Services by Archie Cochrane

The first book is a moving, idiosyncratic and dryly amusing autobiography of a brilliant and erudite outsider that makes you wish you’d known the man firsthand.

The second is a stinging critique of a well-meaning but entrenched medical establishment, for their ineffective and dangerous medical practices.

[48:23] We spend time on non-randomized observational studies trying to spot business practices that actually add value rather than just adding overhead.

[48:34] My favorite part of Mark’s letters

[51:09] A huge body of academic research confirms that complexity and coordination effort increases at a much faster rate than head count in a growing organization.

[51:50] The business manager needs to be asked why employees and customers wouldn't be better served by splitting that business into smaller units. Our favorite outcome in this sort of situation is that the original business manager runs a large piece of the original business and spins off a new business unit run by one of his or her proteges.

[53:39] Something wonderful happens when you spin off a new business unit.

[54:16] When you get big you lose entrepreneurship.

[54:43] If I were advising my 35 or 40-year-old self on where to go, I would tell him to stay put. Become a master Craftsman in the art of managing your VMS business. It is the most satisfying job in Constellation and will generate more than enough wealth for you to live very comfortably and provide for your family.

[55:30] You can't be normal and expect abnormal results.

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“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 Rick Rubin: In the Studio by Jake Brown.

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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 records that have a timeless quality.

[1:13:58] Mozart: A Life by Paul Johnson. (Founders #240)

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“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

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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.

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[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 California freeway network became a significant factor in In-N-Out's own rising popularity.

[50:45] He's got a handful of really simple principles he refuses to deviate from. He focuses on quality and does that for decade after decade, He's giving us somewhat of a blueprint to build a cult-like following. People respond to this because you've put their interest ahead of your own.

[51:56] Nuts!: Southwest Airlines' Crazy Recipe for Business and Personal Success(Founders #56)

[56:50] You don't build a cult following by trying to wring more money out of cheaper products.

[58:19] I'm focused on the customer. I'm focused on quality. My competitors are focused on a spreadsheet.

[59:56] Limit the number of details to perfect and make every detail perfect. That is exactly what Harry Snyder did.

[1:00:41] From his perspective, In-N-Out was simply a different creature than its competitors.

[1:01:07] He was very much about problem solving before it became a problem.

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“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 Risk Game: Self Portrait of an Entrepreneur by Francis Greenburger.

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[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.

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“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.

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[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.

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“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 Mozart: A Life by Paul Johnson.

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[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!

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“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