robert noyce

What I learned from reading Insull: The Rise and Fall of A Billionaire Utility Tycoon by Forrest McDonald. 

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(0:01) Insull had been in the electric business as long as there had been an electric business.

(4:00) He awoke early, abruptly, completely, bursting with energy; yet he gained momentum as the day wore on, and long into the night. Sam had near-demonic energy.

(5:00) Sam's most obvious attribute was a capacity for racing through large quantities of reading material, effortlessly perceiving its important assumptions and generalizations, and thoroughly assimilating its salient details.

(7:00) He eagerly embraced platitudes:

• Idle hands are the devil's workshop

• Time is money

• Things are simply "done" or "not done"

• One reveres one's family

• Only that which is useful is good

• Survival of the fittest

(8:00) Opportunity handled well leads to more opportunity.

(12:00) He developed an ability to concentrate on a single subject and to completely shut out everything else, no matter how pressing.

(13:00) A theme from the robber baron era: How do we turn a luxury product into a necessity?

(18:00) If you do everything you will win.  — Working by Robert Caro. (Founders #305) and The Mind of Napoleon: A Selection of His Written and Spoken Words edited by J. Christopher Herold. (Founders #302)

(19:00) Insull reread every one of Edison's European contracts, and he took it upon himself to write weekly letters to Johnson, summarizing the fluctuations in the telephone situation and outlining Edison's shifting interests in connection with it. These letters proved to be the best selling points Johnson could have in recommending Insull to Edison.

(20:00) One of his most deep-rooted traits was that he was absolutely unable to imagine the possibility of his own failure; he entirely lacked the sense of caution of those who doubt themselves.

(21:00) Caution, like relaxation, was unnatural to him.

(21:00) We will make electric lights so cheap that only the rich will be able to burn candles.

(27:00) Edison had an almost pathological hostility to any form of system, order, or discipline imposed from without.

(33:00) Warren Buffett on leverage:

Unquestionably, some people have become very rich through the use of borrowed money. However, that's also been a way to get very poor. When leverage works, it magnifies your gains. Your spouse thinks you're clever, and your neighbors get envious. But leverage is addictive. Once having profited from its wonders, very few people retreat to more conservative practices.

And [to repeat] as we all learned in third grade-and some relearned in 2008–any series of positive numbers, however impressive the numbers may be, evaporates when multiplied by a single zero. History tells us that leverage all too often produces zeroes, even when it is employed by very smart people.

Leverage, of course, can be lethal to businesses as well. Companies with large debts often assume that these obligations can be refinanced as they mature. That assumption is usually valid. Occasionally, though, either because of company-specific problems or a worldwide shortage of credit, maturities must actually be met by payment. For that, only cash will do the job.

— The Essays of Warren Buffett by Warren Buffett and Lawrence Cunningham. (Founders #227)

(35:00) Smart men go broke three ways: liquor, ladies and leverage. — Charlie Munger

(42:00) To make electricity as cheap as possible we need the largest base of customers. The way to get the largest base of customers is through monopoly.

(45:00) He understood the potential of his industry in a way others did not.

(45:00) We are only going to do things that other people can not do.

(47:00) While money may not buy friends it will keep many a man from becoming an enemy.

(50:00) The moment of applause was the moment for action.

(1:00:00) You need to tell your customers what goes into making your product. It may be normal to you because it is your everyday thing. It is not normal to them. And if you explain and you educate your customers they will find it fascinating. And as a result it will make the service and the product you provide more valuable in their eyes.

(1:00:00) Sam Insull made electric power so abundant and cheap in the United States that people who had never expected to use it, found it as natural and as necessary as breathing.

(1:06:00) He took his leverage too high and the structure of the leverage was a problem. —  Ted Turner's Autobiography.(Founders #327)

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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 The Man Behind the Microchip: Robert Noyce and the Invention of Silicon Valley by Leslie Berlin.

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[0:01] Bob Noyce took me under his wing,” Steve Jobs explains. “I was young, in my twenties. He was in his early fifties. He tried to give me the lay of the land, give me a perspective that I could only partially understand.” Jobs continues, “You can’t really understand what is going on now unless you understand what came before.” 

[2:00] He inspired in nearly everyone whom he encountered a sense that the future had no limits , and that together they could , as he liked to say, “Go off and do something wonderful.” 

[3:15] Warren Buffett , who served on a college board with Noyce for several years said: “Everybody liked Bob. He was an extraordinarily smart guy who didn’t need to let you know he was that smart. He could be your neighbor, but with lots of machinery in his head.” 

[12:01] Noyce was slowly gathering experiences that would anchor his adult approach to life, which was not so much an approach as a headlong rush into any challenge with the unshakable assumption that he would emerge not only successful, but triumphant. 

[14:18] Every night before he fell asleep, Noyce would mentally rehearse each of his dives in slow motion until he could see himself executing them perfectly. He called this habit “envisioning myself at the next level,” and he carried it with him throughout his life. In his mind’s eye, he could always see himself achieving something more. 

[21:16] Bob was not the type to slow down for much of anything. 

[33:02] His approach was to know the science cold and then “forget about it.” He did not slog or grind his way to ideas; he felt they just came to him. When he heard Picasso’s famous line about artistic creativity — “I do not seek; I find” — Noyce said that he invented in the same way. 

[35:31] “I don’t have any recollection of a ‘ Boom! There it is!’ light bulb going off, ”Noyce later said of his ideas. Instead, he conceived of the integrated circuit in an iterative method he described thus: “[ I thought,] let’s see, if we could do this, we can do that. If we can do that, then we can do this. [It was] a logical sequence. If I hit a wall, I’d back up and then find a path, conceptually, all the way through to the end. [Once you have that path], you can come back and start refining, thinking in little steps that will take you there. Once you get to the point that you can see the top of the mountain, then you know you can get there.” 

[45:48] We were a hard, young, hungry group. Our attitude was ‘We don’t give a damn what money you have to offer, buddy. We’re going to do this ourselves.’

[1:08:55] Noyce was invited to dinner at the home of an entrepreneur whose company the his fund had supported. After the dishes had been cleared and the children sent to bed, Noyce listened as the company founder explained that some day, if the business did well, he would like to move his family into a bigger, nicer house. Noyce looked up at him and said very quietly, “You’ve got a nice family. I screwed up mine. Just stay where you are.” Twenty - five years and a successful company later, the entrepreneur has not moved. 

[1:09:45] His financial success directly benefited the entrepreneurs whose companies he funded, but the stories about Noyce’s success indirectly inspired many more. One entrepreneur put it this way: “Why do we love this dynamic environment? I’ll tell you why. Because we have seen what Steve Jobs, Bob Noyce, Nolan Bushnell [founder of Atari], and many others have done, and we know it can and will happen many times again. ”In other words, if they could do it, why couldn’t he? Such rationale functioned as a self - fulfilling prophecy in Silicon Valley, propelling the region forward on a self - perpetuating cycle of entrepreneurship and wealth. (This is what I hope Founders does.) 

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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 Swimming Across by Andrew S. Grove. 

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[0:01] I was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1936. By the time I was twenty, I had lived through a Hungarian Fascist dictatorship, German military occupation, the Nazis’ “Final Solution,” the siege of Budapest by the Soviet Red Army, a period of chaotic democracy in the years immediately after the war, a variety of repressive Communist regimes, and a popular uprising that was put down at gunpoint. 

[3:02] Some 200,000 Hungarians escaped to the West. I was one of them. 

[8:05] A subtle and compelling commentary on the power to endure. 

[10:03] He dedicates this book to his mom. He says: To my mother, who gave me the gift of life more than once.  

[13:03] People avoided looking at us. Even people whom we knew wouldn’t meet our eyes. It was as if a barrier was growing between us and everyone else. 

[14:01] My mother returned in a couple of hours, shaken up. She told me that the man who came for her was a policeman who arrested her along with the superintendent’s wife. Feeding Jewish people was against the law. The policeman told her that she should have bid me a more proper good-bye because she probably would not see me again. 

[18:35] There was so much pressure in my chest that I could barely breathe. After a while, my mother came back for me. She was very tense and angry. She carried me to bed and we went to sleep. Later on that night, some more Russians came into our cellar. My mother yelled at them something about how all three of the women had already done it today. 

[23:02] An emaciated man, filthy and in a ragged soldier’s uniform, was standing at the open door. I thought: This must be my father. His arms and legs were like sticks. 

[25:49] There was nothing to be done. The Communist government called all the shots. They increasingly interfered with our daily life. They took away my parents’ business, they uprooted me from my school. 

[28:09] I always had a tight feeling in my chest when we went by because by now I knew my relatives had been taken from that house to be killed. 

[33:30] Life is like a big lake. All the boys get in the water at one end and start swimming. Not all of them will swim across. But one of them, I’m sure will. That one is Grove. 

[37:28] In the middle of one bitterly cold winter night, my father’s battalion was made to strip naked and climb trees, and the guards sprayed them with water and watched and laughed as one after another fell out of the trees frozen to death. 

[43:52] I thought I had made an important discovery. I realized that it’s good to have at least two interests in your life. If you have only one interest and that goes sour, there’s nothing to act as a counterbalance to lift your mood. But if you have more than one interest, chances are something will always go okay. 

[52:11] I wished there were no mortars falling on our house and no Russian soldiers in our apartment. I wanted the trams to run again. I wanted to go back to school. I wanted life to go back to normal. 

[56:24] After a while, we emerged from the woods. I could see some faint lights far across an open field. The man came close to us. “Those lights are Austria’, he whispered. ‘Head towards them and don’t take your eyes off them. This is as far as I go.’ And he was gone. I didn’t take my eyes off those lights. I trudged toward them as if they were a magnet. 

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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 Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution by Walter Isaacson.

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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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Subscribers can: 

-ask me questions directly

-listen to Ask Me Anything (AMA) episodes

-listen to every bonus episode

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[0:29] This is the story of those pioneers hackers, inventors, and entrepreneurs. Who they were, how their minds worked, and what made them so creative. 

[8:41] She developed a somewhat outsize opinion of her talents as a genius. In her [Ada Lovelace] letter to Babbage, she wrote, “Do not reckon me conceited but I believe I have the power of going just as far as I like in such pursuits.” 

[14:10] The reality is that Ada’s contribution was both profound and inspirational. More than any other person of her era, she was able to glimpse a future in which machines would become partners of the human imagination. 

[16:37] Alan Turing was slow to learn that indistinct line that separated initiative from disobedience.

[20:15] If a mentally superhuman race ever develops its members will resemble John Von Neumann. 

[23:40] His [William Shockley] tenacity was ferocious. In any situation, he simply had to have his way. 

[28:38] Bob Noyce described his excitement more vividly: “The concept hit me like the atom bomb. It was simply astonishing. Just the whole concept. It was one of those ideas that just jolts you out of the rut, gets you thinking in a different way. 

[29:06] Some leaders are able to be willful and demanding while still inspiring loyalty. They celebrate audaciousness in a way that makes them charismatic Steve Jobs,  for example; his personal manifesto dressed in the guise of a TV ad, began, “Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in square holes.” Amazon's founder, Jeff Bezos has the same ability to inspire. The knack is to get people to follow you, even to places that they may not think they can go, by motivating them to share your sense of mission. 

[38:26] As Grove wrote in his memoir, Swimming Across, “By the time I was twenty, I had lived through a Hungarian Fascist dictatorship, German military occupation, the Nazi’s final solution, the siege of Budapest by the Soviet Red Army, a period of chaotic democracy in the years immediately after the war, a variety of repressive Communist regimes, and a popular uprising that was put down at gunpoint. 

[39:10] Grove had a blunt, no-bullshit style. It was the same approach Steve jobs would later use: brutal honesty, clear focus, and a demanding drive for excellence. 

[39:40] Grove’s mantra was “Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive.” 

[40:24]  Engineering the game was easy. Growing the company without money was hard. 

[42:40] Vannevar Bush was a man of strong opinions, which he expressed and applied with vigor, yet he stood in all of the mysteries of nature, had a warm tolerance for human frailty, and was open-minded to change 

[47:17] Gate was also a rebel with little respect for authority. He did not believe in being deferential. 

[47:51] Jobs later said he learned some important lessons at Atari, the most profound being the need to keep interfaces friendly and intuitive. Instructions should be insanely simple: “Insert quarters, avoid Klingons.” Devices should not need manuals. That simplicity rubbed off on him and made him a very focused product person. 

[48:47]  Steve Jobs’ interesting way to think about a new market: My vision was to create the first fully packaged computer. We were no longer aiming for the handful of hobbyists who liked to assemble their own computers, who knew how to buy transformers and keyboards. For every one of them, there were a thousand people who would want the machine to be ready to run. 

Innovation will come from people who are able to link beauty to engineering, humanity to technology, and poetry to processors. [57:21]

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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 Intel Trinity: How Robert Noyce, Gordon Moore, and Andy Grove Built the World's Most Important Company by Michael Malone.