Founders

What I learned from reading Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon by Colin Bryar and Bill Carr.---(8:00) Principles Jeff Bezos would repeat: customer obsession, innovation, frugality, personal ownership, bias for action, high standards.(10:30) Single threaded leadership: For each project, there is a single leader whose focus is that project and that project alone, and that leader oversees teams of people whose attention is focused on that one project.(11:00) The best thing I did as a manager at PayPal was to make every person in the company responsible for doing just one thing. Every employee’s one thing was unique, and everyone knew I would evaluate him only on that one thing. I had started doing this just to simplify the task of managing people. But then I noticed a deeper result: defining roles reduced conflict. — Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Futureby Peter Thiel. (Founders #278)  (12:30) Jeff said many times: We need to eliminate communication, not enc

What I learned from reading Young Titan: The Making of Winston Churchill by Michael Shelden. ----Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book----(5:00) It was better for the world that he had known failure and suffered moments of self doubt.(6:00) There was something in Churchill's character that simply wouldn't allow him to give up. He was a dangerous optimist.(8:00) History likes winners.(9:30) The adventures and ordeals of those early years were essential to the making of a man who triumphed in the second world war.(10:00) At 40 he was largely written off as a man whose best days were behind him. (Churchill shares a lot of parallels with Steve Jobs)(10:30) He fashioned his career as a grand experiment to prove that he could work his will on his times. Persevering in that approach, despite repeated setbacks and often harsh ridicule of those who didn't share his high opinion of himself.(13:00) At the heart of this story is an irrepressible spirit.(17:30) Little men let events tak

What I learned from rereading The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America's Banana King by Rich Cohen.----Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book----[4:47] 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.[8:56] Tycoon's War: How Cornelius Vanderbilt Invaded a Country to Overthrow America's Most Famous Military Adventurer by Stephen Dando-Collins (Founders #55)[10:00] Unlike Vanderbilt's other adversaries William Walker was not afraid of Cornelius when he should have been.[12:21] The immigrants of that era could not afford to be children.[12:42] The Adventures of Herbie Cohen: World's Greatest Negotiator by Rich Cohen[12:54] He was driven by the sa

What I learned from reading Hero of the Empire: The Boer War, a Daring Escape, and the Making of Winston Churchill by Candice Millard. ---Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book---(2:30) He was meant not just to fight for his country, but one day to lead it. Although he believed this without question, he still had to convince everyone else.(3:30) He didn't even have a plan. Just the unshakeable conviction that he was destined for greatness.(4:00) Churchill by Paul Johnson. (Founders #225)(4:30) Young Titan: The Making of Winston Churchill by Michael Shelden(5:00) The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey by Candice Millard. (Founders #175)(8:00) In his open pursuit of fame and popular favor, Churchill seemed far less Victorian than Rooseveltian.(8:30) Winston advertises himself as simply and as unconsciously as he breathes. Churchill was widely criticized for being a self advertiser.(9:30) “I am certainly not one of those who need to be prodded. In fact, if any

What I learned from the first 6 years of making Founders.---I'm doing a live show with Patrick OShaughnessy (Invest Like the Best) on October 19th in New York City. Get your tickets here!---I recorded a new episode with Patrick. It should be out soon. Follow Invest Like the Best in your favorite podcast app so you don't miss it. 

What I learned from reading The Forgotten Highlander: An Incredible WWII Story of Survival in the Pacific by Alistair Urquhart.---Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book---(4:00) I hope that this book will be inspirational and offer hope to those who suffer adversity in their daily lives.(10:00) You might as well send a cow in pursuit of a rabbit. The Indians were accustomed to these woods. — Franklin & Washington: The Founding Partnership by Edward Larson. (Founders #251)(13:30) When you reach a large goal or finally get to the top, the distractions and new assumptions can be dizzying. First comes heightened confidence, followed quickly by overconfidence, arrogance, and a sense that “we’ve mastered it; we’ve figured it out; we’re golden.” But the gold can tarnish quickly. Mastery requires endless remastery. In fact, I don’t believe there is ever true mastery. It is a process, not a destination. — The Score Takes Care of Itself: My Philosophy of Leadership by Bill Walsh.

What I learned from rereading Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration by Ed Catmull. ---Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book---(7:00) Walt Disney created a made-up world, used cutting-edge technology to enable it, and then told us how he’d done it.(7:30) Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson. (Founders #187)(7:30) Both Einstein and Disney inspired me, but Disney affected me more because of his weekly visits to my family's living room.(7:45) Every time some technological breakthrough occurred, Walt Disney incorporated it.(9:30) His dad was the son of an Idaho dirt farmer. His dad was one of 14 kids. 5 of his dad's siblings died as infants. His dad was the first person in his family ever to go to college. He had to work while he was going to college and pay his own way. His dad built the family house with his own hands.(10:30) When you read biographies of people who've done great work, it's remarkable how much luc

What I learned from reading The Bugatti Story by L’Ebe Bugatti.---Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book---(2:01) If there was a prototype operation for what Enzo Ferrari envisioned it had to be what the legendary Ettore Bugatti built in Molsheim. — Enzo Ferrari: The Man and the Machine by Brock Yates. (Founders #220)(7:00) Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari, and Their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans by A. J. Baime. (Founders #97)(14:30) I determined to build a car of my own. I had realized by then that I was completely taken by mechanics. My ideas gave me no rest.(16:00) The two inventors described to each other a singular experience: Each had imagined a perfect new product, whole, already manufactured and sitting before him, and then spent years prodding executives, engineers, and factories to create it with as few compromises as possible. — Instant: The Story of Polaroid by Christopher Bonanos. (Founders #264)(22:00) Faster progress would be made in all fields if conceit d

What I learned from reading Creators: From Chaucer and Durer to Picasso and Disney by Paul Johnson. ---Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book---(2:20) Among the masters of Parisian fashion, Balenciaga was the greatest.(3:00) Christian Dior called Balenciaga “the master of us all" and Coco Chanel said that Balenciaga was "the only couturier in the truest sense of the word. The others are simply fashion designers".(3:30) Jay Gould episodes #258 and #285 (5:00) For the next seventy-four years Balenciaga did a piece of sewing every day of his life.(5:20) Being prolific is underrated. — Paul Graham (Founders #314)(8:45) From the age of three to his mid-twenties he learned thoroughly every aspect of his trade.(17:00) Bernard Arnault (Founders #296)(23:00) What Dior told Boussac: What you need, and I would like to run, is a craftsman’s workshop, in which we would recruit the very best people in the trade, to reestablish in Paris a salon for the greatest luxury and the highest stand

What I learned from reading How To Do Great Work by Paul Graham.---Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book---(2:00) All you need to do is find something you have an aptitude for and great interest in.(2:10) Doing great work means doing something important so well that you expand people's ideas of what's possible.(4:15) How many even discover something they love to work on? A few hundred thousand, perhaps, out of billions.  —How to Do What You Love by Paul Graham(5:10) Always preserve excitingness. (Let what you are excited about guide you)(8:15) If you're excited about some possibility that everyone else ignores, and you have enough expertise to say precisely what they're all overlooking, that's as good a bet as you'll find.(9:15) How To Work Hard by Paul Graham(10:05) When you follow what you are intensely interested in this strange convergence happens where you're working all the time and it feels like you're never working.(10:20) You can't tell what most kinds of work are

What I learned from reading The Nolan Variations: The Movies, Mysteries, and Marvels of Christopher Nolan by Tom Shone.---Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book---(7:00) The only way I know how to work is to sort of burrow in on one project very obsessively.(7:25) People will say to me, "There are people online who are obsessed with Inception or obsessed with Memento.”They're asking me to comment on that, as if I thought it were weird or something, and I'm like, Well, I was obsessed with it for years. Genuinely obsessed with it. So it doesn't strike me as weird. . . I feel like I have managed to wrap them the up in it way I try to wrap myself up.(8:30) The Futurist: The Life and Films of James Cameron by Rebecca Keegan and The Return of James Cameron, Box Office King by Zach Baron. (Founders #311)(11:00) I don’t think of myself as an artist. I’m a craftsman. I don’t make a work of art; I make a movie. — George Lucas: A Life by Brian Jay Jones. (15:30) Steven Spielberg: A Bio

What I learned from reading Lighting Out for the Territory: How Samuel Clemens Headed West and Became Mark Twain by Roy Morris Jr.---One of the best podcasts I've heard this year: Listen to Invest Like The Best #336 Jeremy Giffon Special Situations in Private Markets ---Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book---(7:20) A great way to think about power law people: Their absence leaves of void that no one else can fill.(8:00) His death would not have lengthened the life of the Confederacy or the Union, by a single day. It would, however, have reduced the literary inheritance of the United States by an incalculable amount.(11:20) Opportunity is a strange beast. It frequently appears after a loss.(13:00) In another life Mark Twain would be a cocaine dealer.(17:30) I knew more about retreating than the man that invented retreating.(21:15) The ad itself became legendary: “Wanted: Young, skinny, wiry fellows not over eighteen. Must be expert riders, willing to risk death daily. Orpha

What I learned from reading The Futurist: The Life and Films of James Cameron by Rebecca Keegan and The Return of James Cameron, Box Office King by Zach Baron.(4:00) I watched Titanic at the Titanic. And he actually replied: Yeah, but I madeTitanic at the Titanic.(7:10) I like difficult. I’m attracted by difficult. Difficult is a fucking magnet for me. I go straight to difficult. And I think it probably goes back to this idea that there are lots of smart, really gifted, really talented filmmakers out there that just can’t do the difficult stuff. So that gives me a tactical edge to do something nobody else has ever seen, because the really gifted people don’t fucking want to do it.(7:20) At 68 years old, Cameron wakes up at 4:45 AM and often kick boxes in the morning.(7:45) Self doubt is not something Cameron has a lot of experience with. His confidence preceded his achievements.(9:00) I was going through this stuff, chapter and verse, and making my own notes and all that. I basically gave myself a college edu

What I learned from reading Creators: From Chaucer and Durer to Picasso and Disney by Paul Johnson. ---(3:30) Disney made use of the new technologies throughout his creative life.(4:45) Lists of Paul Johnson books and episodes: 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) Socrates: A Man for Our Times by Paul Johnson. (Founders #252) (5:55) Picasso was essentially self-taught, self-directed, self-promoted, emotionally educated in the teeming brothels of the city, a small but powerfully built monster of assured egoism.(7:30) Most good copywriters fall into two categories. Poets. And killers. Poets see an ad as an end. Killers as a means to an end. If you are both killer and poet, you get rich. — Confessions of an Advertising Man by David Ogilvy. (Founders #306)(10:00) Whatever you do, you must do it with gusto, you must do it in volume. It is a case of repea

What I learned from reading Michael Jordan: The Life by Roland Lazenby.---Join Founders AMAMembers of Founders AMA can:-Email me your questions directly (you get a private email address in the confirmation email) -Promote your company to other members by including a link to your website with you question -Unlock 27 Ask Me Anything (AMA) episodes immediately-Listen to new Ask Me Anything (AMA) episodes every week ---(5:07) His competence was exceeded only by his confidence.(5:58) He worked at the game, and if he wasn't good at something, he had the motivation to be the best at it.(6:33) It seemed that he discovered the secret quite early in his competitive life: the more pressure he heaped on himself, the greater his ability to rise to the occasion.(14:06) At each step along his path, others would express amazement at how hard he competed. At every level, he was driven as if he were pursuing something that others couldn't see.(16:10) Whenever I was working out and got tired and figured I ought to stop, I'd clo

What I learned from reading Arnold and Me: In the Shadow of the Austrian Oak by Barbara Outland Baker.---Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book---(6:30) He forced his sons to eat with silverware at perfect right angles. They had to keep their elbows to their waists. If the boys did not obey, the back of his hand was quick to strike their cheeks.(7:30) His life began to flourish through the art and science of bodybuilding.Arnold ate it, slept it, worked it, imagined it, thought it, believed it, and trusted it.Bodybuilding became his existence.(8:10) He had no time to waste on naysayers. He aligned only with those who shared his passion. (8:15) He knew that to succeed according to his manic standards he needed to master an individual sport.(8:30) His intelligence did not show on his report cards yet he mastered his goals like a wizard. (If you do everything you will win)(8:50) His singular concentration provided a rock solid belief in his potential.(9:30) Not even his peers co

What I learned from reading Glock: The Rise of America's Gun by Paul Barrett.  Listen to Invest Like the Best #292 David Senra: Passion and Pain. ---Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book---(5:22) What struck me is how his inexperience was a great advantage. He didn't assume anything about how to design a handgun because he's never designed one before. Consequently he designed the best one ever. He didn't know what was out of bounds.(8:20) Gaston Glock himself put it in an interview: "That I knew nothing was my advantage.”(8:55) He began disassembling the guns, putting them back together, and noted the contrasting methods used to make them.(9:00) More on Glock’s initial research process: I started intensive studies in such a manner that I visited the Austrian patent offices for weeks examining generations of handgun in innovation.(9:10) Learning from history of a form of leverage.(10:25) Crucially, the gun should have no more than 40 parts. This is one of the most important

What I learned from reading Dynasties: Fortunes and Misfortunes of the World's Great Family Businesses by David Landes.----Listen to Invest Like the Best #292 David Senra: Passion and Pain. Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book----(4:25) Success causes failure. As the family develops power and prestige, the heirs find many interesting and amusing things to do rather than run their business.(6:00) Those on the margins often come to control the center.(9:00) Great industrial leaders are always fanatically committed to their jobs. They are not lazy, or amateurs. — Confessions of an Advertising Man by David Ogilvy. (Founders #306)(9:50) For many of the great founders “Appetite comes with eating.”(11:00)Rothschild episodes:Founder: A Portrait of the First Rothschild by Amos Elon. (Founders #197)The House of Rothschild: Money's Prophets by Niall Ferguson. (Founders #198)JP Morgan episodes:The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance by Ron Chern

What I learned from reading Confessions of an Advertising Man by David Ogilvy. ----Listen to one of my favorite podcasts: Invest Like the Best----Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book----(4:15) When Fortune published an article about me and titled it: "Is David Ogilvy a Genius?," I asked my lawyer to sue the editor for the question mark.(4:45) The people who built the companies for which America is famous, all worked obsessively to create strong cultures within their organizations. Companies that have cultivated their individual identities by shaping values, making heroes, spelling out rites and rituals, and acknowledging the cultural network, have an edge(5:30) We prefer the discipline of knowledge to the anarchy of ignorance. We pursue knowledge the way a pig pursues truffles. A blind pig can sometimes find truffles, but it helps to know that they grow in oak forests.(5:48) We hire gentlemen with brains.(6:16) Only First Class business, and that in a First Class way.(6:25

What I learned from reading Working by Robert Caro. ----Listen to one of my favorite podcasts: Invest Like the Best: Sam Hinkie: Find Your People ----[3:40] You can't get very deep into Johnson's life without realizing that the central fact of his life was his relationship with his father.[8:00] It was the hill country and his father's failures that taught him how terrible could be the consequences of a single mistake.[8:45] Lyndon Johnson wouldn't understand. He would refuse to understand. He would threaten you, would cajole you, bribe you or charm you. He would do whatever he had to do, but he would get that vote.[9:00] What mattered to him was winning because he knew what losing could be. What its consequences could be.[9:50] Robert Caro books I've read: The Power Broker The Path to PowerMeans of AscentMaster of The Senate (currently reading) [11:00] About what I wanted to do with my life and my books (which are my life)[11:40] I am a reflection of what I do. — Steve Jobs[23:20] There are certain moments i