Afleveringen
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(I fixed the audio and uploaded a new episode!) "To read Jeff Bezos’s shareholder letters is to get a crash course in running a high-growth internet business from someone who mastered it before any of the playbooks were written." That is the best description of Bezos's letters I have ever read. I just finished rereading these letters for the 4th or 5th time. With clear thinking and ferocious intelligence, Bezos provides a masterclass in building a customer-obsessed, enduring franchise. With relentless repetition Bezos teaches us about the importance of invention, risk-taking, wandering, differentiation, technology, judgement, high-standards, customer obsession, long-term orientation, and why value trumps everything.
Read the letters on Amazon's website here.
Or in the book Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos
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( 15:00 ) Setting the bar high in our approach to hiring has been, and will continue to be, the single most important element of Amazon success. It's not easy to work here but we are working to build something important, something that matters to our customers, something that we can all tell our grandchildren about. Such things aren't meant to be easy.
( 24:00 ) We believe we have reached a "tipping point," where this platform allows us to launch new ecommerce businesses faster, with a higher quality of customer experience, a lower incremental cost, a higher chance of success, and a faster path to scale and profitability than any other company.
( 27:00 ) We will continue to invest heavily in introductions to new customers. Though it's sometimes hard to imagine with all that has happened in the last five years, this remains Day 1 for ecommerce, and these are the early days of category formation where many customers are forming relationships for the first time. We must work hard to grow the number of customers who shop with us.
( 37:00 ) Focus on cost improvement makes it possible for us to afford to lower prices, which drives growth. Growth spreads fixed costs across more sales, reducing cost per unit, which makes possible more price reductions. Customers like this, and it's good for shareholders. Please expect us to repeat this loop.
( 47:00 ) Our quantitative understanding of elasticity is short-term. We can estimate what a price reduction will do this week and this quarter. But we cannot numerically estimate the effect that consistently lowering prices will have on our business over five years or ten years or more. Our judgment is that relentlessly returning efficiency improvements and scale economies to customers in the form of lower prices creates a virtuous cycle that leads over the long term to a much larger dollar amount of free cash flow, and thereby to a much more valuable Amazon.
( 55:00 ) Our fundamental approach remains the same. Stay heads down, focused on the long term and obsessed over customers. Long-term thinking levers our existing abilities and lets us do new things we couldn't otherwise contemplate. Seek instant gratification and chances are you'll find a crowd there ahead of you.
( 56:00 ) Long-term orientation interacts well with customer obsession. If we can identify a customer need and if we can further develop conviction that that need is meaningful and durable, our approach permits us to work patiently for multiple years to deliver a solution.
( 59:00 ) Invention is in our DNA and technology is the fundamental tool we wield to evolve and improve every aspect of the experience we provide our customers.
( 1:00:00 ) A dreamy business offering has at least four characteristics. Customers love it, it can grow to very large size, it has strong returns on capital, and it's durable in time-with the potential to endure for decades. When you find one of these get married.
( 1:02:00 ) We all know that if you swing for the fences, you're going to strike out a lot, but you're also going to hit some home runs. The difference between baseball and business, however, is that baseball has a truncated outcome distribution. When you swing, no matter how well you connect with the ball, the most runs you can get is four. In business, every once in a while, when you step up to the plate, you can score one thousand runs. This long-tailed distribution of returns is why it's important to be bold. Big winners pay for so many experiments.
( 1:10:00) When a memo isn't great, it's not the writer's inability to recognize the high standard, but instead a wrong expectation on scope: they mistakenly believe a high standards, six-page memo can be written in one or two days or even a few hours, when really it might take a week or more! They're trying to perfect a handstand in just two weeks, and we're not coaching them right. The great memos are written and re-written, shared with colleagues who are asked to improve the work, set aside for a couple of days, and then edited again with a fresh mind. They simply can't be done in a day or two. The key point here is that you can improve results through the simple act of teaching scope-that a great memo probably should take a week or more.
( 1:12:00 ) Sometimes (often actually) in business, you do know where you're going, and when you do, you can be efficient. Put in place a plan and execute. In contrast, wandering in business is not efficient-but it's also not random. It's guided-by hunch, gut, intuition, curiosity, and powered by a deep conviction that the prize for customers is big enough that it's worth being a little messy and tangential to find our way there. Wandering is an essential counterbalance to efficiency. You need to employ both. The outsized discoveries-the "nonlinear" ones-are highly likely to require wandering.
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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.
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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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My friend Patrick O’Shaughnessy asked me to come to New York and record a conversation. Patrick had just finished listening to episode #383 "Todd Graves and his $10 Billion Chicken Finger Dream" and he believed there was an important conversation to have on focus and finding your life's work. This conversation was off-the-cuff and from the soul. I hope you find it useful.
If you'd prefer to watch the episode you can do that on Spotify and YouTube.
Patrick and I are doing a live show on May 27th in New York. Event details and registration here!
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Ramp gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud by going to Ramp and learning how they can help your business control your costs and save more.
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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.
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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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Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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Jim Simons never took a single class on finance, wasn’t interested in business, and didn’t start trading full time until he was 40. The company he founded — Renaissance Technologies — has made over $100 billion in profits.
Starting out with the heretical belief that there was a hidden structure in financial markets, Jim decided to staff his “crazy hedge fund” with mathematicians, computer scientists, and physicists. He went to great lengths to collect more historic financial data than anyone else, spent a lot of time recruiting “killers” (people with single minded focus that wouldn’t quit), invested heavily in computers (and the people who ran them), and designed the most collaborative work environment.
Jim was a world-class mathematician, code breaker, exceptional manager of people with exceptional minds, a genius in system design, and deeply understood the power of incentives. He was also incapable of giving up, willing to endure a decade of struggle and pain, and hell-bent on doing something “historic” with his life.
Jim Simons lived a life defined by persistence, unconventional thinking, and an unwavering pursuit of excellence. Studying his life and work is time well spent. This episode is what I learned from rereading The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution by Gregory Zuckerman.
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Ramp gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud by going to Ramp and learning how they can help your business control your costs and save more.
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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.
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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.
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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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Akio Morita was a visionary entrepreneur and co-founder of Sony. Born as the first son and fifteenth-generation heir to a 300-year-old sake-brewing family in Japan, Akio eschewed the traditional path to forge his own legacy in electronics.
In post-war Japan, Akio joined forces with Masaru Ibuka to found Sony. They started in a burned-out department store with limited resources—to build their first product they had to buy supplies on the black market. Akio was determined to change the global perception of Japanese goods as poor quality. From day one he set out to build high-quality, differentiated products, targeted at affluent markets.
Akio believed in long-term vision over short-term profits, product innovation without market research, and brand building over immediate profits. Against all opposition, including inside of his own company, Akio invented one of the most successful consumer products of all time: The Walkman. It sold over 400 million units and inspired countless other entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, James Dyson, and Phil Knight.
This episode is what I learned from rereading Akio's classic 1986 autobiography Made In Japan.
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Ramp gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud by going to Ramp and learning how they can help your business control your costs and save more.
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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.
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Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book
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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.
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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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This is one of the most extraordinary founder stories you will ever hear. Michael Dell started his company with $1000 when he was 19 years old. The revenues for the first 16 years of Dell look like this:
1984 $6M
1985 $33M
1986 $67M
1987 $159M
1988 $258M
1989 $388M
1990 $546M
1991 $890M
1992 $2B
1993 $2.9B
1994 $3.5B
1995 $5.3B
1996 $7.8B
1997 $12.3B
1998 $18.2B
1999 $25.3B
Dell had been profitable for every quarter of its existence. By 2012 the story had changed. The consensus was that Dell was dead. Michael Dell certainly didn't think so — and besides—he was incapable of giving up on the company that bears his name. As he said at the time "I will care about this company after I'm dead!" Michael takes his company private, completes the largest acquisition in technology history, and remerges perfectly positioned for the age of AI. Michael Dell has been working on his company for over 40 years and it feels like he's just getting started. In his autobiography he shares the most important lessons he's learned. It's a treasure trove for entrepreneurs and leaders.
This episode is what I learned from reading Play Nice But Win: A CEO's Journey From Founder to Leader by Michael Dell and Direct From Dell: Strategies That Revolutionized an Industry by Michael Dell.
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Ramp gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud by going to Ramp and learning how they can help your business control your costs and save more.
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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.
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Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book
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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.
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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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Because of the podcast I get to meet a lot of super successful people. I'm always asking them "Who is the smartest person you know" and "Who do you think has the best business?". "Ken Griffin" is a very common answer. I've heard Ken described in two ways: "Winner" and "Killer". For years I've come across interesting anecdotes about Ken. Like when he appears as a 19 year old kid in Ed Thorp's excellent autobiography A Man For All Markets. Or when John Arnold describe Ken's intense competitive drive following the blowup of Enron. And then consider the fact that I'm obsessed with people who run their business for decades (Ken founded Citadel 35 years ago and Citadel Securities 23 years ago) — and I knew I had to make an episode about his life and work. The only problem was there's no great biography of Ken. So to make this episode I transcribed this talk that Ken gave at Yale. And for additional context I read the book Ken recommends: Hardball: Are You Playing to Play or Playing to Win.
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Ramp gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud by going to Ramp and learning how they can help your business control your costs and save more.
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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.
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Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book
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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.
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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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Daniel Ludwig was the richest man in the world and no one knew his name. I've read almost 400 biographies of history's greatest founders and this book is one of my all time favorites. Daniel Ludwig started his company at 19 and was working on it well into his 90s. He built a massive conglomerate of over 200 companies operating in more than 50 countries. Spending the time to learn how he did this is a great investment. This episode will tell you what I learned from rereading The Invisible Billionaire: Daniel Ludwig by Jerry Shields.
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Ramp gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud by going to Ramp and learning how they can help your business control your costs and save more.
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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.
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Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book
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EPISODE OUTLINE
1. Obsessed with privacy, Ludwig pays a major public relations firm fat fees to keep his name out of the papers.
2. An associate speaks of his unlimited ingenuity in dreaming up new ways of doing things.
3. Ludwig’s most notable characteristic, besides his imagination and pertinacity, is a lifelong penchant for keeping his mouth shut.
4. I'm in this business because I like it. I have no other hobbies.
5. Pertinacity: Holding strongly to an opinion, purpose, or course of action, stubbornly or annoyingly persistent.
6. Risk Game: Self Portrait of an Entrepreneur by Francis Greenburger (Founders #243)
7. At his peak, he owned more than 200 companies in 50 countries.
8. War makes the demand for Ludwig's products and services skyrocket.
9. Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire by James Wallace and Jim Erickson. (Founders #290)
10. He did not mellow as he grew richer and older.
11. Some years later, the captain of a Ludwig ship made the extravagant mistake of mailing in a report of several pages held together by a paper clip. He received a sharp rebuke for his prodigality: "We do not pay to send ironmongery by air mail!"
12. Ludwig’s tightfistedness, however, persisted after the Depression, putting him in sharp contrast to such free spenders as Onassis and Niarchos. It also was largely responsible for many of his innovations in the shipbuilding industry.
13. Onassis: An Extravagant Life by Frank Brady. (Founders #211)
14. Ludwig’s ridding his ships of any feature that did not contribute to profits pleased his own obsessive sense of economy and kept him a step ahead of the competition. When someone asked why he didn't put a grand piano aboard his ships, as Stavros Niarchos did, Ludwig snapped, "You can't carry oil in a grand piano."
15. Stay in the game long enough to get lucky.
16. 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)
17. The yacht was as much a business craft as any of his tankers and probably earned him more money than any of them.
18. Like the Rockefeller organization, Ludwig had mastered the practice of keeping his money by transferring it from one pocket, one company to another, while appearing to spend it.
19. He had learned something by now. Opportunities exist on the frontiers where most men dare not venture, and it is often the case that the farther the frontier, the greater the opportunity.
20. The way to escape competition is to either do something no one else is doing or do it where no one else is doing it.
21. Much of Ludwig's success was due to his willingness to venture where more timid entrepreneurs dared not go.
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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.
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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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Todd Graves is one of my favorite living entrepreneurs. He's a great example of Charlie Munger's maxim: Find a simple idea and take it seriously. Todd wanted to create a quick service restaurant that only focused on quality chicken finger meals and nothing else. Everyone told him that couldn't possibly work. The college paper that described the idea that would turn into Raising Canes got the lowest grade in the class. Banks wouldn't loan him any money —but nothing could stop Todd from living out his "chicken finger dream." He worked 95 hour weeks as a boilermaker, risked his life on a commercial fishing boat off the coast of Alaska, and scrounged up startup money from his bookie and a guy named Wild Bill. Todd made every mistake in the book, over leveraged himself, almost lost everything and yet he refused to give up or sell out. Today he has over 800 locations, 50,000 employees, and owns 90% of a business that's worth at least $10 billion. Todd's maxim is "Do one thing and do it better than anyone else."
Sources:
Trading Secrets: Raising Cane’s founder Todd Graves reveals his path to building the wildly popular restaurant
Theo Von: Raising Cane’s Founder Todd Graves
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Ramp gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud by going to Ramp and learning how they can help your business control your costs and save more.
----
Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.
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Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book
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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.
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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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At the core of Michael Ovitz's success is his relentless work ethic and commitment to mastering his craft. 50 years ago he founded Creative Artists Agency. CAA starts out as just five young guys in a run down office and eventually becomes the most powerful agency in the world. Ovitz's autobiography explains how that happened. As the Wall Street Journal wrote: When the history of Hollywood is written, few people will have played a larger role than Michael Ovitz.
This episode is what I learned from reading (for the 2nd time!) Who Is Michael Ovitz?: The Rise and Fall (and Rise) of the Most Powerful Man in Hollywood by Michael Ovitz.
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Ramp gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud by going to Ramp and learning how they can help your business control your costs and save more.
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Vesto: All of your company's financial accounts in one view. Connect and control all of your business bank accounts from one dashboard. Go to Vesto and schedule a demo with the founder Ben. Tell him David sent you.
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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.
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Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book
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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.
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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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What I learned from having an intense and fun 3 hour dinner with Michael Ovitz.
1: Mediocrity is always invisible until passion shows up and exposes it.
2: There's no ceiling on where you can push your profession.
3: Don't be unequally yoked. Pick partners that have the same ambition as you.
4: Read biographies. Know everything about the history of your industry.
5. Have a profound sense of belief. The world is very malleable.
6: There’s opportunity hiding in plain sight.
7: By endurance we conquer.
8: Work 10% less. Optimize for the long term.
9. Surround yourself with people who will tell you the truth.
10: Retirement is lame.
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Ramp gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud by going to Ramp and learning how they can help your business control your costs and save more.
----
Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.
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Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book
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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.
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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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For over 30 years the Berkshire Hathaway Annual meetings were recorded. Munger and Buffett answered over 1700 questions from shareholders during that period. Alex Morris watched hundreds of hours of these meetings and then he gathered, organized, and edited the most interesting ideas into 450+ pages — all in Buffett and Munger's own words. I thought it would be fun to rip through a bunch of Munger and Buffett's best ideas very rapidly. It was.
This episode is what I learned from reading Buffett and Munger Unscripted: Three Decades of Investment and Business Insights from the Berkshire Hathaway Shareholder Meetings by Alex Morris.
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Ramp gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud by going to Ramp and learning how they can help your business control your costs and save more.
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Vesto: All of your company's financial accounts in one view. Connect and control all of your business bank accounts from one dashboard. Go to Vesto and schedule a demo with the founder Ben. Tell him David sent you.
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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.
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Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book
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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.
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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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Jerry Jones rolled the dice until his knuckles bled. He started working at 7 years old. Jerry could sell, sell, sell. He sold fruit at his father’s grocery store in grade school and sold shoes out of the trunk of his car in college. After failing to sell pizza franchises he tried real estate and insurance. He never met a high risk deal he didn’t like. Jerry got pitched a deal to drill for oil that everyone else had already said no to. Jerry said yes. That well made $4 million. He hit again on the next 14 wells. Jerry decided to drill for natural gas next. He drills 200 wells. He hit on 199 of them. He sells that company for $175 million. He has $90 million in the bank. He buys the Dallas Cowboys for $140 million. 75 other people had the opportunity to buy the team and said no. He empties his bank account and borrows $50 million at steep interest rates. The year before Jerry bought the team the Cowboys lost $9 million. Financial advisors told Jerry that the Cowboys were ridiculously overpriced and that he was committing financial suicide. Within a few years the team is printing $30 million a year in profit. The Dallas Cowboys are worth $10 billion today.
This episode is what I leaned from reading King of the Cowboys: The Life and Times of Jerry Jones by Jim Dent.
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Ramp gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud by going to Ramp and learning how they can help your business control your costs and save more.
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Vesto: All of your company's financial accounts in one view. Connect and control all of your business bank accounts from one dashboard. Go to Vesto and schedule a demo with the founder Ben. Tell him David sent you.
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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.
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Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book
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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.
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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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Your father goes bankrupt. You work for 50 cents a day to try to help your family survive the Great Depression. At 19 you see an opportunity where others see nothing. You start “a little fuel delivery business” with one used truck. Five years later you have 10 trucks. World War II breaks out and you serve as the fuel supply officer for General Patton. You come back to America and apply what the war taught you about logistics and moving fuel efficiently. You expand from fuel delivery to storage, refining, and open gas stations in 16 states. You take your company public. You merge with an oil exploration firm. You build the largest refinery in the Western Hemisphere. You buy the New York Jets. You built your “little fuel delivery business” into a multibillion-dollar, multinational, vertically integrated energy behemoth. You are Leon Hess, founder of the Hess family dynasty.
This episode is what I learned from reading Hess: The Last Oil Baron by Tina Davis and Jessica Resnick-Ault.
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Ramp gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud by going to Ramp and learning how they can help your business control your costs and save more.
----
Vesto: All of your company's financial accounts in one view. Connect and control all of your business bank accounts from one dashboard. Go to Vesto and schedule a demo with the founder Ben. Tell him David sent you.
----
Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.
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Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book
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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.
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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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Marcus Wallenberg Jr's impact on Swedish industry was so substantial that during the 1970s, Wallenberg family businesses employed about 40% of Sweden's industrial workforce and represented 40% of the total worth of the Stockholm stock market. The Wallenberg family is one of the most fascinating family dynasties you could read about. The family has survived — and continues to thrive — for 170 years. In a family full of talented entrepreneurs and investors Marcus Wallenberg Jr. stands out. This episode is what I learned from reading Furthering A Fortune: Marcus Wallenberg Swedish Banker and Industrialist by Ulf Olsson.
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Ramp gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud by going to Ramp and learning how they can help your business control your costs and save more.
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Vesto: All of your company's financial accounts in one view. Connect and control all of your business bank accounts from one dashboard. Go to Vesto and schedule a demo with the founder Ben. Tell him David sent you.
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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.
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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.
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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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What I learned from reading The Nvidia Way: Jensen Huang and the Making of a Tech Giant by Tae Kim.
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Ramp gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud by going to Ramp and learning how they can help your business control your costs and save more.
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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.
----
Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book
----
“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth
Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast
----
Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.
----
“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth
Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast
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Hetty Green bailed out New York City. Her decisions on what interest rates to charge moved markets and were reported in major newspapers. She was a one woman bank and the single biggest individual financier in the world. She took no partners and ran her own money. She built a financial empire of stocks, bonds, railroads, and real estate. She battled the great men of her day and kept a gun on her desk. She did all of this alone. Defiantly independent and ferociously intelligent she built a vast, liquid fortune at a time when women couldn't even vote. She used her intelligence to increase her wealth, her independence to live as she wished, and her strength to battle anyone who stood in her way.
This episode is what I learned from reading Hetty: The Genius and Madness of America’s First Female Tycoon by Charles Slack and The Richest Woman in America: Hetty Green in the Gilded Age by Janet Wallach.
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Ramp gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud by going to Ramp and learning how they can help your business control your costs and save more.
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Vesto: All of your company's financial accounts in one view. Connect and control all of your business bank accounts from one dashboard. Go to Vesto and schedule a demo with the founder Ben. Tell him David sent you.
Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.
----
Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book
----
“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth
Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast
----
Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.
----
“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth
Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast
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Chung Ju-yung grew up so poor he had to eat tree bark to survive. He founded Hyundai and became the richest person in Korea. When Chung was in his 80s, he wrote an autobiography that tells the devastating reality of growing up in dire poverty, how he escaped through manual labor, and how he founded and grew one of the world's largest conglomerates. Along the way he shares advice like why you should emulate bedbugs, the importance of going where the money is, and why people called him "The Bulldozer."
This episode is what I learned from reading Born of This Land: My Life Story by Chung Ju-yung.
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Ramp gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud by going to Ramp and learning how they can help your business control your costs and save more.
----
Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.
----
Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book
----
“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth
Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast
----
Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.
----
“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth
Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast
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Jeff Bezos on retirement being lame, AI, the electricity metaphor for AI, the good fortune of being alive during multiple golden ages, long term life long passions, refusing to underestimate opportunity, dancing with curiosity, inventing, wandering, crisp documents and messy meetings, willing to be misunderstood, and why he doesn't do many interviews.
This episode is what I learned from reading and watching Jeff Bezos at DealBook Summit and Jeff Bezos: The Electricity Metaphor.
Another excellent Jeff Bezos interview on Lex Fridman
Listen to more Founders episodes on Jeff Bezos: #321 Working with Jeff Bezos and #282 Jeff Bezos’s Shareholder Letters
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Ramp gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud by going to Ramp and learning how they can help your business control your costs and save more.
----
Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book
----
“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth
Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast
----
Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.
----
“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth
Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast
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Brad Jacobs is one of the most talented living entrepreneurs. Brad has started 8 different billion dollar or multi-billion dollar businesses. He has done over 500 acquisitions and has raised over $30 billion. He started his first company at 23, has over 40 years of experience as an entrepreneur, and is the most energetic person I have ever been around. Earlier this year he published his life story: How to Make a Few Billion Dollars. How to Make a Few Billion Dollars was one of my favorite books that I've read this year and the episode I made about the book was one of the most popular episodes of Founders.
This episode is what I learned from having breakfast with Brad Jacobs and reading his book How to Make a Few Billion Dollars
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Ramp gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud by going to Ramp and learning how they can help your business control your costs and save more.
----
Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book
----
“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth
Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast
----
Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.
----
“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth
Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast
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Amancio Ortega is one of the wealthiest people in the world. Ortega is the founder of Inditex, a pioneer of fast fashion, an entrepreneur with over 60 years of experience, and has created a business model that is studied in universities that he could not access. His life story is inspiring, educational, and full of valuable ideas for future generations of founders. This episode is what I learned from reading This is Amancio Ortega: The Man Who Created Zara by Covadonga O'Shea.
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Ramp gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud by going to Ramp and learning how they can help your business control your costs and save more.
----
Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book
----
Notes and highlights from the episode:
I remembered a comment that Luis Miguel Dominguin made to me years ago, when he was at the peak of his glory and his son, still a child, played in the garden of his house. "This child will never be a bullfighter. To face a bull you have to go hungry.”
The important thing is to set goals in life and put all your soul into fulfilling them.
I have dreamed of growing the company since I was nobody.
We gave it every day. My priority has always been the company, and I have committed myself to it, with full dedication, from day one.
Ortega is a man of mission. He is so convinced of what he is and what he has to do.
I was convinced that I had to dominate the customer.
Ortega starts with the customer and work backwards: “I am going to manufacture what the customer wants.”
I met Ortega when Zara did not exist. He only had the factories. In those years when nobody thought about technology within our sector, in which there was almost no computer science or mobile phones, he wanted to have a good team in technology.
He built a groundbreaking and avant-garde textile distribution company.
Inditex's business is centered around one simple premise – to be quick at responding to the market.
Their main advantage: an astonishing ability to detect fashion trends, assimilate them, and make them a reality on the hanger at a bargain price, and all in less than 15 days.
Ortega wanted to integrate design and manufacturing first, then complete the chain with distribution and sales in his own stores, turning the customer into his source of privileged information and not just the receiver of a commodity.
I refuse to recognize that there are impossibilities. I cannot discover that any one knows enough about anything on this earth definitely to say what is and what is not possible. — Henry Ford
There are no mature sectors where everything is already discovered, but rather companies or managers with closed minds who resist innovation.
Logistics is a fundamental part of the circle that completes Inditex’s vertical integration process. Inventory control in all locations around the world is as important as getting the design right and producing in a short time; that's why Inditex has invested time, effort, and a lot of money in establishing logistics centers with the latest technologies.
Traditionally, the seller ensures high margins at the beginning of each season, but endures several months of discounts to get rid of stock; the customer knows, therefore, that in the long run they will get the same items at lower prices. Ortega's company renews its clothes in stores around the world every week and twice weekly in Europe. The buyer knows that they will always find new items, but probably won't be able to get what they tried on seven days ago. In this way, customers understand that if they see something they like, they have to buy it immediately, because in a few days it will no longer be in the store. It's about creating an atmosphere of scarcity and opportunity.
Ortega has created a business model that is studied in universities to which he could not access.
I consider myself a worker who is immensely fortunate to have done what he wanted in life and to continue doing it.
It's the most beautiful company in the world.
I want a company with a soul.
Ortega stayed focused on his one great objective: To enable the entire world to dress well.
Ortega refuses to settle halfway to excellence.
He is a man with a lot of personal charm because he is not false. He does not have ulterior motives. He can be very tough, impulsive, very sure of himself, but very truthful.
Ortega does not like to lead sitting in a chair.
He has never liked praise. More than once I've told him: 'What a beautiful collection, how happy the customers are!', and he always interrupts me and asks me: 'Now tell me what's wrong.”
When asked on his advice for future generations of entrepreneurs: “The first thing is that you like what you are doing, that you are passionate about your work. I insist on this idea because it is very important. It has to be something that you would almost pay to do.”
Simplicity is the heritage of geniuses.----
“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth
Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast
----
Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.
----
“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth
Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast
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