Founders

Informações:

Sinopsis

For every episode I read a biography of an entrepreneur and pull out ideas you can use in your work. Here is how one listener described the podcast: "Finally a podcast that doesn't take itself too seriously while delivering something seriously valuable. David takes an unpretentious approach to sharing lessons from the lives of larger-than-life entrepreneurs. It can be best described as a one-person book club without ads, intro music, or a production crew. Founders is, pound for pound, probably the most insightful media out there."

Episodios

  • #195 Sid Meier (Computer game designer)

    31/07/2021 Duración: 01h13min

    What I learned from reading Sid Meier's Memoir!: A Life in Computer Games by Sid Meier. ----Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes----Sometimes it takes a misstep to figure out where you should be headed.Each game taught me something, each game was both painful and gratifying in its own way, and each game contributed to what came after it.We are surrounded by decisions, and therefore games, in everything we do. If my gravestone reads "Sid Meier, creator of Civilization" and nothing else, I'll be fine with that. It's a good game to be known for, and I'm proud of the positive impact it's had on so many players' lives.There was no such thing as a retail computer game, only free bits of code passed  between hobbyists, so it would have been difficult for me to harbor secret dreams of becoming a professional computer game designer."I could design a better game in two weeks." “Then do it," he insisted, "If you can do it, I can sell it."At the ti

  • #194 Ernest Hemingway (Writer, Sailor, Soldier, Spy)

    27/07/2021 Duración: 01h17min

    What I learned from reading Writer, Sailor, Soldier, Spy: Ernest Hemingway's Secret Adventures, 1935-1961 by Nicholas Reynolds. ----Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes----“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — GarethBe like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

  • #193 Arnold Schwarzenegger (Arnold's first autobiography)

    22/07/2021 Duración: 58min

    What I learned from reading Arnold: The Education of a Bodybuilder by Arnold Schwarzenegger.----Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes----I knew I was going to be a bodybuilder. It wasn't simply that either. I would be the best bodybuilder in the world, the greatest.I'm not exactly sure why I chose bodybuilding, except that I loved it. I loved it from the first moment my fingers closed around a barbell and I felt the challenge and exhilaration of hoisting the heavy steel plates above my head.The only time I really felt rewarded was when I was singled out as being best.I had it tougher than a lot of my companions because I wanted more, I demanded more of myself.I was literally addicted.I learned that this pain meant progress. Each time my muscles were sore from a workout, I knew they were growing.I could not have chosen a less popular sport. My school friends thought I was crazy. But I didn't care. My only thoughts were of  going ahead, bu

  • #192 Jim Casey (Founder of UPS)

    19/07/2021 Duración: 01h07min

    What I learned from reading Big Brown: The Untold Story of UPS by Greg Niemann. ----Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes----Casey pursued a Spartan business philosophy that emphasized military discipline, drab uniforms, and reliability over flash.I had heard stories about the company's tireless founder. He was a living legend. Jim Casey started working from the age of eleven to support a family of five.Casey began at the bottom. He speedily delivered messages and packages on foot. Casey learned about efficiency by doing.Seconds saved become minutes over the day and a few minutes each day mean big dollars.To outsiders the UPS regime has always seemed excessive.People have always bought more than they could carry, and a hundred years ago they had no cars to help them out. When Jim Casey and his partners began their delivery service, it served only department stores, and the UPS role was to complete the stores' retail transactions.Humility

  • #191 Naval Ravikant (A Guide to Wealth and Happiness)

    13/07/2021 Duración: 01h05min

    What I learned from reading The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness by Naval Ravikant and Eric Jorgenson. Read the book online for free here. ----Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes----Naval has changed my life for the better, and if you approach the following pages like a friendly but highly competent sparring partner, he might just change yours.Books make for great friends, because the best thinkers of the last few thousand years tell you their nuggets of wisdom.If you don't know yet what you should work on, the most important thing is to figure it out.Seek wealth, not money or status. Wealth is having assets that earn while you sleep. Money is how we transfer time and wealth. Status is your place in the social hierarchy.Ignore people playing status games, They gain status by attacking people playing wealth creation games.You will get rich by giving society what it wants but does not yet know how to get. At sc

  • #190 Henry Ford and Thomas Edison

    10/07/2021 Duración: 59min

    What I learned from reading The Vagabonds: The Story of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison's Ten-Year Road Trip by Jeff Guinn. ----Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes----Ford generally accepted the responsibilities of his celebrity-he'd worked diligently to cultivate it, realizing early on that his personal fame heightened demand for Model Ts.Ford's Model T changed everything. Thanks in great part to Ford's innovative assembly line, Model Ts were mass-produced on a previously unimaginable scale. In competitors factories, it took workers several hours to assemble an individual car. At the Ford plant, a completed Model T rolled off the line every two and a half minutes.Ford continued tinkering with the manufacturing process, aggressively seeking ways to cut production expenses and Model T prices even more. The best example fostered a popular joke that you could buy any color Model T that you liked, so long as the color was black. Few realized

  • #189 David Ogilvy (The book I've given as a gift the most)

    05/07/2021 Duración: 59min

    What I learned from reading The Unpublished David Ogilvy by David Ogilvy. ----Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes----[0:01] Will Any Agency Hire This Man? He is 38, and unemployed. He dropped out of college.He has been a cook, a salesman, a diplomatist and a farmer. He knows nothing about marketing, and has never written any copy. He professes to be interested in advertising as a career (at the age of 38!) and is ready to go to work for $5,000 a year.I doubt if any American agency will hire him.However, a London agency did hire him. Three years later he became the most famous copywriter in the world, and in due course built the tenth biggest agency in the world.The moral: it sometimes pays an agency to be imaginative and unorthodox in hiring.[2:39] Words were what made him. Reading this collection, one is struck, piece after piece by how David's words surprise and seduce, tease and provoke.[2:58] His writing is opinionated, forceful, a

  • #188 Joe Coulombe (Founder of Trader Joes)

    28/06/2021 Duración: 01h15min

    What I learned from Becoming Trader Joe: How I Did Business My Way and Still Beat the Big Guys by Joe Coulombe.----Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes----[0:01] I wrote this book to help entrepreneurs and would-be entrepreneurs. That's why there's a lack of miracles and a surplus of marketing details including buying, advertising, distributing, and running stores; and lots of discussion of how we built a successful business on high wages.[18:09] Chapter 11 was a possibility. But I was reading The Guns of August, by Barbara W. Tuchman, with its implicit concept of multiple solutions to non-convex problems.[19:07] This is my favorite of all managerial quotes: If all the facts could be known, idiots could make the decisions. —Tex Thornton, cofounder of Litton Industries, quoted in the Los Angeles Times in the mid-1960s.[22:33] The most basic conclusion I drew from her book was that, if you adopt a reasonable strategy, as opposed to waitin

  • #187 Albert Einstein

    22/06/2021 Duración: 01h25min

    What I learned from reading Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson. ----Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes----[0:01] In a drama that would seem fake were it not so horrifying, Einstein’s brain ended up being, for more than four decades, a wandering relic.[4:22] Einstein remained consistent in his willingness to be a serenely amused loner who was comfortable not conforming.[6:49] “In teaching history,” Einstein replied, “there should be extensive discussion of personalities who benefited mankind through independence of character and judgment.” [8:33] It is important to foster individuality, for only the individual can produce the new ideas.[11:39] He had an allergic reaction against all forms of dogma and authority.[14:37] It made me clearly realize how much superior an education based on free action and personal responsibility is to one relying on outward authority.[20:24] It would be an astonishing nine years after his gr

  • #186 Phil Knight (Nike)

    16/06/2021 Duración: 01h42min

    What I learned from rereading Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike by Phil Knight. ----Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes----[2:02] I had an aching sense that our time is short, shorter than we ever know, short as a morning run, and I wanted mine to be meaningful. And purposeful. And creative. And important. Above all...different.[6:18] So that morning in 1962 I told myself: Let everyone else call your idea crazy... just keep going. Don't stop. Don't even think about stopping until you get there, and don't give much thought to where "there" is. Whatever comes, just don't stop. That's the precocious, prescient, urgent advice I managed to give myself, out of the blue, and somehow managed to take. Half a century later, I believe it's the best advice-maybe the only advice-any of us should ever give.[10:32] They greeted my passion and intensity with labored sighs and vacant stares.[16:48] Carter never did mess around. See an open shot

  • #185 César Ritz and Auguste Escoffier (The Hotelier and The Chef)

    10/06/2021 Duración: 01h22min

    What I learned from reading Ritz and Escoffier: The Hotelier, The Chef, and the Rise of the Leisure Class by Luke Barr. ----Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes----[1:00] The words echoed in his head, even now. The idea that they should be seen as servants was the cruelest of insults. César Ritz, Auguste Escoffier, servants?[11:28] He hasn't the least idea how much work and care, how much imagination and effort, go into the proper running of a hotel. [20:44] This was the very heart of a world that had shaped him, a world of privilege and luxury in which he had forged a place for himself, against all odds. Ritz had not been born to this life. Raised in a tiny village (population 123) in the foothills of the Swiss Alps, he was the last of eleven children, and had left home at the age of twelve.[21:04]  He was a self-made man. And beneath his placid, imperturbable Swiss poise lay enormous ambition. [22:26] Ritz knew better than anyone the

  • #184 Isadore Sharp (Four Seasons)

    06/06/2021 Duración: 01h16min

    What I learned from reading Four Seasons: The Story of a Business Philosophy by Isadore Sharp.----Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes----[0:01] When I built my first hotel I knew nothing about the hotel business. [4:28] He refused to settle for the pragmatic dictum of maturity. Issy also skipped skepticism and "Let's be sensible." People said he was naïve, with a kind of glandular optimism. Perhaps. But as it turned out naïveté served him well. [6:32] Early on he made some audacious statements that sounded like pipe dreams. He told me once that his aim was to make the name Four Seasons a worldwide brand, synonymous with luxury, like Rolls-Royce.[8:39]Once, when Dad was excavating a basement with horse and plough, he broke his shoulder. But he shrugged it off and uncomplainingly kept on working, something I never forgot. [26:52] I decided to go ahead. I foresaw only one difficulty, but it loomed large: How do you build a two-hundred-roo

  • #183 Johnny Carson

    04/06/2021 Duración: 01h17min

    What I learned from reading Johnny Carson by Henry Bushkin. ----Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes----[13:50] He often told me that all it took to turn the most electrifying film stars into dullards was to be around them for a while. But he felt that way around everybody. There were very few social scenes in which he was ever really comfortable.[14:07] Johnny was comfortable in front of twenty million but just as uncomfortable in a gathering of twenty.[15:44] Carson grasped that he owned the camera the way Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra had grasped that they owned the microphone. That understanding made him more natural, more relaxed, cooler.[21:29] Johnny continued. “If a doctor opened up my chest right now, he couldn’t find a heart, or any goddamn thing. Just a lot of misery. My mother made sure of that. She deprived us all of any real goddamn warmth."[23:20] Facts revealed themselves. Curious facts. Disturbing facts. Like the fact t

  • #182 Warren Buffett (The Making of an American Capitalist)

    29/05/2021 Duración: 01h12min

    What I learned from reading Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist by Roger Lowenstein.----Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes----His talent sprang from his unrivaled independence of mind and ability to focus on his work and shut out the world, yet those same qualities exacted a toll.He emerged from those first hard years with an absolute drive to become very, very rich. He thought about it before he was five years old. And from that time on, he scarcely stopped thinking of it.Most of us were trying to be like everyone else. I think he liked being different. He was what he was and he never tried to be anything else.Warren disgustedly reported that he knew more than the professors. His dissatisfaction-a forerunner of his general disaffection for business schools-was rooted in their mushy, overbroad approach. His professors had fancy theories but were ignorant of the practical details of making a profit that Warren craved.It seeme

  • #181 Paul Orfalea (Kinkos)

    23/05/2021 Duración: 01h13min

    What I learned from reading Copy This!: How I turned Dyslexia, ADHD, and 100 square feet into a company called Kinkos by Paul Orfalea.----Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes----[4:23] I've never met a more circular, out-of-the-box thinker. It's often exhausting trying to keep up with him.[5:21] I graduated from high school eighth from the bottom of my class of 1,200. Frankly, I still have no idea how those seven kids managed to do worse than I did.[8:29] I also have no mechanical ability to speak of. There isn't a machine at Kinko's I can operate. I could barely run the first copier we leased back in 1970. It didn't matter. All I knew was that was I could sell what came out of it.[10:24] Building an entirely new sort of business from a single Xerox copy machine gave me the life the world seemed determined to deny me when I was younger.[13:04] The A students work for the B students, the C students run the companies, and the D students d

  • #180 Jeff Bezos (Invention of a Global Empire)

    17/05/2021 Duración: 01h03min

    What I learned from reading Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire by Brad Stone.----Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes----[1:47] Every interesting thing I've ever done, every important thing I've ever done, every beneficial thing I've ever done, has been through a cascade of experiments and mistakes and failures. I'm covered in scar tissues as a result of this.[6:19] I absolutely know it's hard, but we'll learn how to do it.[8:30] Thinking small is a self fulfilling prophecy.[12:13] Begin any conversation about a new product in terms of the benefit it creates for customers.[19:08] Bezos deployed his playbook for experiments that produced promising sparks: he poured gasoline on them.[22:41] You can regulate yourself quite easily or think about what you're going to do with your existing resources. Sometimes, you don't know what the boundaries are. Jeff just wanted us to be unbounded.[25:48] If I have to choose

  • Jeff Bezos (Insights, Stories, and Secrets)

    13/05/2021 Duración: 01h03min

    What I learned from Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon by  Colin Bryar and Bill Carr.----Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes----[3:58] What is best for the customer? Do that: "Amazon believes that long-term growth is best produced by putting the customer first. If you held this conviction, what kind of company would you build?"[7:05] Jeff skips the conferences and dinners: "95 percent of the time I spent with Jeff was focused on internal work issues rather than external events like conferences, public speeches, and sports matches."[25:08] Don't encourage communication—eliminate it: "Jeff said many times that if we wanted Amazon to be a place where builders can build, we needed to eliminate communication, not encourage it. When you view effective communication across groups as a "defect," the solutions to your problems start to look quite different from traditional ones." (There is nothing conventional

  • #179 Jeff Bezos

    10/05/2021 Duración: 01h21min

    What I learned from The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon by Brad Stone.This is part one of a three part series on Jeff Bezos. The next two books are Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon and Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire.----Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes----(0:54) It may very well be that the absolute intensity of drive and focus is essential and incompatible with all of the nice management thought about consensus and gentle demeanor.(2:07) Jeff’s clarity, intensity of focus, and ability to prioritize is unusual.(4:05) As I read the Steve Jobs biography I even had an insight and question about myself, that maybe I haven’t begun to really find my own limits.(10:49) You have to be able to think what you're doing for yourself. (11:42) There is probably no limit to what he can do. (12:34) People forget that most people believed Amazon was doomed becaus

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

    03/05/2021 Duración: 01h21min

    What I learned from reading Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple's Greatest Productsby Leander Kahney.----Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes----[4:43] Mike Ive influence on his son’s talent was purely nurturing. They were constantly keeping up a conversation about made-objects and hw they could be made better.[6:39] I came to realize that what was really important was the care that was put into it. What I really despise is when I sense some carelessness in a product.[9:24] Take big chances. Pursue a passion. Respect the work.[11:47] His designs were incredibly simple and elegant. They were usually rather surprising but made complete sense once you saw them. You wondered why we had never seen such a product like that before.[15:52] Grind it out. You can make something look like magic by going further than most reasonable people would go.[17:34] The more I learned about this cheeky, almost rebellious company (Apple) the more it appealed to

  • #177 Robert Campeau (Junk Bonds and Retail Bankruptcy)

    26/04/2021 Duración: 01h09min

    What I learned from reading Going for Broke: How Robert Campeau Bankrupted the Retail Industry, Jolted the Junk Bond Market, and Brought the Booming Eighties to a Crashing Halt by John Rothchild.----Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes----[0:01] A stranger comes to Wall Street, borrows nearly $4 billion to acquire a company that six months earlier he'd never even heard of. This transaction is scarcely settled before he's allowed to borrow $7 billion more to acquire a bigger company, making him a major force in retailing, an industry he knows nothing about. [11:16] Just a few weeks back, Randall had figured that Bob might be interested in attracting a single Brooks Brothers store into one of his malls. Now in a great imaginary leap, Bob had vaulted himself into the ownership of all forty-five Brooks Brothers stores. [15:01 Neither Bob nor his advisers really knew one investment bank from another. "It was basically a matter of looking up

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