Founders

What I learned from reading Becoming Dr. Seuss: Theodor Geisel and the Making of an American Imagination by Brian Jay Jones. ---- [6:32] Both his parents would inspire and encourage Ted’s love for books. Reading was a pastime the entire family took seriously.  [9:24] Ted came to appreciate the considerable discipline and commitment it took to hone expertise.  [10:15] He was an inspiration. Whatever you do, he taught me, do it to perfection.  [10:53] No matter what discipline you are in there’s a common denominator in how we approach our craft. The attention to detail, the level of commitment. Those things are the same across the board. That is my message. Don’t look at what I did but how I did it. The how. And then you can transfer that over to any profession and any discipline. —Kobe Bryant.  [20:07] Unlike many of his classmates, Ted wasn’t entirely certain what to do next.  [22:51] You’re not very interested in the lecture she told him plainly —then leaned in and pointed at one of his drawings. I think tha

What I learned from reading Routines and Orgies: The Life of Peter Cundill, Financial Genius, Philosopher, and Philanthropist by Christopher Risso-Gill. ---- Excellence as a goal in itself had been drummed into him from early boyhood. I’m convinced that to achieve real greatness a person needs above all to have passion but at the same time immense discipline, concentration, patience and an unshakeable determination to become a master of his craft. There is a choice of courses in life: either to seek equilibrium or to enjoy the heights and suffer the depths. You need to get into some situations which make your gut tight and your balls tingle. Do the unappealing things first. Once you have done your homework properly and are absolutely convinced that an investment is right you should not hesitate or wait for others to share the adventure. The price at which you start buying will almost invariably be imperfect but that should never discourage you. Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not a

What I learned from reading Swimming Across by Andrew S. Grove.  ---- [0:01] I was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1936. By the time I was twenty, I had lived through a Hungarian Fascist dictatorship, German military occupation, the Nazis’ “Final Solution,” the siege of Budapest by the Soviet Red Army, a period of chaotic democracy in the years immediately after the war, a variety of repressive Communist regimes, and a popular uprising that was put down at gunpoint.  [3:02] Some 200,000 Hungarians escaped to the West. I was one of them.  [8:05] A subtle and compelling commentary on the power to endure.  [10:03] He dedicates this book to his mom. He says: To my mother, who gave me the gift of life more than once.   [13:03] People avoided looking at us. Even people whom we knew wouldn’t meet our eyes. It was as if a barrier was growing between us and everyone else.  [14:01] My mother returned in a couple of hours, shaken up. She told me that the man who came for her was a policeman who arrested her along with the

What I learned from reading Disney’s Land: Walt Disney and the Invention of the Amusement Park That Changed the World by Richard Snow. ---- [1:29] In Disney's Land, popular historian Richard Snow brilliantly presents the entire spectacular story, a wild ride from vision to realization that reflects the uniqueness of the man determined to build “the happiest place on earth” with a watchmaker's precision, an artist's conviction, and the desperate, high-hearted recklessness of a riverboat gambler.  [4:13]  When he reached middle age it seemed that we were going to witness an all too familiar process—the conversion of the tired artist into the tired businessman. When in 1955 we heard that Disney had opened an amusement park under his own name, it appeared certain that we could not look forward to anything new from Mr. Disney. We were quite wrong. He had, instead, created his masterpiece.  [4:58] Walt Disney was an obsessive with soul in the game.  [5:26] Disney’s father didn’t believe children should have toys. 

What I learned from reading The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution by Walter Isaacson. ---- [0:29] This is the story of those pioneers hackers, inventors, and entrepreneurs. Who they were, how their minds worked, and what made them so creative.  [8:41] She developed a somewhat outsize opinion of her talents as a genius. In her [Ada Lovelace] letter to Babbage, she wrote, “Do not reckon me conceited but I believe I have the power of going just as far as I like in such pursuits.”  [14:10] The reality is that Ada’s contribution was both profound and inspirational. More than any other person of her era, she was able to glimpse a future in which machines would become partners of the human imagination.  [16:37] Alan Turing was slow to learn that indistinct line that separated initiative from disobedience. [20:15] If a mentally superhuman race ever develops its members will resemble John Von Neumann.  [23:40] His [William Shockley] tenacity was ferocious. In any si

What I learned from reading Mornings on Horseback: The Story of an Extraordinary Family, a Vanished Way of Life and the Unique Child Who Became Theodore Roosevelt ---- [0:20] He was scratched, bruised, and hungry, but gritty and determined as a bulldog.  [2:44] Not the least extraordinary part of the story is that during these same six days after catching the thieves, Theodore in odd moments read the whole of Anna Karenina.  [3:56] He impressed me and puzzled me. And when I went home I told my wife that I'd met the most peculiar, and at the same time, the most wonderful man I'd ever come to know. I could see that he was a man of brilliant ability and I could not understand why he was out there on the frontier.   [4:35]  Roosevelt has been a supporting character in a lot of the biographies that I've read for this podcast: #135 Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print, and Power #139 The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance#142 The Hour of Fate: Theodore Roosevelt, J. P. Morgan

What I learned from reading Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos, With an Introduction by Walter Isaacson. ---- [2:38]  The whole point of moving things forward is that you run into problems, failures, things that don't work. You need to back up and try again. Each one of those times when you have a setback, you get back up and you try again. You're using resourcefulness; you're using self-reliance; you're trying to invent your way out of a box. We have tons of examples at Amazon where we’ve had to do this.  [4:08] I would much rather have a kid with nine fingers than a resourceless kid.  [5:51]  I am often asked who, of the people living today, I would consider to be in the same league as those I have written about as a biographer: Leonardo da Vinci (#15), Benjamin Franklin (#115), Ada Lovelace, Steve Jobs (#5), and Albert Einstein. All were very smart. But that’s not what made them special. Smart people are a dime a dozen and often don’t amount to much. What counts is being creative and i

What I learned from reading My Life with Charlie Brown by Charles Schulz.  ---- [0:24] Beginning with the first strip published on October 2nd, 1950, until the last published on Sunday, February 13th, 2000, the day after his death, Schultz wrote, penciled, inked, and lettered by hand every single one of the daily and Sunday strips to leave his studio, 17,897 in all for an almost fifty-year run.  [4:08] If there were one bit of advice I could give to a young person, it would be to do at least one task well. Do what you do on a high plain.  [5:54] Slow consistent growth over a long period of time: Year  / # of newspapers1950     71952    401958    3551971     11001975    14801984    2000  [12:00] There are certain seasons in our lives that each of us can recall, and there are others that disappear from our memories, like the melting snow.  [14:05] I used my spare time to work on my own cartoons. I tried to never let a week go by without having something in the mail working for me.  [21:03] You don’t work all of

What I learned from reading Bowerman and the Men of Oregon: The Story of Oregon's Legendary Coach and Nike's Cofounder by Kenny Moore.  ---- [0:01] Take a primitive organism, any weak, pitiful organism. Say a freshman. Make it lift, or jump or run. Let it rest. What happens? A little miracle. It gets a little better. It gets a little stronger or faster or more enduring. That's all training is. Stress. Recover. Improve. You would think any damn fool could do it, but you won't. [0:25] You work too hard and you rest too little and get hurt.  [1:38] You cannot just tell somebody what’s good for him. He won’t listen. He will not listen. First, you have to get his attention.   [4:14] From the book Shoe Dog. Phil Knight on Bowerman: I look back over the decades and see him toiling in his workshop, Mrs. Bowerman carefully helping, and I get goosebumps. He was Edison in Menlo Park, Da Vinci in Florence, Tesla in Wardenclyffe. Divinely inspired. I wonder if he knew, if he had any clue, that he was the Daedalus of sneak

What I learned from reading Personal History by Katherine Graham.  ---- [1:02] A few minutes later there was the ear-splitting noise of a gun going off indoors. I bolted out of the room and ran around in a frenzy looking for him. When I opened the door to a downstairs bathroom, I found him. It was so profoundly shocking and traumatizing —he was so obviously dead.  [3:56] Katherine Graham was the first-ever female CEO of a fortune 500 company.  [5:30] This book is the inner monologue of someone not at all comfortable with herself and where she fits in with others.  [8:55] Katherine's mom on having a second wind: The fatigue of the climb was great but it is interesting to learn once more how much further one can go on one’s second wind. I think that is an important lesson for everyone to learn for it should also be applied to one’s mental efforts. Most people go through life without ever discovering the existence of that whole field of endeavor which we describe as second wind. Whether mentally or physically oc

What I learned from reading Overnight Success: Federal Express and Frederick Smith, Its Renegade Creator by Vance Trimble. ---- [0:01] At age thirty Frederick Wallace Smith was in deep trouble. His dream of creating Federal Express had become too expensive and was fast fizzling out. He had exhausted his father’s millions. He was in hock for 15 or 20 million more. He appeared in danger of losing his cargo jets and also his wife. His own board of directors had fired him as CEO. Now the FBI accused him of forging papers to get a $2 million bank loan and was trying to send him to prison. He thought of suicide.  [1:08] At any risk, at any cost, he refused to let his Federal Express dream die.  [6:23] I believe that a man who expects to win out in business without self-denial and self-improvement stands about as much chance as a prizefighter would stand if he started a hard ring battle without having gone through intensive training. Natural ability, even when accompanied by the spirit to win, is never sufficient. 

What I learned from reading Sam Walton: The Inside Story of America's Richest Man by Vance H. Trimble. ---- [3:11] Charlie Munger on Sam Walton: It's quite interesting to think about Walmart starting from a single store in Arkansas – against Sears Roebuck with its name, reputation and all of its billions. How does a guy in Bentonville, Arkansas, with no money, blow right by Sears, Roebuck? And he does it in his own lifetime – in fact, during his own late lifetime because he was already pretty old by the time he started out with one little store. He played the chain store game harder and better than anyone else. Walton invented practically nothing. But he copied everything anybody else ever did that was smart – and he did it with more fanaticism. So he just blew right by them all.  [4:46]  Sam Walton was no ordinary man. He was a genius in business, with an iron mind —some say pig-headed—unwilling to compromise any of his carefully thought out policies and principles.  [5:08] To him, making money was only a ga

What I learned from reading The Big Rich: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Texas Oil Fortunes by Bryan Burrough. ---- [3:12] There's truth behind legend. There really were poor Texas boys who discovered gushing oil wells and became overnight billionaires, patriarchs of squabbling families who owned private islands and colossal mansions and championship football teams, who slept with movie stars and jousted with presidents and tried to corner and international market or two.  [9:55] Their success raised a tantalizing question. What if there really was another Spindletop out there, and what if it were discovered not by a large company but by a single Texan working alone? One well, one fortune, it was the stuff of myth, the Eldorado of Texas Oil, and as a new decade dawned, a hoard of young second-generation oilmen would begin trying to find it.  [14:53] He first headed to the Houston public library where he read every book he could find on the geology of oil.  [17:51] Let me get a shave and a bath. Tomorrow's

What I learned from Random Reminiscences of Men and Events by John D. Rockefeller.  ---- [0:16] These incidents which come to my mind to speak of seemed vitally important to me when they happened, and they still stand out distinctly in my memory.  [2:43] That sounds funny, making friends among the eminent dead, but if you go through life making friends with the eminent dead who had the right ideas, I think it will work better in life and work better in education. — Charlie Munger  [3:07] On Founders #16 I covered the biography of Rockefeller. Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller.  [3:19] Rockefeller prioritized silence and using the element of surprise by not telling people what he was up to.  [3:54] The book I read for Founders #31 Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue by Ryan Holiday.  [5:02] They woke up and saw for the first time that my mind had not been idle while they were talking so big and loud.  [5:35] He's attempting to buy out one of his competitors and he says

What I learned from reading Revolver: Sam Colt and the Six-Shooter That Changed America by Jim Rasenberger. ---- [0:01] Sam Colt embodied the America of his time. He was big brash, voracious, imaginative, and possessed extraordinary drive and energy. He was a classic disruptor who not only invented a world-changing product but produced it and sold it in world-changing ways.  [1:59] He had solved one of the great technological challenges of the early 19th century.  [2:36] He was rich at 21. Poor at 31. Then rich again at 41.  [7:10] Sam Colt solved a 400-year-old problem. The guns of 1830 were essentially what they had been in 1430. [7:53] There's a financial panic in 1819. This is a very important part in the life of Sam Colt. It may explain why he was such a hard worker, ruthless, and determined. The panic of 1819 bankrupts his family.  [10:48] What kind of person would do this voluntarily? He was set to embark on a 17,000-mile voyage across the Atlantic, around the horn of Africa, through the Indian ocean a

What I learned from reading Hershey: Milton S. Hershey's Extraordinary Life of Wealth, Empire, and Utopian Dreams by Michael D'Antonio. ---- [0:01] Perhaps the only thing about Milton Hershey that is absolutely certain is that he believed in progress. He was always moving.  [2:51] This blew my mind. Only six universities held larger endowments. Which meant that the Milton Hershey School was richer than Cornell, Columbia, or the University of Pennsylvania.    [4:14] Milton’s father was unrealized ambition personified.   [5:44] One of the biggest things Milton learned from his father and something he avoided. His father had 1,000 schemes and never stuck to any of them. He didn’t know what perseverance meant.  [7:25] Rockefeller had arrived in Oil City in the same year as Hershey, 1860. But unlike Henry, he was possessed of extraordinary energy, remarkable financial savvy, and an uncanny ability to remain focused on his goals.  [8:00] Henry’s had a preference for talking about things rather than doing them. Even

What I learned from reading The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst by David Nasaw. ---- [0:20] There has never been —nor, most likely, will there ever again be — a publisher like William Randolph Hearst.  [0:26] Decades before synergy became a corporate cliche, Hearst put the concept into practice. His magazine editors were directed to buy only stories which could be rewritten into screenplays to be produced by his film studio and serialized, reviewed, and publicized in his newspapers and magazines. He broadcast the news from his papers over the radio and pictured it in his newsreels.  [1:42]  Winston Churchill on William Randolph Hearst: “Hearst was most interesting to meet,” Churchill wrote. “I got to like him — a grave, simple child — with no doubt a nasty temper — playing with the most costly toys. A vast income always over spent: ceaseless building and collecting . . .two magnificent establishments, two charming wives; complete indifference to public opinion, a 15 million daily circulation, and e

What I learned from reading Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing. ---- [0:58] All the men were struck, almost to the point of horror, by the way the ship behaved like a giant beast in its death agonies.  [1:27]  His name was Sir Ernest Shackleton, and the twenty-seven men he had watched so ingloriously leaving the stricken ship were the members of his Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition.  [2:02] Few men have borne the responsibility Shackleton did at that moment. Though he certainly was aware that their situation was desperate, he could not possibly have imagined then the physical and emotional demands that ultimately would be placed upon them, the rigors they would have to endure, the sufferings to which they would be subjected.  [2:52] Their plight was naked and terrifying in its simplicity: If they were to get out—they had to get themselves out.  [9:21] Shackleton returned to England a hero of the Empire. He was lionized wherever he went, knighted by the king, and decorated by every

What I learned from reading Tuxedo Park : A Wall Street Tycoon and the Secret Palace of Science That Changed the Course of World War II by James Conant. ---- [0:01] Few men of Loomis’ prominence and achievement have gone to greater lengths to foil history.  [0:17]  Independently wealthy, iconoclastic, and aloof, Loomis did not conform to the conventional measure of a great scientist. He was too complex to categorize—financier, philanthropist, society figure, physicist, inventor, dilettante—a contradiction in terms.  [0:42] He rose to become one of the most powerful figures in banking in the 1920s.  [4:42] The smile was a velvet glove covering his iron determination to get underway without any lost motion.  [5:29] He would dedicate himself to overcoming Germany’s scientific advantage.  [7:19] He had amassed a substantial fortune, which allowed him to act as a patron.  [8:06] Loomis was a bit stiff, with the bearing of a four-star general in civilian clothes. He was strong and decisive.   [10:15]  He was enthus

What I learned from reading The Hour of Fate: Theodore Roosevelt, J.P. Morgan, and the Battle to Transform American Capitalism by Susan Berfield.  ---- [0:17] Morgan was the most influential of these businessmen. He wasn’t the richest but that didn’t matter; he was commanding in a way none could match.  [0:38] Morgan had an aristocrat’s disdain for public sentiment and the conviction that his actions were to the country’s advantage, no explanations necessary.  [0:50] Roosevelt thought big business was not only inevitable but essential. He also believed it had to be accountable to the public, and Roosevelt considered himself the public.  [1:04] Each [Morgan and Roosevelt] presumed he could use his authority to determine the nation’s course. Each expected deference from the other along the way. [2:18] “I’m afraid of Mr. Roosevelt because I don’t know what he’ll do,” Morgan said. “He’s afraid of me because he does know what I’ll do,” Roosevelt replied.  [5:24] Morgan had trusted his father to set him on the righ