Learn from history's greatest entrepreneurs. Every week I read a biography of an entrepreneur and find ideas you can use in your work.
This quote explains why: "There are thousands of years of history in which lots and lots of very smart people worked very hard and ran all types of experiments on how to create new businesses, invent new technology, new ways to manage etc. They ran these experiments throughout their entire lives. At some point, somebody put these lessons down in a book. For very little money and a few hours of time, you can learn from someone’s accumulated experience. There is so much more to learn from the past than we often realize. You could productively spend your time reading experiences of great people who have come before and you learn every time." —Marc Andreessen
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What I learned from rereading The Invisible Billionaire: Daniel Ludwig by Jerry Shields. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes ---- Follow one of my favorite podcasts Invest Like The Best ! ---- [2:00] Obsessed with privacy, Ludwig pays a major public relations firm fat fees to keep his name out of the papers. [4:00] An associate speaks of his unlimited ingenuity in dreaming up new ways of doing things. [5:00] Ludwig’s most notable characteristic, b...
What I learned from reading The HP Way: How Bill Hewlett and I Built Our Company by David Packard. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by signing up for Founders Notes ---- Follow one of my favorite podcasts Invest Like The Best ! ---- Do our products offer something unique? Customer satisfaction second to none is the only acceptable goal. What I learned from rereading Jeff Bezos' Shareholder Letters for the 3rd time (Founders #282) In Silicon Valley, the ultimate ...
David Senra reviews the biography "Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire," diving into the formative years and intense drive that defined the young Bill Gates. The episode explores his early obsession with computers, his ruthless competitive spirit, and the pivotal decisions that shaped Microsoft's rise, including the deal with IBM and the development of MS-DOS. It highlights Gates's focus, financial conservatism, and relentless pursuit of market dominance, painting a portrait of a brilliant and driven entrepreneur.
What I learned from reading The Dream of Solomeo: My Life and the Idea of Humanistic Capitalism by Brunello Cucinelli. ---- This episode is brought to you by: Tiny : Tiny is the easiest way to sell your business. Quick and straightforward exits for Founders. ---- Follow one of my favorite podcasts Invest Like The Best and listen to episode 293 David Senra Passion and Pain ! [4:00] I am reminded of Machiavelli: during his exile, he too spent his afternoons playing board games and drinking wine, w...
What I learned from reading Ralph Lauren: The Man Behind the Mystique by Jeffrey Trachtenberg. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes ---- Follow one of my favorite podcasts Invest Like The Best and listen to episode 311 John Fio — Creating Magic for Consumers, episode 307 Jeremiah Lowin: Explaining the New AI Paradigm, and episode 293 The Business of Gaming. ---- [2:01] When I lumped him together with a handful of othe...
What I learned from rereading Rolls-Royce: The Magic of a Name: The First Forty Years of Britain s Most Prestigious Company by Peter Pugh. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes ---- Follow one of my favorite podcasts Invest Like The Best and listen to episode Mitch Lasky—The Business of Gaming ---- [2:31] Henry Royce had known poverty and hardship all his life. The only university he had graduated from was the one of h...
What I learned from reading All I Want To Know Is Where I'm Going To Die So I'll Never Go There: Buffett & Munger – A Study in Simplicity and Uncommon, Common Sense by Peter Bevelin. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes ---- Follow one of my favorite podcasts Invest Like The Best and listen to episode Mitch Lasky—The Business of Gaming Follow the podcast Gamecraft to learn more about the history of the video game ...
What I learned from reading American Rascal: How Jay Gould Built Wall Street's Biggest Fortune by Greg Steinmetz. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes ---- [0:01] A series of spectacular financial triumphs had made Gould fabulously rich. At age thirty-six, he was the most notorious businessman in the country. [1:00] Vanderbilt told a newspaper that Gould was "the smartest man in America." Rockefeller, when asked who h...
What I learned from rereading Meet You in Hell: Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, and the Bitter Partnership That Changed America by Les Standiford. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes ---- Follow one of my favorite podcasts Invest Like The Best and check out these great episodes: #137 Bill Gurley: All Things Business and Investing #88 Sam Hinkie: Data, Decisions, and Basketball #204 Sam Hinkie: Find Your People — [...
What I learned from rereading The Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie by Andrew Carnegie. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes ---- Follow one of my favorite podcasts Invest Like The Best ---- (1:01) 3 part series on Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick: Meet You In Hell: Andrew Carnegie Henry Clay Frick, and the Bitter Partnership That Transformed America by Les Standiford. (Founders #73) The Autobiography of Andrew Car...
What I learned from rereading Jeff Bezos' Shareholder Letters (for the 3rd time!) Read Jeff's letters in book form: Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos or for free online: Amazon Investor Relations ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes ---- Follow one of my favorite podcasts Invest Like The Best [2:30] Amazon hopes to create an enduring franchise [3:00] Because of our emphasis on the long term, we m...
What I learned from rereading Creative Selection: Inside Apple's Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs by Ken Kocienda. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes ---- Follow one of my favorite podcasts Invest Like The Best [2:01] We're going to relentlessly chase perfection, knowing full well we will not catch it, because perfection is not attainable. But we are going to relentlessly chase it because, in the p...
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 ---- Follow Invest Like The Best in your favorite podcast player here Two episodes I recommend: Paul Orfalea - It's About the Money episode 299 David Senra - Passion & Pain episode 292 [5:23] I've never met a more circular, out-of-the-box thinke...
What I learned from reading Starting At Zero: His Own Story by Jimi Hendrix. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes ---- [0:01] He was also a compulsive writer, using hotel stationery, scraps of paper, cigarette cartons, napkins—anything that came to hand. [0:01] Decoded by Jay Z. (Founders #238) [1:00] He always claimed that for him life and music were inseparable. [5:00] I liked to be different. [5:00] The Autobiograp...
What I learned from reading What I Learned Before I Sold to Warren Buffett: An Entrepreneur's Guide to Developing a Highly Successful Company by Barnett Helzberg Jr. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes ---- [5:00] Then, right there on the sidewalk I told one of the most astute businessmen in America why he ought to consider buying our family's 79-year-old jewelry business. "I believe that our company matches your cri...
What I learned from rereading Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes ---- [4:01] Jobs's return to Apple 12 years later shows how the most important task in business-the creation of new valuecannot be reduced to a formula and applied by professionals. [5:00] A really important sentence to understand one of the main points in Peter’s book: Apple's ...
What I learned from reading Hackers and Painters: Big Ideas From The Computer Age by Paul Graham ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- [4:00] How To Make Wealth by Paul Graham [4:01] Wealth is stuff we want: food, clothes, houses, cars, gadgets, travel to interesting places, and so on. You can have wealth without having money. If you had a magic machine that could on command make you a car or cook you dinner or do your laundry, or do anythi...
What I learned from reading Paul Graham’s essays . ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- [4:01] You don't want to start a startup to do something that everyone agrees is a good idea, or there will already be other companies doing it. You have but that you know isn't to do something that sounds to most other people like a bad idea. [5:20] The independent-minded are often unaware how different their ideas are from conventional ones, at least ...
What I learned from reading Paul Graham’s essays . ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- [4:52] My father told me I could be whatever I wanted when I grew up, so long as I enjoyed it. [5:49] Do what you love doesn't mean, do what you would like to do most this second. [7:41] To be happy I think you have to be doing something you not only enjoy, but admire. You have to be able to say, at the end, wow, that's pretty cool. [8:00] You should no...
What I learned from rereading The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story by Michael Lewis ---- Founders Notes gives you the superpower to learn from history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. You can search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast. Get access to Founders Notes here . ---- [1:23] Maybe somewhere in a footnote, it would be mentioned that he came from nothing, grew up poor, dropped out of high school, and made himself three or four billion dollars....
What I learned from rereading The Mamba Mentality: How I Play by Kobe Bryant. ---- Founders Notes gives you the superpower to learn from history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. You can search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast. Get access to Founders Notes here . ---- Episode outline: If you really want to be great at something, you have to truly care about it. If you want to be great in a particular area, you have to obsess over it. A lot of people sa...
What I learned from reading Showboat: The Life of Kobe Bryant by Roland Lazenby. ---- Founders Notes gives you the superpower to learn from history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. You can search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast. Get access to Founders Notes here . ---- [9:15] Notes from The Redeem Team documentary : 30 seconds into the first practice Kobe is diving for loose balls. That set the tone. Players go clubbing. Come back at 5:30am and see K...
What I learned from reading Endless Frontier: Vannevar Bush, Engineer of the American Century by G. Pascal Zachary. ---- Founders Notes gives you the superpower to learn from history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. You can search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast. Get access to Founders Notes here . ---- [7:31] Acts of importance were the measure of his life and they are the reason that his life deserves study today. [8:10] Suspicious of big instituti...
What I learned from reading Pieces of the Action by Vannevar Bush. ---- Founders Notes gives you the superpower to learn from history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. You can search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast. Get access to Founders Notes here . ---- Outline: Pieces of the Action offers his hard-won lessons on how to operate and manage effectively within complex organizations and drive ambitious, unprecedented programs to fruition. Stripe Press ...
What I learned from reading Am I Being Too Subtle?: Straight Talk From a Business Rebel by Sam Zell. ---- Founders Notes gives you the superpower to learn from history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. You can search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast. Get access to Founders Notes here . ---- [6:37] I have an embedded sense of urgency. What I can’t figure out is why so many other people don’t have it. [6:50] I was willing to trade conformity for authenti...
What I learned from reading Cable Cowboy: John Malone and the Rise of the Modern Cable Business by Mark Robichaux. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- Outline: Thread of highlights from Cable Cowboy by @Loadlinefinance Malone was stalwart about building long term value through leveraged cash flow. Earnings didn’t count. He wasn’t constrained by quarterly expectations. Malone built the pipes, then bought the water that flows through them. ...
What I learned from reading Edison: A Biography by Matthew Josephson. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- Outline: He had known how to gather interest, faith, and hope in the success of his projects. I think of this episode as part 5 in a 5 part series that started on episode 263: #263 Land's Polaroid: A Company and the Man Who Invented It by Peter C. Wensberg. #264 Instant: The Story of Polaroid by Christopher Bonanos. #265 Becoming Stev...
What I learned from rereading My Life and Work by Henry Ford. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- [7:45] True education is gained through the discipline of life. [8:00] Land's Polaroid: A Company and the Man Who Invented It by Peter C. Wensberg. (Founders #263) [9:40] Reading this book is like having a one-sided conversation with one of the greatest entrepreneurs to ever live who just speaks directly to you and tells you, “Hey this is my ...
What I learned from rereading Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader by Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes.com ---- [3:11] His mind was never a captive of reality. [5:16] A complete list of every Founders episode on Steve Jobs and the founders Steve studied: Steve Jobs’s Heroes [7:15] Steve Jobs and The Next Big Thing by Randall Stross (Founders #77) [9:05] Steve Job’s Com...
David Senra delves into the life and work of Edwin Land, the visionary behind Polaroid, highlighting his similarities to Steve Jobs in their dedication to product excellence and absolute control. The episode covers Land's early focus on polarizers, his unique approach to talent acquisition, and his philosophical belief in the intersection of humanities and science. It also examines Polaroid's journey through dramatic product demonstrations, the strategic use of paid critics, and the eventual downfall due to the Polavision failure, underscoring lessons on perseverance, product vision, and the inevitable challenges of business survival.
