Founders

What I learned from reading Alfred Nobel: A Biography by Kenne Fant.

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[16:24] The self-awareness that would become so characteristic of him was awakening and with it the determination to be the master of every situation. He was not going to throw himself into the world and let luck or chance lead the way. 

[26:26] When it comes to serious matters, I have adopted the rule of acting seriously. 

[28:09] Alfred never forgot poverty. 

[30:04] Financial pressure was accelerating his development as an inventor. 

[39:15] Alfred asked her what she wished as a wedding present. The quick-witted young woman astonished him by replying without hesitation, “As much as Monsieur Nobel himself earns in one day.” Impressed and amused, Alfred agreed. The girl received a monetary gift of such size that she and her husband could enjoy it as long as their marriage lasted. The bank draft Alfred signed was for $110,000. 

[47:33] It would take many years for Alfred to accept the idea that sometimes business failures were inevitable, that steps forward in one market were very often followed by a decline in another. Alfred learned to steel himself so that the disappointments would not depress him into inaction. 

[51:18] Never do yourself what others could do better or equally well. 

[57:26] Nobel had a soul of fire. He worked hard, burned with ideas, and spurred his collaborators on with his contagious energy. 

[58:04] When he went somewhere he liked to get there fast. 

[59:17] Whatever a human being manages to accomplish during his or her lifetime, there are so utterly few whose names will remain on the pages of history for any extended amount of time. Rarer still are those whose renown grows after their death. Alfred Nobel belongs among these. 

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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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What I learned from reading Yeager: An Autobiography by General Chuck Yeager. 

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[10:14] I was a competitive kid. I always tried to do my best. I never thought of myself as being poor or deprived in any way. We managed to scrape by. Kids learned self-sufficiency. Mom and Dad taught us by example. They never complained. I had certain standards that I lived by. Whatever I did, I determined to do the best I could at it.  

[13:22] The sense of speed and exhilaration makes you so damned happy that you want to shout for joy. 

[17:15]  In nearly every case the worst pilots die by their own stupidity. 

[26:04] I sensed that he was a very strong and determined person, a poor boy who had started with nothing and would show the world what he was really made of. 

[38:48] Every muscle in my body is hammering at me. I just want to let go of his guy and drop in my tracks—either to sleep or to die. I don’t know why I keep hold of him and struggle to climb. It’s the challenge, I guess, and a stubborn pride knowing that most guys would’ve let go of Pat before now. 

[40:57] Chuck is the most stubborn bastard in the world, who doesn’t dabble in gray areas. He sees in black and white. He simply said, “I’m not going home.”  

[45:26] The Germans began to come up to challenge us and ran into a goddamn West Virginia buzzsaw. 

[50:30] If you love the hell out of what you’re doing, you’re usually pretty good at it, and you wind up making your own breaks. I wasn’t a deep, sophisticated person, but I lived by a basic principle: I did only what I enjoyed. I wouldn’t let anyone derail me by promises of power or money into doing things that weren’t interesting to me. 

[55:38] Yeager would rely on himself. I couldn’t teach him enough.  

[1:03:31]  My life was flying and pilots. I didn’t spend a whole helluva lot of time doing or thinking about anything else. We were an obsessed bunch, probably because we were so isolated. 

[1:17:29] Living to a ripe old age is not an end in itself; the trick is to enjoy the years remaining. And unlike flying, learning how to take pleasure from living can’t be taught. Unfortunately, many people do not consider fun an important item on their daily agenda. For me, that was always high priority in whatever I was doing.  

[1:18:22] I’ve never lost the curiosity about things that interest me. I’m very good at the activities I most enjoy, and that part has made my life that much sweeter. I haven’t yet done everything, but by the time I’m finished, I won’t have missed much. If I auger in tomorrow, it won’t be with a frown on my face. I’ve had a ball. 

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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

What I learned from reading Becoming Dr. Seuss: Theodor Geisel and the Making of an American Imagination by Brian Jay Jones.

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[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 that is a very good flying cow. 

[23:04] Maybe the most important thing anyone ever said to him: You’re crazy to be a professor she told Ted. What you really want to do is draw. 

[23:48] Ted’s notebooks were always filled with these fabulous animals. So I set to work diverting him. Here was a man who could draw such pictures. He should earn a living doing that. 

[26:57] I don’t know. But I know one thing. My policy is to laugh my god damned head off. Occasionally I depress myself and work myself into one of those delightful funks. And I seek out subway tracks on which to toss myself. And then it strikes me as very comical and I laugh instead. 

[30:08] The money he earned through his advertising work would buy him his artistic freedom. What would eventually become the Dr. Suess empire would be laid on a foundation built and paid for with Standard Oil money. 

[33:01] To his increasing distress, the responses were all negative. He would later recall being rejected by 27 publishers. 

[45:12] We can live on $100 a week. If I could get $5,000 a year in royalties I’d be set for life. 

[46:58] If you want to write good books spend a little time studying the bad ones. 

[48:02] Your capacity for healthy, silly, friendly laughter was smothered. You’d really grown up. You’d become adults. Adults—which is a word that means obsolete children. 

[49:28] Even after 9 books he still wasn’t earning enough from them to make a living. 

[54:29] I’m subversive as hell! I’ve always had a mistrust of adults. And one reason I dropped out of Oxford was that I thought they were taking life too damn seriously, concentrating too much on nonessentials. 

[1:02:47] For me, success means doing work that you love, regardless of how much you make. I go into my office almost every day and give it 8 hours. Though every day isn’t productive of course. 

[1:03:08] All he wanted was for people to read:
The more that you read, 
The more things you will know.
The more that you learn,
The more places you’ll 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

What I learned from reading Routines and Orgies: The Life of Peter Cundill, Financial Genius, Philosopher, and Philanthropist by Christopher Risso-Gill.

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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 act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act but a habit. (Aristotle)

The more that I think about the way the Greeks, especially the Spartans, regarded the subject of exercise and the necessity of maintaining peak levels of physical fitness, the more I am convinced that the health of the mind and the spirit are either bolstered or hampered by the condition of the body.

Concentrate with absolute clarity on one thing at a time.

The mantra is patience, patience, and more patience. Think long term and remember that the big rewards accrue with compound annual rates of return.

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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

What I learned from reading Swimming Across by Andrew S. Grove. 

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[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 superintendent’s wife. Feeding Jewish people was against the law. The policeman told her that she should have bid me a more proper good-bye because she probably would not see me again. 

[18:35] There was so much pressure in my chest that I could barely breathe. After a while, my mother came back for me. She was very tense and angry. She carried me to bed and we went to sleep. Later on that night, some more Russians came into our cellar. My mother yelled at them something about how all three of the women had already done it today. 

[23:02] An emaciated man, filthy and in a ragged soldier’s uniform, was standing at the open door. I thought: This must be my father. His arms and legs were like sticks. 

[25:49] There was nothing to be done. The Communist government called all the shots. They increasingly interfered with our daily life. They took away my parents’ business, they uprooted me from my school. 

[28:09] I always had a tight feeling in my chest when we went by because by now I knew my relatives had been taken from that house to be killed. 

[33:30] Life is like a big lake. All the boys get in the water at one end and start swimming. Not all of them will swim across. But one of them, I’m sure will. That one is Grove. 

[37:28] In the middle of one bitterly cold winter night, my father’s battalion was made to strip naked and climb trees, and the guards sprayed them with water and watched and laughed as one after another fell out of the trees frozen to death. 

[43:52] I thought I had made an important discovery. I realized that it’s good to have at least two interests in your life. If you have only one interest and that goes sour, there’s nothing to act as a counterbalance to lift your mood. But if you have more than one interest, chances are something will always go okay. 

[52:11] I wished there were no mortars falling on our house and no Russian soldiers in our apartment. I wanted the trams to run again. I wanted to go back to school. I wanted life to go back to normal. 

[56:24] After a while, we emerged from the woods. I could see some faint lights far across an open field. The man came close to us. “Those lights are Austria’, he whispered. ‘Head towards them and don’t take your eyes off them. This is as far as I go.’ And he was gone. I didn’t take my eyes off those lights. I trudged toward them as if they were a magnet. 

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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

What I learned from reading Disney’s Land: Walt Disney and the Invention of the Amusement Park That Changed the World by Richard Snow.

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[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. 

[14:50] One small enterprise did please him, though, and it had little to do with the art he had done so much to invent and of which he was the undisputed master. 

[15:09] He was dismayed to find the man whose work he had long admired “seemed totally uninterested in movies and seemed wholly, almost weirdly concerned with the building of a miniature railroad engine and a string of cars. All of his zest for invention, for creative fantasies, seemed to be going into this plaything.” 

[17:15] Disney on his nervous breakdown: “I had a hell of a breakdown. I went to pieces. I kept expecting more from the artists and when they let me down, I got worried. Costs were going up and it was always way over what they figured the picture would bring in. I just got very irritable. I got to a point that it couldn't talk on the telephone. I would begin to cry.”

[17:49] The money wasn't coming in. His last successful feature, Bambi, was six years in the past. 

[22:19] Why would you want to get involved in an amusement park? They're so dirty, and not fun at all for grownups. Why would you want to get involved in a business like that? He fielded the question the way he would countless times during Disneyland's germination. "That's exactly the point. Mine isn't going to be that way."

[25:25] Disney’s friend’s reaction to hearing the plans for Disneyland: While he talked, becoming more and more enthusiastic by the minute, I began to grow more and more concerned. I hardly knew how to tell him that, for once, he was making what would probably be the biggest, most ruinous mistake of his life. What could I say? I knew he was wrong.  

[28:00] He never lost his calm understanding that the company's prosperity, rested not on the rock of conventional business practices, but on the churning, extravagant perfectionist, imagination of his younger brother. 

[38:48] You asked the question, What was your process like? I kind of laugh because process is an organized way of doing things. I have to remind you, during the “Walt Period” of designing Disneyland, we didn't have processes. We just did the work. Processes came later. All of these things had never been done before. Walt had gathered up all of these people who had never designed a theme park, never designed a Disneyland. So we’re all in the same boat at one time, and we figure out what to do and how to do it on the fly as we go along with it and not even discuss plans, timing, or anything. We just worked and Walt just walked around and had suggestions. 

[40:24]  He told a parable. Two men are laying bricks. Somebody asked one of them what he's doing, and is told, “I’m laying bricks.” To the same question, the other man answers, “I’m building a cathedral.” 

[47:32] Disney was asked what he thought was his greatest accomplishment. “To be able to build an organization and hang onto it.”  

[48:00]  The way I see it, Disneyland will never be finished. It's something we can keep developing and adding to. . .I’ve always wanted to work on something alive, something that keeps growing. We've got that in Disneyland. 

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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

What I learned from reading The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution by Walter Isaacson.

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[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 situation, he simply had to have his way. 

[28:38] Bob Noyce described his excitement more vividly: “The concept hit me like the atom bomb. It was simply astonishing. Just the whole concept. It was one of those ideas that just jolts you out of the rut, gets you thinking in a different way. 

[29:06] Some leaders are able to be willful and demanding while still inspiring loyalty. They celebrate audaciousness in a way that makes them charismatic Steve Jobs,  for example; his personal manifesto dressed in the guise of a TV ad, began, “Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in square holes.” Amazon's founder, Jeff Bezos has the same ability to inspire. The knack is to get people to follow you, even to places that they may not think they can go, by motivating them to share your sense of mission. 

[38:26] As Grove wrote in his memoir, Swimming Across, “By the time I was twenty, I had lived through a Hungarian Fascist dictatorship, German military occupation, the Nazi’s 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. 

[39:10] Grove had a blunt, no-bullshit style. It was the same approach Steve jobs would later use: brutal honesty, clear focus, and a demanding drive for excellence. 

[39:40] Grove’s mantra was “Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive.” 

[40:24]  Engineering the game was easy. Growing the company without money was hard. 

[42:40] Vannevar Bush was a man of strong opinions, which he expressed and applied with vigor, yet he stood in all of the mysteries of nature, had a warm tolerance for human frailty, and was open-minded to change 

[47:17] Gate was also a rebel with little respect for authority. He did not believe in being deferential. 

[47:51] Jobs later said he learned some important lessons at Atari, the most profound being the need to keep interfaces friendly and intuitive. Instructions should be insanely simple: “Insert quarters, avoid Klingons.” Devices should not need manuals. That simplicity rubbed off on him and made him a very focused product person. 

[48:47]  Steve Jobs’ interesting way to think about a new market: My vision was to create the first fully packaged computer. We were no longer aiming for the handful of hobbyists who liked to assemble their own computers, who knew how to buy transformers and keyboards. For every one of them, there were a thousand people who would want the machine to be ready to run. 

Innovation will come from people who are able to link beauty to engineering, humanity to technology, and poetry to processors. [57:21]

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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