Founders

What I learned from reading Anna: The Biography by Amy Odell.  ---- 1. If you need tax prep and bookkeeping check out betterbookkeeping.com/founders. It's like having a full time CFO and super cheap grandpa sitting on your shoulder.  2. Vesto makes it easy for you to invest your businesses idle cash. Schedule a demo with Vesto's founder Ben and tell him David from Founders sent you.  Here's the le...

What I learned from reading How Larry Gagosian Reshaped The Art World by Patrick Radden Keefe.  ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes ---- (4:00) The dealer has been so successful selling art to masters of the universe that he has become one of them. (5:45) We think of genius as being complicated, but geniuses have the f...

What I learned from reading The 38 Letters from J.D. Rockefeller to His Son by John D. Rockefeller.  ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes ---- (5:00) My Influence had been extended to all corners of the oil industry.  If I say that I have the power of life and death over oil producers and oil refiners, that is not a lie...

What I learned from reading Bloomberg by Michael Bloomberg.  ---- 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.  ---- [2:08] Answering to no one is the ultimate situation. [3:02] Twitter thread on Michael Bloomberg by Neck...

What I learned from reading Jimmy Buffett: A Good Life All the Way by Ryan White and A Pirate Looks at Fifty by Jimmy Buffett. ---- 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.  ---- (8:00) Q: What are you going to do wit...

What I learned from reading Nuts!: Southwest Airlines' Crazy Recipe for Business and Personal Success by Kevin and Jackie Freiberg and  Herb’s Heroes by David Sanders.  ---- 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.  -...

What I learned from reading Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon by Colin Bryar and Bill Carr. --- 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.  --- (8:00) Principles Jeff Bezos would repea...

What I learned from reading Young Titan: The Making of Winston Churchill by Michael Shelden.  ---- 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.  ---- Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every bo...

What I learned from rereading The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America's Banana King by Rich Cohen. ---- Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book ---- [4:47] This story can shock and infuriate us, and it does. But I found it invigorating, too. It told me that the life of the nation was written not only by speech-making grandees in funny hats but a...

What I learned from reading Hero of the Empire: The Boer War, a Daring Escape, and the Making of Winston Churchill by Candice Millard.  --- Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book --- (2:30) He was meant not just to fight for his country, but one day to lead it. Although he believed this without question, he still had to convince everyone else. (3:30) He didn't ev...

What I learned from the first 6 years of making Founders. I recorded a new episode with Patrick. It should be out soon. Follow Invest Like the Best in your favorite podcast app so you don't miss it.  ---- 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 F...

What I learned from reading The Forgotten Highlander: An Incredible WWII Story of Survival in the Pacific by Alistair Urquhart. --- Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book --- (4:00) I hope that this book will be inspirational and offer hope to those who suffer adversity in their daily lives. (10:00) You might as well send a cow in pursuit of a rabbit. The Indians...

What I learned from rereading Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration by Ed Catmull.  --- Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book --- (7:00) Walt Disney created a made-up world, used cutting-edge technology to enable it, and then told us how he’d done it. (7:30) Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson. (F...

What I learned from reading The Bugatti Story by L’Ebe Bugatti. --- Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book --- (2:01) If there was a prototype operation for what Enzo Ferrari envisioned it had to be what the legendary Ettore Bugatti built in Molsheim. — Enzo Ferrari: The Man and the Machine by Brock Yates. (Founders #220) (7:00) Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari, and T...

What I learned from reading Creators: From Chaucer and Durer to Picasso and Disney by Paul Johnson.  --- Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book --- (2:20) Among the masters of Parisian fashion, Balenciaga was the greatest. (3:00) Christian Dior called Balenciaga “the master of us all" and Coco Chanel said that Balenciaga was "the only couturier in the truest sens...

What I learned from reading How To Do Great Work by Paul Graham. --- Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book --- (2:00) All you need to do is find something you have an aptitude for and great interest in. (2:10) Doing great work means doing something important so well that you expand people's ideas of what's possible. (4:15) How many even discover something they l...

What I learned from reading The Nolan Variations: The Movies, Mysteries, and Marvels of Christopher Nolan by Tom Shone. --- Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book --- (7:00) The only way I know how to work is to sort of burrow in on one project very obsessively. (7:25) People will say to me, "There are people online who are obsessed with Inception or obsessed wit...

What I learned from reading Lighting Out for the Territory: How Samuel Clemens Headed West and Became Mark Twain by Roy Morris Jr. --- One of the best podcasts I've heard this year: Listen to Invest Like The Best #336 Jeremy Giffon Special Situations in Private Markets  --- Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book --- (7:20) A great way to think about power law peo...

What I learned from reading The Futurist: The Life and Films of James Cameron by Rebecca Keegan and The Return of James Cameron, Box Office King by Zach Baron. (4:00) I watched Titanic at the Titanic. And he actually replied: Yeah, but I madeTitanic at the Titanic. (7:10) I like difficult. I’m attracted by difficult. Difficult is a fucking magnet for me. I go straight to difficult. And I think it...

What I learned from reading Creators: From Chaucer and Durer to Picasso and Disney by Paul Johnson.  --- (3:30) Disney made use of the new technologies throughout his creative life. (4:45) Lists of Paul Johnson books and episodes:  Churchill by Paul Johnson. (Founders #225)  Heroes: From Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar to Churchill and de Gaulle by Paul Johnson.(Founders #226) Mozart: A Life...

What I learned from reading Michael Jordan: The Life by Roland Lazenby. --- (5:07) His competence was exceeded only by his confidence.(5:58) He worked at the game, and if he wasn't good at something, he had the motivation to be the best at it. (6:33) It seemed that he discovered the secret quite early in his competitive life: the more pressure he heaped on himself, the greater his ability to rise...

What I learned from reading Arnold and Me: In the Shadow of the Austrian Oak by Barbara Outland Baker. --- Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book --- (6:30) He forced his sons to eat with silverware at perfect right angles. They had to keep their elbows to their waists. If the boys did not obey, the back of his hand was quick to strike their cheeks. (7:30) His li...

What I learned from reading Glock: The Rise of America's Gun by Paul Barrett.    Listen to Invest Like the Best #292 David Senra: Passion and Pain.  --- Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book --- (5:22) What struck me is how his inexperience was a great advantage. He didn't assume anything about how to design a handgun because he's never designed one before. Cons...

What I learned from reading Dynasties: Fortunes and Misfortunes of the World's Great Family Businesses by David Landes. ---- Listen to Invest Like the Best #292 David Senra: Passion and Pain.  Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book ---- (4:25) Success causes failure. As the family develops power and prestige, the heirs find many interesting and amusing things to...

What I learned from reading Confessions of an Advertising Man by David Ogilvy.  ---- Listen to one of my favorite podcasts: Invest Like the Best ---- Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book ---- (4:15) When Fortune published an article about me and titled it: "Is David Ogilvy a Genius?," I asked my lawyer to sue the editor for the question mark. (4:45) The people...