Founders

What I learned from reading Ritz and Escoffier: The Hotelier, The Chef, and the Rise of the Leisure Class by Luke Barr.  ---- 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.  ----[1:00] The words echoed in his head, even now. The ide...

What I learned from reading Four Seasons: The Story of a Business Philosophy by Isadore Sharp. ---- 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.  ----[0:01] When I built my first hotel I knew nothing about the hotel business.  [4:...

What I learned from reading Johnny Carson by Henry Bushkin.  ---- 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.  ---- [13:50] He often told me that all it took to turn the most electrifying film stars into dullards was to be around...

What I learned from reading Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist by Roger Lowenstein. ---- 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.  ---- His talent sprang from his unrivaled independence of mind and ability to focus...

What I learned from reading Copy This!: How I turned Dyslexia, ADHD, and 100 square feet into a company called Kinkos by Paul Orfalea. ---- 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.  ---- [4:23] I've never met a more circular,...

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 mi...

What I learned from Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon by  Colin Bryar and Bill Carr. ---- [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...

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. ---- (0:54) It may very well be that the absolute intensity of drive and focus is essential an...

What I learned from reading Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple's Greatest Products by Leander Kahney. ---- [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 sen...

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. ---- [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 bo...

What I learned from reading Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary by Linus Torvalds and David Diamond. ---- [0:01] From a party of one it now counted millions of users on every continent, including Antartica, and even outer space, if you count NASA outposts. Not only was it the most common operating system, but its very development model—an intricate web of its own, encompassing h...

What I learned from reading The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey by Candice Millard. ---- 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.  ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every...

What I learned from reading Overdrive: Bill Gates and the Race to Control Cyberspace by James Wallace. ---- There would be an industry breakthrough unimagined at the time, and it would be made by a company that didn’t yet exist. [7:55] Another corollary to Joys Law of Innovation was that the number of bright people in any company went down as the size went up. [10:47] As Apple founder Steve Jobs l...

What I learned from reading Hollywood Rajah: The Life and Times of Louis B. Mayer by Bosley Crowther.  ---- The reason so many people showed up at his funeral was because they wanted to make sure he was dead. [0:50] He is in that phalanx of men of aggressive bent who seized on the opportunities that an expanding civilization exposed. With them, he ascended to high places along an upwardly spiralin...

What I learned from reading Liftoff: Elon Musk and the Desperate Early Days That Launched SpaceX by Eric Berger.  ---- [12:38] Numerous other entrepreneurs had tried playing at rocket science before, Musk well knew. He wanted to learn from their mistakes so as not to repeat them.  [20:55]  He could be difficult to work for, certainly. But his early hires could immediately see the benefits of worki...

What I learned from reading The Billionaire Who Wasn't: How Chuck Feeney Secretly Made and Gave Away a Fortune by Conor O'Clery. ---- He celebrated having divested himself personally of the vast wealth with which fate and his genius for making money had burdened him. [0:01]  Feeney was already showing a trait that would assert itself throughout his life: thinking big and aiming to achieve the best...

What I learned from reading My Life in Advertising by Claude Hopkins.  ---- Any man who by a lifetime of excessive application learns more about anything than others owes a statement to successors. The results of research should be recorded. Every pioneer should blaze his trail. That is all I have tried to do. [0:19] There are few pages in “My Life in Advertising” which do not repay careful study—...

What I learned from reading The King of Madison Avenue: David Ogilvy and the Making of Modern Advertising by Kenneth Roman.  ---- One characteristic of geniuses, said Einstein, is they are passionately curious. Ogilvy’s great secret was an inquiring mind. In conversation, he never pontificated; he interrogated. There were piles of books all over his house, most about successful leaders in business...

What I learned from reading Driven: An Autobiography by Larry Miller.  ---- [1:01] I decided I had to be extremely good at something.  [2:47] I’m sorry to say, neglecting my family to do all of the above. I worked and worked and worked, day after day, night after night, dawn to bedtime.  [5:23] He owned movie theaters, auto dealerships, a motorsports park with a world-class racetrack, a movie prod...

What I learned from reading Jackie Cochran: An Autobiography by Jackie Cochran.  ---- [4:37] At the time of her death on August 9, 1980, Jacqueline Cochran held more speed, altitude, and distance records than any other pilot, male or female, in aviation history. Her career spanned 40 years, from the Golden Age of the 1930s as a racing pilot, through the turbulent years of World War Il as founder a...

What I learned from reading The Man Behind the Microchip: Robert Noyce and the Invention of Silicon Valley by Leslie Berlin. ---- [0:01] Bob Noyce took me under his wing,” Steve Jobs explains. “I was young, in my twenties. He was in his early fifties. He tried to give me the lay of the land, give me a perspective that I could only partially understand.” Jobs continues, “You can’t really understand...

What I learned from reading Broken Genius: The Rise and Fall of William Shockley, Creator of the Electronic Age by Joel Shurkin.  ----  [1:19] Why would a man as unquestionably brilliant as he knowingly and deliberately destroy himself? [5:04] Dear Jean: I am sorry that I feel I can no longer go on. Most of my life I have felt. that the world was not a pleasant place and that people were not a ver...

What I learned from reading Rocket Man: Robert Goddard and the Birth of the Space Age by David A. Clary.  --- [18:16] For even though I reasoned with myself that the thing was impossible, there was something inside me which simply would not stop working.   [20:08] Anything is possible with the man who makes the best use of every minute of his time.  [20:18] There are limitless opportunities open t...

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

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