The importance of a company mission that is greater than yourself and your company
Dear David, It is an honor to be part of the Founders community. Thank you for sharing the learnings of history's greatest entrepreneurs with the next-generation. Every episode of founders is like an entire MBA class compressed into an hour. My question is around the importance of having a company mission/purpose that is greater than the founder and the company. Is this a pre-requisite for excellence and success? (Are there counter examples?) Does having a crazy, seemingly impossible ambition paradoxically increase the probability of achieving outlier success? Does it empower an irrational sense of belief in yourself before it is warranted externally? It appears that an audacious mission galvanizes the founder and founding team to identify and unlock resources they didn't know they had. Further, it seems to exponentially increase the capacity of a founder to endure the inevitable pain on the journey. With gratitude, Dan It's nice to meet this community. I am the founder and managing partner of ReGen Ventures. We partner with founders daring to restore our planet from the atom up. You can find us at www.regen.vc
Founders solving their own problem
Hi David, I really love the show, and how you connect the traits of many of the worlds great entrepreneurs. I am also delighted to be part of your AMA community. My question is: What insights have you seen about founders, who create something that solves their own problem, and are their own first customer ? As an aside, I understand you are meeting my friend Paul Buser (Notre Dame) shortly. Paul is such an insightful person, and I know you will enjoy your time together. My own startup is Snapfix, and we are on a mission to become "the" maintenance platform for the world buildings, infrastructure and equipment - with a focus on simplicity. Snapfix uses the power of the Photo for communication, and the Traffic Light for collaboration. Perfect for multilingual teams, globally. Our website www.snapfix.com I look forward to meeting you at some point in the future, All the best, Paul paul@snapfix.com
The Inner Scorecard
Warren Buffett came up with the concept of an "inner scorecard" but I think this concept has been distorted and misunderstood. Buffett was advocating intellectual independence when it comes to a field in which a person is highly competent, not the idea that we should not care about the opinions of others who we respect. Yet many entrepreneurs and investors seem to quote the "inner scorecard" line as a license to not care about the opinions of others, not only in business but in personal life. I think that risks bordering on sociopathy when taken to its limits. I am curious what your views are on the inner scorecard concept given that you have studied hundreds of extremely successful people, many of them highly flawed. I like the fact that your discussion typically blends in some facts about a founder's personal life. How do you think founders should strike a balance between the intellectual confidence to have an inner scorecard in areas where they have special competence but to also be open to the judgement of those who they respect in business, as well as the judgment of their family? Ultimately, I think almost everyone needs a circle of people to whom we subject ourselves to judgment. Buffett might not care what some random talking head thinks but he does care what Charlie Munger (and others he respects) think. I'm a huge fan of the podcast. Hope you keep going to 1,000+!
Could Henry Ford realistically have done anything differently to keep his dominant market share in the car industry?
You covered the early car industry really well with your multiple episodes on Ford, Alfred Sloan, Billy Durant, among others. You point out how Henry Ford had a maniacal focus, and that is what powered him to rise to the top. His focus was on providing basic transportation to the masses at the lowest cost, but by the later part of the 1920's, the used car market developed and this was the best way to provide the lowest cost basic transportation. His focus on just the Model T for so long allowed them to achieve economies of scale and obtain a dominant cost advantage, but this focus also led Ford to get overtaken by GM once the Model T was obsolete and Ford had no other vehicle to turn to. Could Henry Ford have kept his focus/mission (lowest cost car for the masses) by shifting his business to the used car business, maybe a dealership business, or a chain of repair shops? Could he have stopped focusing on his original mission by the 1920's and diversified car models at diverse economic levels? Maybe a better way to ask this question is - How can a founder avoid having your biggest strength eventually turn into your biggest weakness? Thank you - Jacob McDonough www.mcdonough-investments.com and The 10-K Podcast
Which founder has the most stacked resume?
I was thinking about how crazy of a resume William Fargo had. He founded (along with Henry Wells) both Wells Fargo and American Express. He was the mayor of Buffalo, and the city of Fargo, North Dakota is named after him. He was born in 1818, so to have two thriving companies still alive today as well as a city bearing your name, that is some measure of success as a founder. Who would you rank at the top if you had to pick 2-3 founders? By the way, the book 'American Express: The Unofficial History of the People Who Built the Great Financial Empire' was a pretty interesting read on the background of the company, but also of its founders. Thanks - Jacob McDonough www.mcdonough-investments.com and The 10-K Podcast