If Sam Walton Could Have Seen the Internet
Imagine if Sam Walton was around for the internet. How quickly would have Walmart pivoted online? What do you think would have been the business model - a separate business that copied Amazon (kind of like how Sam's Club and Walmart are separate concepts) or ecommerce more integrated into Walmart stores more quickly? Bezos vs Walton would have been a battle, but when Amazon was small it needed time. I wonder if Sam Walton would have given them as much time to grow and get established. Thanks - Jacob McDonough
How to apply knowledge
Multi ad scientiam pervenissent si se illuc pervenisse non putassent. Presume not too much upon a bright genius, a ready wit, and good parts; for this, without labor and study, will never make a man of knowledge and wisdom. So as Isaac Watts would say learning about all these founders makes you a good historian, but we cannot forget about that next step. Having the knowledge is one thing, but being able to use the knowledge is another. What tips or advice do you have on how to display or use all the gathered knowledge we have? To add additional context, I just started my first job and see a lapse between my role and what I know I am capable of doing. How do I navigate this? Would also be interested in hearing your advice for other stages of the workforce (1st time founder - late executive in the corporate world).
What tools do you wish existed for the Founders podcast?
I’m obsessed with podcasts. Their current and future impact on my life and society is massive. I’m focused on making products that improve the podcast creation and listening experience. Here are two products I’ve made so far: https://linkinbio.dev - lets you sign in with your spotify and quickly find links mentioned from podcasts you listen to. I use this to go back and find material mentioned in Founders all the time. https://ownmyrss.com - create digitally authenticated RSS feeds, allowing users to verify authors, feeds, and enable digitally native payments. I want to allow podcast creators to have complete ownership over their body of work. Founders is a living, breathing, body of work and I want to help it unlock even more potential. What tools or products do you wish existed that would help make the Founders podcast even more world class? - Erik https://x.com/eabnelson
Which Founders Mastered The Art of Setting Incentives Right?
Hi David Charlie Munger once said: “I think I've been in the top 5% of my age cohort all my life in understanding the power of incentives, and all my life I've underestimated it. And never a year passes but I get some surprise that pushes my limit a little farther” Mastering the art of setting incentives implies a profound understanding of human nature and organizational behavior, i.e. leveraging the team's potential in an optimal way and getting things done. Among the hundreds of founders you have studied and based on the incentives they set in their company/organization, which are the top 3 founders (excluding Charlie Munger) in terms of setting incentives in their organizations in order to achieve their ultimate key objectives ? Thanks Kevin Martelli www.dplus.ventures
The Human Tech Stack
I'm working on a White Paper which I will use to launch my podcast (already making an internal one for my company, I'm the CEO of an early stage--but funded--AI Startup). The paper will be titled, "The Human Tech Stack" and will focus on evaluating the ages of human history through the lens of truly disruptive and foundational technology. I've included a link to a GoogleDoc where I've consolidated dozens of pages of notes, research, sketches, and ideation into a simple grid. I'm soliciting feedback b/c I am an adaptive fellow (its one of my superpowers) and until I publish I will ruthlessly edit my ideas,. All that to say, this isn't yet perfected content, but I didn't pull these ideas out of my ass either, there is substance here. My question is more of a request for input and feedback. I consume a LOT of podcasts, and you may be my favorite, I respect your opinion and would absolutely love to get you to weigh in on this. Even better than an email would be a call to beat this up, I have been told I have infectious energy and I think it would be a fun convo even for someone as impressive as yourself :) Check me out on LinkedIn to get a feel for my vibe and approach first if you would like. Anyway, this is the main reason I signed up for AMA, to hopefully get to interact with you, hope that's not too forward. Thanks for reading and I look forward to connecting and/or getting your feedback. Most interested in your opinion on the approach, the age splits, the foundational technologies and if you think I'm missing any, and the criteria by which we are evaluating them. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1FSv91LDY0GmZQelOFby7VCH-SKEqO20H66dgHnqumiI/edit?usp=sharing P.S. It may sound ridiculous but I honestly don't care about how I look. I believe you will be making one of your pods about me some day. That's what I'm about and I don't fuck around :)
When do Opposites work?
Hi David Thanks for your work. I've made a thread on your work on X at @thegrantdotco. I searched the questions already asked and didn't see this one in there. When have you noticed contradictions of principles between companies and yet the two different, conflicting principles actually both work? For example Peter Thiel makes sure people have ONE THING to work on and similarly Jeff Bezos has "single threaded leadership" but Jobs did the opposite and Apple is divided by functional groups not product groups which severely limits the number of products possible but tends to increase the quality of the products. What other contradictions have you noticed between founders? And when is it better to apply one vs. the other? You often point out when two founders have said the same thing. But it might be equally instructive to learn when the opposites apply. This is similar to conflicting maxims. Early bird gets the worm but second mouse gets the cheese.
why are there so few Healthcare Founders featured?
David.. I am founder of www.diaceutics.com and no doubt like many before me have come late to your podcasts to find my tribe!.. but I do wonder why there are so few ( none) true founders disrupting in healthcare.... I have my own thoughts which I am happy to share but thought I would move from silent listener to lifetime member and ask you.. My email is Peter.keeling@diaceutics.com
Insightful Questions To Identify Intelligent Fanatics
As an investor, over the last 10 years or so I have been paying greater attention in identifying the qualities of “intelligent fanatics” when assessing early-stage founders or CEOs of listed companies. This is not easy especially if one looks at business leaders across different industries, geographies and cultures (I live in Europe). Based on your extensive reading of great founders' biographies, what are in your opinion 3-5 examples of insightful questions one can ask founders/CEOs to better assess if they are (or are likely to become) “intelligent fanatics”, who can achieve disproportionate success in their respective field? It would be interesting also to think about which questions could have easily enabled investors to better assess founders, who also in the eyes of sophisticated investors initially appeared to be “intelligent fanatics” but overtime revealed themselves to be “overly successful storytellers” (Theranos, FTX, Wework, etc) Thank you for all the work you put in the Founders podcast! It’s a great product that in different ways makes a difference to many people PS: The google doc below, which you can share with your audience if you want, is a collection of materials on the subject of "intelligent fanatics" qualities, which you may find interesting: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1m7k-2cepxK75Gr7k0Ws-usR2ArJesM2MA_-gW_3N4G0/edit?pli=1 Kevin Martelli Switzerland www.dplus.ventures
A lifesaving book to a bored friend in a boring job.
Hi, thank you for the best podcast I can imagine! It´s changing my life. (And my wife, making her read Estée Lauder, etc.) My friend is very uninspired and bored in her job. She has a lot of talent and is doing great. She was even employee of the year. But she is so bored and is not doing what she loves. But she cannot get her self to quit and find a new job that is inspiring. What book can I give her that will hopefully inspire her to quit her job and get her life better. I believe everybody should do what they love and not just have a job because it is convenient and pays a good salary. Best regards Endre Bryn Hidlefjord (So lucky to be owning and running my own paradise in Norway, living the dream. Doing what me and my family loves for a living) https://florogfjare.no/en/ Thank you so much!
Common Threads - Door to Door Salesman
Hi David, Love your passion and focus. I've listened to almost all of your episodes, which has been a wonderful journey with you. In addition to the individual stories, one of the things I love is connecting the dots on "common threads" across the various Founders. One of them is obscure or much less obvious... that is a number of them spent time in door-to-door sales - from Henry Kaiser to Jim Clayton, to Paul Orfela to David Ogilvy. What's in the soup here? Excited to get your thoughts... With gratitude, Adam R. Karr
Personal growth of founders
Hi David! I love your podcast and the AMA! I take notes on every episode and review them all the time, and I've bought a number of the books that you've discussed - I became obsessed with Walt Disney for weeks! I'm an executive coach (AlisaCohn.com) and the author of From Start-up to Grown-up. I'm obsessed with the personal growth of leaders, particularly the personal growth of founders who need to evolve and grow as their companies grow. What have you observed are some themes about how founders grow personally as their companies grow? Who are the top 3-5 founders who exhibit this quality of rapid personal growth? Thanks so much and keep inspiring us! Alisa Cohn/AlisaCohn.com
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
Can a high quality podcast be scripted?
One of the many reasons your podcast is so good is because it is unscripted. When I record a podcast, so far I have been unable to ditch the script. I feel as though the quality of the content is so much higher when I work on a script of what I want to say. But then the audio quality is lower because it is harder for the listener to follow along with a script vs normal unscripted conversation. Is it about the content quality, the audio quality, or some mixture of both? Thanks - Jacob McDonough www.mcdonough-investments.com and The 10-K Podcast
Bloomberg - Following the How
Hi David, One of my favorite episodes is the one on Michael Bloomberg. Not focusing on the 'what' too much (data company), but are there other founders who have followed the same 'how' as Bloomberg? Creating a product, using that product and increasing the value of the product as newer innovations come out. In the case of Bloomberg, you have the financial data, the news source and now going into AI. Best, Sean Duffy Product Manager, sean.duffy164@gmail.com
If the story of the son is studying the father, as a father, how can I influence the story of my son better?
Knowing what you’ve studied and read on some of these founders (thinking Ed Thorpe as a model founder) - how are you thinking about being the role model to your kids? I can see my story was heavily influenced by my dad (I wanted to do the exact opposite of him). That has motivated me and served me well. But I want to be a positive influence on my 3 kids. What traits would you emphasize teaching your kids? My son is seven and girls are 10 and 12. I try to model the actions o want them to take. I’m trying to do the best I can to share my values and principles with them. Would be interested in getting your thoughts David. Thanks
Aspects of Laws and Regulations
I remember you read a book and it talked about franchising , (Dunkin Donuts?) and how at the time it was considered a fraud. Also you read One from Many with Dee Hock and you mention chapter 16? The Onion was good to read up on about cryptocurrencies. Any books you recommend to study more to learn about navigating industries that seem fraudulent in the past. Industries that seemed scammy and fraudulent at first, but then became legitimate. (or if not legitimate if thats the case.)