What I learned from My Life and Work: The Autobiography of Henry Ford.---Subscribe to listen to Founders Premium — Subscribers can listen to Ask Me Anything (AMA) episodes and every bonus episode. ---A theory of business (0:01)If an old idea works then the weight of the evidence is all in its favor. The Lindy Effect. (7:30)All people are not equal (11:00) "That is why I never employ an expert in full bloom" (15:00), "I quit my job on August 15th, 1899 and went into the automobile business" (19:30)Henry Ford's philosophy on constant change (25:00)Henry Ford's 3 conclusions about business (26:00)Traits of a prosperous business (29:45)I cannot discover that anyone knows enough about anything on this earth definitely to say what is and what is not possible. .We get some of our best results from letting fools rush in where angels fear to tread. (34:00)Fix the problem. Do not think money will be the solution. (40:00)Overcome fear. Be free. (44:00)Fuck your feelings (52:30)Henry Ford's 4 principles of business (56:00)—“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. ” — GarethBe like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

What I learned from reading Against the Odds: An Autobiography by James Dyson---Subscribe to listen to Founders Premium — Subscribers can listen to Ask Me Anything (AMA) episodes and every bonus episode. ---I am a creator of products, a builder of things. [0:01]This book is the story of 15 years of struggle to finally invent, own, and sell his own product. [1:35]This is the exposition of a business philosophy which is very different from anything you might have encountered before. [2:11]The first 75% to 80% of the book is just struggle after struggle. [2:47]Dyson had a bunch of people that he looked up to that motivated him as a young man. Thomas Edison is one of those people. [4:51]Such reverence has been accorded to the miserable wheel —that perhaps that alone can account for the fact it was never improved. Perhaps millions of people in the last few years had ideas for improving it. All I did was take things a little further than just having an idea. [6:10]The look of the product —the intangible style that sets one thing apart from another—is still closest to my heart. [7:04]After the idea there is plenty of time to learn the technology. My first cyclonic vacuum cleaner was built out of cereal packets and masking tape long before I understood how it worked. [8:09]The greatest lesson for aspiring inventors was yet to come. The actual making of money. Paper stuff in thick wads which they finally give to you because you have done something good. [8:40]The best kind of business is one where you could sell a product at a high price with a good margin and in enormous volumes. That type of investment is long term, high risk, and not very British. Or at least it looks like a high-risk policy. It is not so likely to prove hazardous to one’s financial health as simply following the herd. [9:25]Difference for the sake of it. In everything. Because is must be better. From the moment the ideas strikes, to the running of the business. Difference, and retention of total control. [10:39]This is not even a business book. If anything it is a book against business, against the principles that have filled the world with ugly, useless objects. [11:37]Everybody told James over and over and over again “Who are you to think that you could invent a better vacuum cleaner? If that was possible Hoover would have done it already." [12:44]We all want to make our mark. We all want to make beautiful things and a little money. We all have our own ideas about how to do it. What follows just happens to be my way.  [13:15]I have been a misfit throughout my professional life, and that seems to have worked for my advantage. Misfits are not born or made. They make themselves. [13:45]I took on the big boys at their own game, made them look very silly, just by being true to myself. [15:56]There was no dad to teach me how to run. There was no dad to tell me how great I was. Herb Elliot was a big name [in running] at the time, so I read a few books about him and discovered that his coach had told him that the way to develop stamina and strengthen the leg muscles was to run up and down sand dunes. This suited me fine. I would get up at six in the morning and run dunes for hours, or put on my running kit at ten o’ clock at night and not reappear until after midnight. Out there alone on the dunes I got a terrific buzz knowing that I was doing something that no one else was—they were all tucked away in bed. I knew I was training myself to do something better than anyone else would be able to do.  [18:14]Running is a wonderful thing. It isn’t like a team sport where you depend on other people. There is no question of your performance being judged. You either run faster than everyone else or you do not. In running your performance is absolute. I was out there [on the sand dunes] learning how to do something, and getting a visible result. [19:34]As I started to win by greater and greater margins I did it [run sand dunes] more and more because I knew the reason for my success was that out on the sand dunes I was doing something else no one else was doing. They were all running around the track like a herd of sheep and not getting any quicker. Difference itself was making me come in first. [20:50]I was learning about the physical and psychological strength that keeps you competitive. I was learning about obstinacy. I was learning how to overcome nerves, and as I grew more and more neurotic about being caught from behind, I trained harder to stay in front. To this day it is the fear of failure, more than anything else, that keeps me working at success. [21:31]The only way to make a genuine breakthrough was to pursue a vision with single-minded determination in the face of criticism. [22:26]Isambard Kingdom Brunel was unable to think small, and nothing was a barrier to him. The mere fact that something had never been done before presented, to Brunel, no suggestion that the doing of it was impossible—he was fired by an inner strength and self-belief almost impossible to imagine in this feckless age. I have tried to be as confident in my vision as he was. And at times in my life when I have encountered difficulty and self-doubt I have looked to his example to fire me on. [22:55]I have told myself, when people tried to make me modify my ideas, that the Great Western Railway could not have worked as anything but the vision of a single man, pursued with dogged determination that was nothing less than obsession. Throughout my story I will return to Brunel, and to other designers and engineers, to show how identifying with them, and seeing parallels with every stage of my own life, enabled me to see my career as a whole and to know that it would all turn out the way it has. [24:59]Remember that I am celebrating only my stubbornness. I am claiming nothing but the virtues of a mule. [25:42]So my dream was to be a Isambard Kingdom Brunel. [26:40]The public has been easily convinced by advertising, and receptiveness to revolution has dwindled. Such ‘invention’ as is now allowed is the prerogative of multinationals, not people. Where are our Wright Brothers? Where have the Edisons gone? And the Henry Fords? They are not here. We have broken new frontiers, but where are the names? Who invented the space shuttle? The nuclear submarine? The wind farm? When you go for backing for your crazy scheme it is not enough to be a man, you have to be a group of men. And where is the fun in that? [26:56]I learnt a crucial business principle: The only way to make real money is to offer the public something entirely new, that has style value as well as substance, and which they cannot get anywhere else. [28:03]College had taught me to revere experts and expertise. Jeremiah Fry ridiculed all that; as far as he was concerned, with enthusiasm and intelligence anything was possible. It was mind-blowing. And as we proceeded I could see that we were getting on extremely quickly. The more I observed his method, the more it fascinated me. [31:07]I learned one of the most crucial business lessons of my life; to stint on investment in the early stages, to try to sell a half-finished product, is to doom from the start any project you embark on. [32:13]People do not want all-purpose; they want high-tech specificity. [34:11]You simply cannot mix your messages when selling something new. A consumer can barely handle one great new idea, let alone two, or even several. [34:20]Only by trying to sell the thing that you have made yourself, by dealing with consumers’ problems and the product’s failings as they arise, can you really come to understand what you have done. Only the man who has brought the thing into the world can presume to foist it on others, and demand a heavy price, with all his heart. [35:52]It was an interesting lesson in psychology, teaching me that the entrenched professional is always going to resist far longer than the private consumer. [36:26]Editorials are the very best way of convincing the public. One decent editorial counts for a thousand advertisements. [39:20]One fo the strains of this book is about CONTROL. If you have the intimate knowledge of a product that comes with dreaming it up and then designing it, then you will be the better able to sell it and then, reciprocally, to go back to it and improve it. From there you are in the best possible position to convince others of its greatness. To see it through all the way to its optimum point. To total fruition, if you like. [42:04]I was stopped by one of them with the words I was to hear over and over and over again for the next ten years. ‘But James, your idea can’t be any good. If there were a better kind of vacuum cleaner, Hoover would have invented it.' [48:07]We always want to create something new out of nothing, and without research, and without long hard hours of effort. But there is no such thing as a quantum leap. There is only dogged persistence—and in the end you make it look like a quantum leap. [51:38]A vacuum cleaner designed entirely by me, incorporating innovations up to the very latest point at which my technology had arrived, to be produced and marketed and sold under my own exclusive direction was, to be frank, what this whole thing had been all about. [1:02:48]It was a fantastic environment to work in, for it was just engineers and designers, and no one to mess us around. There were no salesmen, no advertising people, no marketing managers, to interfere and try to guide us in their direction. We had nothing to do but deduce our own dream product. [1:04:48]Everyday products sell. Although it is harder to improve a mature product, if you succeed there is no need to create a market. Try out current products in your own home, and make a list of things that you don’t like about them. I found about 20 things wrong with my Hoover Jr. at the first attempt. [1:07:19]Total control. From the first sprouting of the idea, through research and development, testing and prototyping, model making and engineering drawings, tooling, production, sales and marketing, all the way into the homes, it is most likely to succeed if the original visionary (or mule) sees it right through. [1:11:43]On 2 May 1992, I found myself looking at the first, fully operational, visually perfect, Dyson Dual Cyclone. I was thirty-one years old when I tore the bag off my Hoover and stuck a cereal packet in the hole. 2 May 1992 was my forty-fifth birthday. [1:12:24]We were selling more vacuum cleaners than anyone else despite costing twice as much. [1:14:32]In other words: if you make something, sell it yourself. And so we did. And absolutely nothing went bang. Except, of course, everyone else’s market slice. [1:17:57]Encourage employees to be different, on principle. This is part of my anti-brilliance campaign. Very few people can be brilliant. Those who are, rarely do anything worthwhile. You are just as likely to solve a problem by being unconventional and determined as by being brilliant. And if you can’t be unconventional, be obtuse. Be deliberately obtuse, because there are 5 billion people out there thinking in train tracks, and thinking what they have been taught to think. [1:21:18]“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.”— GarethBe like Gareth. Buy a book. It's good for you. It's good for Founders. A list of all the books featured on Founders Podcast.

What I learnd by reading No Better Time: The Brief, Remarkable Life of Danny Lewin, the Genius Who Transformed the Internet by Molly Knight Raskin. ---Subscribe to listen to Founders Premium — Subscribers can listen to Ask Me Anything (AMA) episodes and every bonus episode. ---When Danny was excited about something, you couldn't help but get excited too (3:00)Steve Jobs had one speed: GO! (6:00)Danny joins Israel's special forces (10:00)"Life is too short to be bored. Only boring people are bored." (19:00)The idea for Akamai (22:00)"If he didn't know something, he'd go learn it." (28:00)Building a company the right way (31:00)Finding a business model (35:00)Passion is worth $500,000 (38:30)The first product (42:00)"My goal was to express it in layman's terms so that your grandmother could understand it." (44:00)Finding the right price/model (45:00)The best salesperson (48:10)"Hi, this is Steve Jobs, and I want to buy your company." (54:00)"I have this company of one hundred ten people, headed by one of the biggest businessmen around with lots of money in the bank, and I'm just a graduate student." (57:00)"In less than one year, a tiny startup out of MIT had grown to a company with a market valuation than that of General Motors" (58:30)The last day of Danny's life (1:00:00)“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. ” — GarethBe like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

What I learned from reading The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story by Michael Lewis---Subscribe to listen to Founders Premium — Subscribers can listen to Ask Me Anything (AMA) episodes and every bonus episode. ---He grew up poor, dropped out of high school, and made himself 3 or 4 billion dollars (0:01), New Growth Theory (8:00), "Growth is just another word for change." (11:15), "The notion of what constituted useful work had broadened." (15:00), "If everyone was patient there'd be no new companies." (18:00), Turning his life around at 38 (21:00), Jim's idea to avoid the Innovator's Dilemma (30:00), The beginning of Netscape (33:00), The fast eat the slow (38:00), The people you don't want (40:00), The difference between a pig and a chicken /"They had wanted to be chickens; Clark forced them to be pigs" (43:00), All chips on 00 / Diversification is for idiots (48:00), Moving the goalposts / "Mama, I'm going to show Plainview." (56:00)—“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. ” — GarethBe like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

What I learned from reading How to Turn Down a Billion Dollars: The Snapchat Story by Billy Gallagher. ---Subscribe to listen to Founders Premium — Subscribers can listen to Ask Me Anything (AMA) episodes and every bonus episode. ---I'm not going to work for someone else (0:01)Early design decisions of Snapchat (7:45)Evan idolized Steve Jobs and Edwin Land (10:00)How Snapchat convinced people to download the app (13:00)How Facebook created the environment for Snapchat to grow (16:00)The problem of standard (21:00)Evan on conforming (23:00)Mark Zuckerberg's first move on Snapchat (27:00)A great quote from Jeff Bezos (34:30)Digital Dualism (36:30)Snapchat Stories (39:00)Evan's framework for Snapchat and the Internet Everywhere (44:45)Learning from messaging apps in Asia (50:00)Brands are not social. People are. (55:00)Evan's philosophy on the distinction between privacy and secrecy (59:00)“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. ” — GarethBe like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

Explore the challenging childhood of John Romero, his escape into gaming amidst abuse. Witness the genesis of Carmack's rebellious spirit and innovative mindset. Discover the rise of shareware in the gaming industry and the birth of the groundbreaking game, Doom.

What I learned from reading Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business by Danny Meyer. This is not a typical business book (0:30)Why don't you just do what you've been thinking about doing your whole life? (4:00)How Danny learned from other founders on what to do and what to avoid (8:00)The smartest business decision I ever made (18:00)Optionality as a non-negotiable (20:00)Inadequate focus on core product (23:30)The founding of Shake Shack is an example of this great quote from Jeff Bezos: "We know from our past experiences that big things start small. The biggest oak starts from an acorn. If you want to do anything new you’ve got to be willing to let that acorn grow into a little sapling and finally into a small tree and maybe one day it will be a big business on its own." (27:00)Advice from Stanley Marcus (Neiman Marcus): "The road to success is paved with mistakes well handled." (38:00)“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. ” — GarethBe like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

What I learned from reading Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader by Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli.---Subscribe to listen to Founders Premium — Subscribers can listen to Ask Me Anything (AMA) episodes and every bonus episode. ---Learning from great company-builders (0:30)Steve Jobs verbal mastery (5:00)The failed negotiations between NeXT and IBM (10:00) "But how can he be a turnaround expert when he eats his lunch alone in his office, with food served to him on china that looks like it came from Versailles?" (18:00)"You can't go to the library and find a book titled The Business Model for Animation. The reason you can't is because there's only one company [Disney] that's ever done it well, and they were not interested in telling the world how lucrative it was." (22:00) Bill Gates on Steve's simplicity (29:00)Steve Jobs on being an artist (33:00)Apple pays half billion dollars to rehire Steve Jobs (34:00)"The company is one of the most amazing inventions of humans, this abstract construct that is incredibly powerful." (38:00)Unlocking secrets (42:00)Who gives a fuck about the channel? (45:00)"It's not about how fast you do something, it's about doing your level best." (52:00)Deep Restlessness (55:00)"Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle." (59:00)Bill Gates on the negotiations between Pixar and Disney (1:08:00)A list of all the books featured on Founders Podcast

Yvon Chouinard, a climber, surfer, kayaker, skier, and blacksmith who enjoyed making good tools and functional clothes, discusses his journey from being a reluctant businessman to embracing entrepreneurship on his own terms. He talks about the importance of enjoying work, reaching 80% proficiency, and the challenges of maintaining quality while growing a company. He also delves into the principles and purpose behind Patagonia, highlighting their unique advertising approach and the value of simplicity, durability, and reducing consumption.

Exploring Jeff Bezos' early career and the Genesis of Amazon. Jeff Bezos' strategic foresight and vision for Amazon's growth. The Amazon flywheel effect driving continuous innovation. Lessons in compassion from Bezos' grandparents. Amazon's decentralized communication culture.