Founders

Learn from history's greatest entrepreneurs. Every week I read a biography of an entrepreneur and find ideas you can use in your work. This quote explains why: "There are thousands of years of history in which lots and lots of very smart people worked very hard and ran all types of experiments on how to create new businesses, invent new technology, new ways to manage etc. They ran these experiments throughout their entire lives. At some point, somebody put these lessons down in a book. For very little money and a few hours of time, you can learn from someone’s accumulated experience. There is so much more to learn from the past than we often realize. You could productively spend your time reading experiences of great people who have come before and you learn every time." —Marc Andreessen

Episodes

#394 An Orphan Who Built An Empire: Leonardo Del Vecchio and The Founding of Luxottica

July 12, 2025 • 68 mins

Your dad dies before you’re born. Your mom can’t afford to take care of you. You grow up without a family and in an institution. You learn a trade and start working full time at the age of 14. You work all day and go to school at night. You’re precise, meticulous, restless, and work circles around everyone. You’re promoted to run the factory at 18 but the thought of working for anyone else terrifies you. For your entire life you’ll...

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#393 The Marketing Genius of the Michelin Brothers

July 2, 2025 • 55 mins

Your family asks you to take over a failing factory in a remote part of France. This “family business” comes with a stack of unpaid bills, a small team of workers who haven’t been paid in months, and a banker refusing to extend any more credit. You cut every unprofitable product and go all in on making rubber tires. You have no experience and don’t know a single thing about rubber manufacturing. You have a genius insight that selli...

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#392 Michele Ferrero and His $40 Billion Privately Owned Chocolate Empire

June 23, 2025 • 55 mins

You take over the family pastry shop and transform it into one of the most valuable privately held businesses in the world. Your father dies young. Your uncle does too. Everyone is relying on you and this keeps you up at night. You insist on differentiation and refuse to make me too products. You obsess over quality. You run tens of thousands of experiments. The products you invent will sell successfully for decades. You shroud you...

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#391 Jimmy Iovine

June 12, 2025 • 57 mins

You grow up in a rough neighborhood in Brooklyn. You drop out of college. Your dad is your best friend but you don’t want to work the docks like him. You’re determined to “do something special.” You get a job sweeping the floor at recording studio. You get fired—twice. You’ll do anything to work in the music business, including working on Easter Sunday. That’s how you meet John Lennon. This is the day your life begins. You focus on...

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#390 Rare Steve Jobs Interview

June 4, 2025 • 41 mins

I've read this interview probably 10 times. It's that good. Steve Jobs was 29 when this interview was published, and with remarkable clarity of thought Steve explains the upcoming technological revolution, why the personal computer is the greatest tool humans have ever invented, how the computer compares to past inventions, why software needs to be simplified (You shouldn't have to read a novel to write a novel!) why the future is ...

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#389 The Founder of Jimmy Choo: Tamara Mellon

May 25, 2025 • 55 mins

When Tamara Mellon’s father lent her the seed money to start a high-end shoe company, he cautioned her: “Don’t let the accountants run your business.” Little did he know that over the next fifteen years, the struggle between “financial” and “creative” would become one of the central themes as Mellon’s business. Mellon grew Jimmy Choo into a billion dollar brand and her personal glamour made her an object of global media fascination...

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#388 Jeff Bezos's Shareholder Letters: All of Them!

May 15, 2025 • 79 mins

(I fixed the audio and uploaded a new episode!) "To read Jeff Bezos’s shareholder letters is to get a crash course in running a high-growth internet business from someone who mastered it before any of the playbooks were written." That is the best description of Bezos's letters I have ever read. I just finished rereading these letters for the 4th or 5th time. With clear thinking and ferocious intelligence, Bezos provides a mastercl...

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A conversation on focus and finding your life's work

May 8, 2025 • 82 mins

My friend Patrick O’Shaughnessy asked me to come to New York and record a conversation. Patrick had just finished listening to episode #383 "Todd Graves and his $10 Billion Chicken Finger Dream" and he believed there was an important conversation to have on focus and finding your life's work. This conversation was off-the-cuff and from the soul. I hope you find it useful. If you'd prefer to watch the episode you can do that on Spo...

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#387 Jim Simons Built The World’s Greatest Money-Making Machine

May 1, 2025 • 68 mins

Jim Simons never took a single class on finance, wasn’t interested in business, and didn’t start trading full time until he was 40. The company he founded — Renaissance Technologies — has made over $100 billion in profits. Starting out with the heretical belief that there was a hidden structure in financial markets, Jim decided to staff his “crazy hedge fund” with mathematicians, computer scientists, and physicists. He went to gre...

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#386 Akio Morita: Founder of Sony

April 22, 2025 • 71 mins

Akio Morita was a visionary entrepreneur and co-founder of Sony. Born as the first son and fifteenth-generation heir to a 300-year-old sake-brewing family in Japan, Akio eschewed the traditional path to forge his own legacy in electronics. In post-war Japan, Akio joined forces with Masaru Ibuka to found Sony. They started in a burned-out department store with limited resources—to build their first product they had to buy supplies o...

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#385 Michael Dell

April 14, 2025 • 108 mins

This is one of the most extraordinary founder stories you will ever hear. Michael Dell started his company with $1000 when he was 19 years old. The revenues for the first 16 years of Dell look like this: 1984 $6M 1985 $33M 1986 $67M 1987 $159M 1988 $258M 1989 $388M 1990 $546M 1991 $890M 1992 $2B 1993 $2.9B 1994 $3.5B 1995 $5.3B 1996 $7.8B 1997 $12.3B 1998 $18.2B 1999 $25.3B Dell had been profitable for every quarter of its existenc...

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#384 Ken Griffin: Founder of Citadel and Citadel Securities

April 1, 2025 • 66 mins

Because of the podcast I get to meet a lot of super successful people. I'm always asking them "Who is the smartest person you know" and "Who do you think has the best business?". "Ken Griffin" is a very common answer. I've heard Ken described in two ways: "Winner" and "Killer". For years I've come across interesting anecdotes about Ken. Like when he appears as a 19 year old kid in Ed Thorp's excellent autobiography A Man For All M...

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The Invisible Billionaire: Daniel Ludwig

March 23, 2025 • 50 mins

Daniel Ludwig was the richest man in the world and no one knew his name. I've read almost 400 biographies of history's greatest founders and this book is one of my all time favorites. Daniel Ludwig started his company at 19 and was working on it well into his 90s. He built a massive conglomerate of over 200 companies operating in more than 50 countries. Spending the time to learn how he did this is a great investment. This episode ...

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#383 Todd Graves and his $10 Billion Chicken Finger Dream

March 16, 2025 • 68 mins

Todd Graves is one of my favorite living entrepreneurs. He's a great example of Charlie Munger's maxim: Find a simple idea and take it seriously. Todd wanted to create a quick service restaurant that only focused on quality chicken finger meals and nothing else. Everyone told him that couldn't possibly work. The college paper that described the idea that would turn into Raising Canes got the lowest grade in the class. Banks wouldn'...

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#382 Who Is Michael Ovitz?: The Rise and Fall (and Rise) of the Most Powerful Man in Hollywood

March 7, 2025 • 91 mins

At the core of Michael Ovitz's success is his relentless work ethic and commitment to mastering his craft. 50 years ago he founded Creative Artists Agency. CAA starts out as just five young guys in a run down office and eventually becomes the most powerful agency in the world. Ovitz's autobiography explains how that happened. As the Wall Street Journal wrote: When the history of Hollywood is written, few people will have played a l...

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#381 I Had Dinner With Michael Ovitz

March 7, 2025 • 27 mins

What I learned from having an intense and fun 3 hour dinner with Michael Ovitz. 1: Mediocrity is always invisible until passion shows up and exposes it. 2: There's no ceiling on where you can push your profession. 3: Don't be unequally yoked. Pick partners that have the same ambition as you. 4: Read biographies. Know everything about the history of your industry. 5. Have a profound sense of belief. The world is very malleable. 6:...

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#380 Four Hundred Pages of Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger In Their Own Words

February 24, 2025 • 81 mins

For over 30 years the Berkshire Hathaway Annual meetings were recorded. Munger and Buffett answered over 1700 questions from shareholders during that period. Alex Morris watched hundreds of hours of these meetings and then he gathered, organized, and edited the most interesting ideas into 450+ pages — all in Buffett and Munger's own words. I thought it would be fun to rip through a bunch of Munger and Buffett's best ideas very rap...

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#379 Jerry Jones (Dallas Cowboys)

February 17, 2025 • 59 mins

Jerry Jones rolled the dice until his knuckles bled. He started working at 7 years old. Jerry could sell, sell, sell. He sold fruit at his father’s grocery store in grade school and sold shoes out of the trunk of his car in college. After failing to sell pizza franchises he tried real estate and insurance. He never met a high risk deal he didn’t like. Jerry got pitched a deal to drill for oil that everyone else had already said no ...

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#378 The Last Oil Baron: Leon Hess

February 10, 2025 • 53 mins

Your father goes bankrupt. You work for 50 cents a day to try to help your family survive the Great Depression. At 19 you see an opportunity where others see nothing. You start “a little fuel delivery business” with one used truck. Five years later you have 10 trucks. World War II breaks out and you serve as the fuel supply officer for General Patton. You come back to America and apply what the war taught you about logistics and mo...

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#377 Expanding A Family Dynasty: Marcus Wallenberg Jr.

January 26, 2025 • 63 mins

Marcus Wallenberg Jr's impact on Swedish industry was so substantial that during the 1970s, Wallenberg family businesses employed about 40% of Sweden's industrial workforce and represented 40% of the total worth of the Stockholm stock market. The Wallenberg family is one of the most fascinating family dynasties you could read about. The family has survived — and continues to thrive — for 170 years. In a family full of talented entr...

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Founders

Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}#394 An Orphan Who Built An Empire: Leonardo Del Vecchio and The Founding of Luxottica

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}#393 The Marketing Genius of the Michelin Brothers

#392 Michele Ferrero and His $40 Billion Privately Owned Chocolate Empire

#391 Jimmy Iovine

#390 Rare Steve Jobs Interview

#389 The Founder of Jimmy Choo: Tamara Mellon

#388 Jeff Bezos's Shareholder Letters: All of Them!

A conversation on focus and finding your life's work

#387 Jim Simons Built The World’s Greatest Money-Making Machine

#386 Akio Morita: Founder of Sony

#385 Michael Dell

#384 Ken Griffin: Founder of Citadel and Citadel Securities

The Invisible Billionaire: Daniel Ludwig

#383 Todd Graves and his $10 Billion Chicken Finger Dream

#382 Who Is Michael Ovitz?: The Rise and Fall (and Rise) of the Most Powerful Man in Hollywood

#381 I Had Dinner With Michael Ovitz

#380 Four Hundred Pages of Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger In Their Own Words

#379 Jerry Jones (Dallas Cowboys)

#378 The Last Oil Baron: Leon Hess

#377 Expanding A Family Dynasty: Marcus Wallenberg Jr.

Popular Podcasts

#394 An Orphan Who Built An Empire: Leonardo Del Vecchio and The Founding of Luxottica

#393 The Marketing Genius of the Michelin Brothers