Founders - #263 Land's Polaroid: A Company and the Man Who Invented It

Starting point is 00:00:00 Why do you want to work in a nutty place like this? I don't. Yes, you do. Otherwise, you wouldn't be here. Well, why is Polaroid a nutty place? To start with, it's run by a man who has more brains than anyone has a right to. He doesn't believe anything until he's discovered it and proved it for himself. Because of that, he never looks at things the way you or I do.

Starting point is 00:00:24 He has no room for small talk. He has no preconceived notions. He starts from the beginning with everything. That's why we have a camera that takes pictures and develops them right away. Isn't that what a camera is supposed to do? Uh, I don't know. Of course it is. It's obvious.

Starting point is 00:00:42 But Land was the first person to think about it that way. I've been a photographer all my life, and I'm a smart guy, but I didn't think of it. It never occurred to me, let alone how to do it. That is a whole nother story. That is an excerpt from the book I'm going to talk to you about today, which is Land's Polaroid, A Company and the Man Who Invent invented it, written by Peter Wensberg. Peter actually worked at Polaroid directly with Land starting at 30. He was actually describing, that excerpt was describing the job interview, the unconventional job interview that he had. And he wound up working

Starting point is 00:01:17 at Polaroid for 24 years. I originally read this book for the first time all the way back on Founders number 133. So I spent an insane amount of time reading this week. I read this book and I read the almost 500 page biography, reread the almost 500 page biography of Edwin Land called Insisting on the Impossible. And then for the last two days, I've also spent time rereading this book called Instant, The Story of Polaroid. It is a history of the entire company. And the reason I'm doing all this is I've told you before, one of my main goals is to convince as many entrepreneurs as I can to study Edwin Land. And there's many good reasons to do that. But the two that stick out to me the most first is that he is Steve Jobs hero. He influenced the career of Steve Jobs more than anybody else. For Steve's entire life, from the time he was in his 20s,

Starting point is 00:02:05 when he's giving interviews and I have notes on, to all the five or six different biographies that I've read about Steve, from the time he was in his 20s until he was dying, he talked about the importance that Edwin Land had on his career. I just want to read something from the Steve Jobs biography from Walter Isaacson just to cover this real quick. And he says, Then I read something that one of my heroes, Edwin Land of Polaroid said about the importance of people who could stand at the intersection of humanities and sciences. And I decided that is what I want to do. Steve got to meet Land. So Steve was in his twenties and Land was in his seventies. He met him three times as he was building Apple, and he described the meetings

Starting point is 00:02:45 as visiting a shrine. And so I think the obvious point is, well, if Steve Jobs spent time, his very valuable time, studying Edwin Land, why wouldn't you or I? So that leads me to the second reason that I'm rereading this book, and why I read two and a half books on Edwin Land this week. I want to figure out, like, what is the easiest way to convince somebody to study Edwin Land by reading one of the biographies about him? And I think the best way to do that is if I could say, hey, if you could only read one book about land, this is the one I would read. For the longest time, I was telling everybody, hey, read Insisting on the Impossible. It is the most comprehensive biography of Edwin Land by far. It is not the easiest to read.

Starting point is 00:03:21 It is almost 500 pages. You have to be really into Land to want to read that. So after reading all these, I realized, hey, the book that I hold in my hand, this is the one. If you've never read a book about Edwin Land and you want to get started, this is the one I would recommend. It's half the size of Insisting on the Impossible. And it gives us more insight into Land as a person because Peter knew him personally. In fact, the book ends after they both have left Polaroid and they're hanging out and talking in Land's house. Okay, so I want to jump into the

Starting point is 00:03:50 book. Also, if you haven't yet, after you're deficient listening to this episode, go back and listen to episode 132, 133, and 134. They're all on different books that I've read of Edwin Land. I've heard from so many people about those three episodes. They were some of my most popular episodes. All right my most popular episodes. All right, let me jump into this. At this point, this is from the introduction. Peter's giving us an overview of the unique life and career of Edwin Land and why he is worthy of study. Polaroid as a company was for 45 years virtually synonymous with Edwin Land.

Starting point is 00:04:20 He was its founder. He invented its first products and many of its products and processes throughout the five decades of the company's history. His titles during the period from 1937 to 1982 included chairman of the board, president, chief executive officer, chief operating officer and director of research. So when I reread that paragraph, I thought of this fantastic quote that I found in a book about Steve Jobs describing how Apple and Steve Jobs were like they're indistinguishable. And it said that Apple was Steve Jobs with 10,000 lives, same situation with Polaroid and land. Land was Polaroid and Polaroid was land. I always felt comfortable speaking my mind to him. Many of his employees did not. He was revered to an extraordinary extent by most of the people who worked for him. And there's a few reasons for that. One, Land was a legitimate genius. Two, he's also extremely famous in his day for his scientific

Starting point is 00:05:15 achievements. And then if you're working in Polaroid, you realize, hey, this guy started one of the great technical monopolies of his day and ran it for 50 years. And then Peter gets into, he accomplished all this and he was a college dropout twice. He dropped out of Harvard twice. Land did not earn a college degree. The list of institutions, however, from which he received honorary degrees includes Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Carnegie Institute of Technology, New York University, Williams College, Tufts College, Washington University, University of Massachusetts, and others. He has received more medals and scientific honors, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the National Medal of Science, than most living Americans. So I guess I need to point out, this is an extremely old book.

Starting point is 00:06:00 It's actually kind of cool because it was published first in 1987, and the copy I have is actually signed by the author, and he signed it on February 15, 1988. So at this point, Peter and Land are still alive. Land dies a few years later. Peter just passed away, unfortunately, in 2006. So back to this, he holds more medals and everything else than most living Americans. The full list of his honors runs to over three pages. He holds 533 patents, second only to Thomas Edison.

Starting point is 00:06:30 And he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1977. And then he wraps up the introduction with an overview of his career and what this book is about. I joined Polaroid in 1958 with little knowledge of the company, but with a sense that I was embarking on an adventure. I began in advertising and promotion. In 1980, I became executive vice president and was given responsibility for technical and industrial photography. In 1982, Land cut ties with his company and retired to devote his full time

Starting point is 00:07:02 to his laboratory and foundation. Two months later, I left Polaroid as well. The subject of this book is Polaroid and land. The span is 1926 to 1982, the period when the company and the man were inseparable and virtually indistinguishable. And then Peter has a random sentence here that I think is actually really important. It's something that I double underlined. And he says, I did not see land as a legend, a tycoon, a genius, or a tyrant, although he was certainly all of those and more. From the first day I met him, he impressed me as a person who lived his life more intensely than the rest of us. Live life more intensely than anyone else. I think that's a fantastic idea. His lifelong friend, advisor, and mentor, Julius Silver, described Land as the most

Starting point is 00:07:52 extraordinary person I have ever met. Now, why is that important? Why am I including in the podcast his mentor's opinion and his mentor and friend's opinion of him, it's because it's who Julius Silver knew. Since Silver had known Albert Einstein and Bernard Barnouk and many other of the 20th century's most interesting minds, egos, and personalities, his judgment is significant. And then I'm working off the same copy of the book that I used the first time I read. And so I come across some of my past highlights and notes. And this past highlight note is still really important.

Starting point is 00:08:31 I wouldn't change anything about what I highlighted or what I wrote. And this is probably two years ago. Land's life seemed primarily a life of the mind. His great dramas were self-created and played on the stage Polaroid, which he constructed for himself. If those productions did not begin or end as the supporting cast would have them, small matter to the principal player. His interest in our reactions was minimal, polite, sometimes kind, but limited by the great drain of energy necessary to sustain his own part.

Starting point is 00:09:06 So that is the highlight I'd made several years ago. This is what I wrote. This is why reading biographies is so important. All of these people created their own world within the world. They were stars of their own movie. And that line, his interest in our reactions was minimal, is actually really important. What popped to mind when I read that, reread that for the second time, is Claude Shannon covered him all the way back on Founders No. 95

Starting point is 00:09:30 and Alfred Lee Loomis from the Fantastic Biography Tuxedo Park back on Founders No. 143. Both of them insisted on independent thinking. They would share their ideas with you, but they wouldn't waste any time trying to convince you that their ideas were correct. Shannon and Loomis, like Lin, were stars of their own movie. Their life was going to go in the direction as a result of their own independent thinking, and the opinions or the reactions of other people were of no concern to them. So now I want to move to the end of the first chapter because there's this fantastic overview that you and I have talked about over and over again, that there's like this old maximum human history that's usually darkest before the dawn. This is the state of Edwin Land's life and Polaroid the company

Starting point is 00:10:09 right before the release of their greatest product. Up until this point, if I can use the words of D. Hawk, the founder of Visa, Land for 20 years has been a successful business failure. And I think it's important to spend some time here because this is something we've seen over and over again. Steve Jobs' career was like this. Sam Walton, think about when he started Walmart in his 40s. David Ogilvie starting his advertising career at 38. Enzo Ferrari struggling for almost two decades. James Dyson struggling for 14 years. In Land's case, it is 20 years of struggle before he gets his biggest break, the break, the invention that makes his name known throughout history. And this is, again, the reason I think this is so important, because everybody knows these names after the fact.

Starting point is 00:10:55 But what's so interesting is they all have a decade, two decades, maybe 25 years of they're not just sitting around with their feet up. They're constantly learning. They're trying to build businesses. They're having some success, a lot of failure, but they keep pushing. It says, listen to this, land was 37. Now, how crazy is this? For all intents and purposes, like Polaroid has different names, like the land will write laboratories. It's essentially Polaroid, right? He picked the field that he wanted to focus on when he was 17 and worked on it till he was 70. So check this out. Land was 37. He had known since he was 17 that he would be a great figure of science and affairs. He had expected to be playing these roles long before now, but he had ultimately been frustrated each time the moment

Starting point is 00:11:37 presented itself. So right before, and I'm going to go into more detail here, right before he introduces the most important product he ever makes, He is in a fight for his life. There's a good chance that Polaroid is going to be bankrupt. For 20 years, he had pursued the dream of a polarizing system to eliminate the glare of automobile headlights, only to be rebuffed time and time again by Detroit. He had tried to adapt the technology of polarization to product after product with only modest success. He had presented the movie industry with the greatest technical revolution since sound and color, only to be ignored and misunderstood by Hollywood.

Starting point is 00:12:15 They're talking about 3D. Polaroid's the one that invented that as well. He was proud of the war record of his company. So, World War II. I've covered this on, you know, probably probably what, 50 different books on this podcast before. Essentially, the entire American economy grind to a halt, went from producing things for the consumer to immediately producing things for the war. Polaroid was no different. So he had a huge increase in revenues because he invented a ton of things. So millions and millions of goggles that soldiers used. In fact, General Patton appeared, I think, on the cover of either Time magazine or Life magazine wearing Polaroid goggles.

Starting point is 00:12:53 He invented things for the U-2 spy plane. Wind up inventing some of the first heat-seeking missiles. They were called the Dove missiles, and now they're called Sidewinders. It was just absolutely remarkable what he was able to do. So that's what they're describing there he's proud of the war record but brilliant as some of the wartime successes had been they could not continue because this is the war is now over so what is going to happen the war ends your contract ends he's why i think they have like 1300 employees something that he winds up having to fire about a thousand people

Starting point is 00:13:18 he knows like this is a race there's a clock here if we do not invent an entire new industry and a product that we can sell to consumers within two to three years, Polaroid is gone. So said this could not continue now that the national emergency was over. So that is World War II. He had staked the future of the company on an idea he called instant photography. The two years following the war had brought the company close to disaster. Sales had fallen from $16 million down to less than $2 million. I don't want to brush over this. Let's pause right there. His company, right before he introduces the product that changes the trajectory,

Starting point is 00:13:57 this product is going to put Edwin Land on the list of some of the top 100 richest Americans. And it's coming at a time where his company is doing less than $2 million in sales. Worst of all, he had been forced to fire people, good people, from about 1,300 employees at war's end. Polaroid has shrunk to fewer than 300. All the training, all those marvelous technical competences were being dissipated and scattered. And before I go into to just an absolutely fantastic paragraph that describes the situation, the note I jotted down to myself when I reread this a second time, the parallel to Jobs is striking. Land, like Jobs, had to turn around the company

Starting point is 00:14:35 he founded before they ran out of money. The field of polarization which Land had chosen as a boy of 17, upon which he had staked his scientific career, around which he had built and financed his company, That is an insane sentence. Think about that. He had devoted almost every hour of his energy for the past 20 years. And this is just, this is the most important sentence in the entire section at 37 he had achieved everything to which he aspired except success that line should give you chills we know what's coming he had been searching for a field that he could dominate without dependence on any entity except the american public and now he believed he had found it.

Starting point is 00:15:26 So that idea, too, I need to run this back because this is we've seen this over and over again. James Dyson's autobiography on Founders number 200 is the one that jumps out to mind immediately. What he's talking about there with lands like, hey, I need a field that could dominate without dependence on an entity except the public. I want to go direct to the consumer. Right. He had spent decade after decade. He had an invention. Back then, this is early, let's see, 1930s, 1940s, a ton of people

Starting point is 00:15:51 were dying because it was very unsafe for driving at night because they had yet to discover, Detroit had yet to discover a way to deal with headlight glare. And so Edwin Land had discovered a way. He basically had stuff you could put on the windshield and the headlights and it would dim the lights of oncoming cars. And he says, hey, if you adopt my invention, you know, we'll save 50 lives a night. That was the estimate of how many people would die because of headlight glare at night. But for his invention to succeed, he had to convince all the automakers at once because it only works if each car has like the windshield has the polarizer and the um the headlight and he just failed over and over again he's like i don't want to deal with that i want to go direct to consumer i want to be able to talk directly to my customer i don't want anybody in

Starting point is 00:16:32 between me and the customer and i want to explain why this invention and the product that i'm selling is will make their life better and so that's what he's talking about he's like i need a field that can dominate without dependence on any other entity except the American public. That's the same advice that James Dyson has in the autobiography. He's like, listen, if you're the one that invented the product, you're in the best position to sell it. The creator of a product is in the best position to sell it because they know the most about it. They put all their heart and soul into it. And don't let anybody else get in between you and the actual customer.

Starting point is 00:17:07 So let's go to when he actually introduces his product directly to the customers. He's doing the most important product demonstration. So you've probably seen Steve Jobs' product demonstrations, the iPod, the Mac, iPhone, same thing. Edwin Land was a gifted showman, and he would, just like Jobs, he would rehearse, rehearse, rehearse these product demonstrations. They would stay up all hours of the day. They wanted to make sure that they got every single aspect of the product demonstration correct. So on the cover of this book is this picture. This is going to wind up being one of the most famous photographs in history. In fact, when you Google image search Edwin Land, a picture of him peeling back one of the first Polaroid

Starting point is 00:17:46 pictures, which is a picture of his face, is one of the pictures that will pop up. He's like, listen, I invented this instant camera. You no longer have to send your camera. You don't have to either, one, build a dark room, which very few people would do. And two, you don't have to now take a picture and then send it off to Kodak and wait a week to get it back. You can see your picture immediately. And so he takes the picture, says, give me 50 seconds.

Starting point is 00:18:11 They're all waiting in suspense and I'll pick it up there. He peeled the two sheets apart and presented them, all the media, and presented them a picture. A gasp riddled around the room. Lan held in his hand a brilliant image of himself. The face only slightly less than life size. The New York Times reporter tipped over in his chair. In an instant, Land was surrounded by a wall of photographers and reporters clamoring for him to repeat this and explain how it was possible.

Starting point is 00:18:41 In an instant, Land had reinvented photography, his company, and himself. Never was a birth so vividly recorded. The picture appeared in Life magazine one week later as a full page. So Life magazine at the time was the largest circulation magazine in America. It was one of the classic photographs of the decade and it was reprinted

Starting point is 00:19:01 in every photographic retrospective of the 40s and 50s that was published after. It appeared the next morning photographic retrospective of the 40s and 50s that was published after. It appeared the next morning on the front page of the New York Times and, of course, hundreds of newspapers all across the country. And so they're gasping, they're tripping over themselves because, again, this did the idea that you could take a picture like this is the world we live in. We take a picture with your phone. You see it immediately. Take a picture with any kind of digital camera. You see it immediately. That did not exist before Edwin Land. You took a picture and you're like, oh, I hope it's well,

Starting point is 00:19:27 but I'll find out in about a week or two. And so Land also does something smart here that I want to bring to your attention. And it's this idea where you can describe, like, think about it. The product that you're making is just some kind of solution to a problem that your customer has, right? And the best way to describe the solution that your company created is just in human terms, one human to another. And what's happening is like, they're all playing with the camera and there's a picture taken

Starting point is 00:19:51 where you immediately see that there was a mistake. So it says, one of the images on the table in front of him showed only the top of his head and his fingertips. And he laughed and said, and now this is the most important part of what he's doing here, because he's going to describe his solution in human terms and then compare it to Kodak's, like the status quo of his day. And he says, this is one of the most significant pictures we have taken this evening. It illustrates a very important point. If you're not satisfied

Starting point is 00:20:22 with the picture, this new process allows you to retake. I'm going to pause there. This new process allows you to retake. In other words, the process I invented and what my product, the one I'm selling to you, allows you to do. This new process allows you to retake the picture immediately and correct the fault. You know that you have a perfect picture on the spot. You never need to be disappointed again. Okay, so now I want to go back 20 years. So we figure out who Edwin Land was at 17. This is his personality and the people and ideas that inspired him. And this part is one of my favorite parts of the entire book because it gives like mini like paragraph size biographies of all the different historical figures that

Starting point is 00:21:05 Land studied and then influenced his work. So Land, like every other one of history's greatest entrepreneurs, they all wanted to know what was the great work that came that happened before I was alive and how could I study that, derive insights from that and build on top of that, start where these people left off. And so he says science and invention consumed Land's attention. At 17, he was deeply concerned with how he would spend his time and intellect and what field he would make his own. He carried a romantic vision of science developed by omnivorous reading and the

Starting point is 00:21:34 certainty that he would achieve scientific success. He was filled with impatience and frustration, and his mind was focused on the question of which scientific path he should follow. And so they just described Land's habit of omnivorous reading, something he continues for his entire life. There's this gigantic library at his house, gigantic library in Polaroid. I'll get to that more on that in a little bit. But these are some of the people that Land is reading about. Land admired Michael Faraday, who was one of the scientific heroes of the 19th century.

Starting point is 00:22:01 Faraday had apprenticed at an early age to a book binder. In his spare time, he read all the scientific volumes that came through the bindery. Land is going to do the exact same thing. He's going to drop out at Harvard. I think he's 17 years old when he enrolls in Harvard, drops out his first year, and instead goes to the New York Public Library every day at the time they open, and he literally reads every book on light contained in the New York Public Library and so in addition to Faraday it goes over all these other people that he's studying at this time and it talks about what these people were doing at this point in Land's life so we're right around 1926 Land is you know 17 18 years old and it says Thomas Edison

Starting point is 00:22:42 was 79 and still creating and what i look before i move on to the other ones this note i left myself is books are the original links the heroes of your heroes become your heroes jobs studied these people too i don't think i ever i have an example of jobs talking about faraday but he talked about edison the next person jobs talks about when he was inventing the macintosh about he put in historical in historical context of Alexander Graham Bell's invention of the telephone. I think Jobs was like 22. He was extremely young when he was doing that. Alexander Graham Bell had died in 1922.

Starting point is 00:23:17 Edison, Ford, the Wrights, and George Eastman had little or no formal learning. So he's just talking about all the different people that he's studying. The fact that this is why he felt so compelled. He's like, I don't have to. The college is moving too slow. And I think he says something very similar to what Bill Gates said. He thought that his classmates at Harvard were unserious. If you remember, I think it was Founders 140,

Starting point is 00:23:41 the biography of Bill Gates that I read, which is fantastic because it just covers the first 35 years of his life up until the Microsoft IPO. I got to reread that book soon. It's really, really good. But what was funny in the book was Bill Gates said he went to Harvard to learn from people smarter than him and left disappointed. So there is some element of that in Land as well. But what Land's realizing is like, well, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, the Wright brothers, George Eastman, these are people that I'm setting up to. They didn't really have like they didn't they didn't need to go to college. They taught themselves. They learned through trial and error and through experience. So he's just realizing that he's setting Faraday, Edison, Alexander Graham Bell.

Starting point is 00:24:16 In fact, what was fascinating is this personal laboratory and office 66 years later. Henry Ford, at this point in Land's life, was 63 when Land entered Harvard, 16 years younger than Edison, whom Ford had idolized. At this time, Ford loomed as the greatest industrial figure in the world. He had built half of all the cars sold in America. Then he moves on to the founder of Kodak. I have an 800-page biography of him, of George Eastman. I haven't got to it yet. It is in the queue. I will eventually get to it one day. George Eastman was 72 in 1926. Eastman's film was indispensable to Edison for his motion picture work. It is amazing how many founders, and this is like clear throughout history, regardless of industry and anything else, how many founders knew each other. I think there's just something motivating

Starting point is 00:25:17 to be around other smart and driven people. And if a lot of people, like if you can get, move yourself into a situation like this, some people can't yet. And I would say books serve this function before you can actually meet these people in person. But a lot of them know each other. In many cases, like these industries are obviously popping up around like certain geographical locations as well. And so then Land starts talking about like, what is all this studying doing to him? There was a great turmoil within him. He was searching for his field, the field that would make his name known to the world of science. He had read all the scientific literature that was available to him. And then he talks about, this is hilarious.

Starting point is 00:25:55 This is one of the probably the most important book that he ever found. He says, I was fortunate enough to acquire Robert W. Woods' book, Physical Optics, which I read nightly the way our forefathers read the Bible. And what he's taking away from this reading is so important. He's like, hey, I'm that too. As I review the nature of the creative drive in the inventive scientists that have been around me, as well as in myself, I find the first event is an urge to make a significant intellectual contribution

Starting point is 00:26:26 that can be tangibly embodied in a product or process. And that's why he picked polarized light. He says, Faraday had moved the world forward a hundred years. Edison had compressed genius and energy enough for three lifetimes. I picked field after field before I decided that the great opportunity was polarized light. It is incredible that he's making this decision at such a young age and then check this out. This is why he wanted to do it too, because again, he's not copying the what he's copying the how he's not, he's not saying, Hey, Ford, Bell, Edison, Faraday did this. Let me

Starting point is 00:27:02 just copy what they did. He's like, let me copy how they do it and apply their principles and principles that are unique to my own mind to a completely different field of study. And he wanted one that had a bunch of unsolved problems, one that he could make his own. This is a crazy sentence. The principles of light and how it transmitted had been studied and debated for more than 300 years. This is where I get excited because it never ceases to amaze me how all of these different ideas and thinking fit together. I just did, back on Founders number 261, right? I did that, these two volumes of maxims that the founder of Visa, Dee Hawk, wrote when he was in his 60s and 70s. And I get to that, so I just read that, what, a week or two ago,

Starting point is 00:27:43 something like that? And then that's fresh in my mind as I pick this book up and I reread it so therefore like I've changed right because of this information the words on the page are the same but my interpretation of them are different so he's like the principles of light and how it transmitted had been studied and debated for more than 300 years the author just spent like five or six pages going over land search of how to make an impact and the influences he had and all the ideas he had and then summarizes like hey i'm going to pick this because it's an unsolved problem there's a hint of like almost arrogance there it's like well i can make a contribution in a field where people have been beating the best thinkers of humanity have been beating their head against

Starting point is 00:28:21 the wall for 300 years why is that so important to me? Because what did D. Hawk write in one of those volumes, Autobiography of a Restless Mind? He said, the young, which is, there's a, we're talking about the young version of Edwin Land where we are, right? The young hurl themselves into vast problems that have troubled the world's best thinkers, believing that they can find a solution. It is well that they should for from time to time one of them does that is a description of edwin land that's remarkable

Starting point is 00:28:54 okay so i want to skip ahead to when he drops out of harvard his parents aren't happy it doesn't matter he he spends uh he decides to open up like a little kind of like a little laboratory kind of like dingy apartment slash laboratory. This is when I told you earlier that he just shows up at the New York Public Library. He's like, I'm just going to read every single thing on the subject and then begin my experiments. It says Lamb began his reading with fierce energy. He planned to devour the entire literature available on the subject of polarization and to reread everything that he had already found at Norwich, his old school and Harvard. Now, this is one of the main lessons that I learned from Land. He concentrated

Starting point is 00:29:32 ferociously on his quest. He concentrated ferociously on his quest. He's got a ton of fantastic quotes. One of my favorite quotes is this important. And I think it's really important today because we're there's we live in an age age of not only infinite leverage we live in the age of infinite distraction and the people that are going to be able to focus and concentrate or it's going to be essentially like a superpower we're almost gonna be like mutants compared to other humans that are just given to distraction after distraction so edwin land said and this is so important i feel like tattooing it on my head for god's sake. My whole life has been spent trying to teach people that intense concentration for hour after hour can bring out in people resources they didn't know they had. That's a powerful idea expressed in a sentence. I keep this quote from the book, one of the biographies, I would land it's called instant image, another super old book. That was founders number one 32,

Starting point is 00:30:27 but there's a quote in that book that I screenshot it. And I keep that folder in that folder on my phone where I just constantly like go back to, if I want to like, like review and remember things. And it was very simple. Like how important it is. It's like among all the components of lands, intellectual arsenal, the chief one seems to be simple concentration. And so what he's trying to do is he's trying to invent the world's first polarizer. This is the very first, like his very first patent, his very first invention.

Starting point is 00:30:55 You could argue this is like the foundation of the entire Polaroid company for the next 50 years. He just constantly tries to apply this idea and this technology in different products. Now he's starting to hire other people. i need to bring something to your attention because it's just remarkable one of the people he hires is terry known as terry that he's going to wind up being married to her for 61 years but at this point they don't have a lot of money they don't really have any equipment so he is going to break into the laboratory at columbia university so it says before long terry was accompanying him on nocturnal visits to a laboratory building at Columbia University.

Starting point is 00:31:29 They climbed up a fire escape and went through a window that was usually left unlocked. There, for a few hours each night, Land had clandestine access to well-equipped laboratory. What jumped out to me, rereading this for the second time, is think about, these are just the founders that came off the top of my head. These are other founders who also broke into places to use equipment necessary for their work. George Lucas, Bill Gates and John Carmack. They did the exact same thing as what Edwin Land is doing here. And I think Bill Gates and John Carmack are the only ones that got

Starting point is 00:32:06 caught. So from 17 until 20, he's working on inventing this polarizer. I'm pretty sure he gets it done. And then he makes the, at this point, I know he definitely gets it done, but I couldn't remember if it occurs after he goes back to Harvard or before. I think it happened before. So he goes back to Harvard at 20. This is really important that this happens because he's going to meet his first business partner, this guy named Wheelwright. And Wheelwright is actually going to be his instructor. So it says, Land had the ability to charm anyone who interested in him. He and Wheelwright had much in common.

Starting point is 00:32:35 Neither was in awe of Harvard. Both had left on their own for an extended period to prove something to themselves and perhaps to their parents. They were brilliant, excited by science, unconventional, and filled with energy. Land was the brightest student in the course called Electricity and Magnetism, the brightest by far, Wheelwright had said. So Wheelwright is Land's instructor in that course. And so it's through that course they wind up becoming friends, they wind up collaborating a lot,

Starting point is 00:33:01 and then this is the beginning of what will eventually turn into Polaroid They had developed a habit of taking long walks talking in the dark trying ideas out on each other You know din so every either people called land either dr. Land or Din he were preferred if you if he knew you well to call him din that was a childhood nickname No one called him Edwin, you know din. I think you should have a real laboratory Why don't you and I start one? I have some money and I can fund it. There was no response. So that's another thing about Lan's personality. You would talk to him and people just, he would think about what you're saying. And so it's not like a back and forth conversation. He's like, there might be five minutes of silence. And you're like, is this guy ignoring me? No, he's thinking about what you're

Starting point is 00:33:42 saying. So it says there was no response. Din, how about starting our own lab? We'll write repeated. And Lan said, an education without a degree. That's the way he thought about starting his own company, his own laboratory. Obviously, they're not starting a laboratory just to do science. They want some physical, like Edison, they want a physical manifestation of what they're inventing. Something that they can sell sell like a product that can actually make people's lives better. So the idea is like, oh, I think about this as an education

Starting point is 00:34:10 without a degree, which is really a great way to think about it. Right. And this also demonstrates that Edwin Land had an inner scorecard. Land left Harvard for the second and last time. He was one semester short of completing the requirements for graduation. So this entire time, Land has been publicizing like his scientific findings and the results of his experiments. And because they're so revolutionary, they wind up getting a lot of attention. So he becomes pretty famous even when he was in his 20s. And this winds up being the main asset because they're still trying to figure out, OK, how can we turn the science that we're making into a product? Because of his notoriety, his fame, there's a lot of people trying to either recruit them

Starting point is 00:34:50 to the research department of their large company, like doing an acqui-hire for the Land Will Write Laboratories, or maybe even saying, hey, why don't you dedicate your talents to academia? And so Land goes and meets with people and talks to people. But this exchange between him and his partner reveals, in my opinion, Lan's obsessive personality. Lan's growing reputation as a bright and unconventional scientist was their chief stock and trade. Will Wright was increasingly worried that Lan might be lured away. When Lan returned from one of the visits to this place, Will Wright confronted his partner.

Starting point is 00:35:25 One of their research people told me that you want to work there. George, Land replied, I told you what it's like. They start at 8 o'clock and work until 4.30. Then everything shuts down and they all go home. They don't work on Saturdays or Sundays. They keep telling me I should work for them. Well, do you want to? Of course not.

Starting point is 00:35:44 How would I get anything done? So the young company's main focus is this idea that Land has to remove headlight glare from automobiles, right? But in the meantime, they need to find a way to get cash into the company ASAP. And so this is where we see that Land, his entire life, even though he's considered like a recluse and an introvert, he's a gifted showman and he's really gifted at the product demo. So it says the two entrepreneurs have been examining every possibility they could imagine, looking for a simple consumer product that would provide them with an income sufficient enough to allow them to pursue the automotive headlight project.

Starting point is 00:36:19 And so they realized that polarizers, if they apply them to sunglasses, you have a product that is not only one, inexpensive, but also better than anything else on the market. So they arrange a meeting with the largest manufacturer of sunglasses in America at the time. It was called the American Optical Company. And so Land decides to have this meeting, this product demonstration at a hotel. He researches where the sun would be at the time

Starting point is 00:36:45 of the meeting, gets a room that is in the right location, and brings upstairs this fishbowl with goldfish in it. And so this is what Land was thinking. And then a description of this very successful product demonstration. Land did not want to talk about manufacturing techniques and specifications and prices and quantities. He didn't want a negotiation. He wanted a victory. He wanted surrender. He wanted applause. And the way he figured out how to achieve those goals is like as soon as the representatives

Starting point is 00:37:13 from the American Optical Company come into the room, they need to understand within a few seconds the value that my product provides. So it says, the three men walked into a room filled with blinding sunlight. As they squinted, Land said in a pleasant voice, I apologize for the glare. I imagine you can't even see the fish. Here, look through this. Land gave each a square of polarizer. As they faced

Starting point is 00:37:38 the window, the glare vanished. There was the bowl on the windowsill. The goldfish were swimming serenely. This is what your new sunglasses will be made of, said Land. It's called Polaroid. So the company takes the name of their first product. These are going to be called the Polaroid Day Glasses. They were extremely popular. Polaroid winds up selling more than a million pairs in 1939. And so with some initial traction, they're like, hey, we need to go raise some money. George Wheelwright, so that's Edwin Land's partner, his dad had actually gone to Harvard with J.P. Morgan. So there's a hilarious story in every book that I've read about Edwin Land when Edwin Land meets J.P. Morgan. So they set up a meeting. It was just after there was a famous bomb attack on Wall Street in 1936. And so Wheelwright and Land are going to show up at J.P. Morgan's office. And it says, we turned up armed with all sorts of strange looking packages

Starting point is 00:38:34 to show Mr. Morgan. We walked in the door of his office and were greeted by four men with shotguns. So they have this meeting with J.P. Morgan. It doesn't talk about it in this book, but in another book I read from Land, they have J.P. saying, hey, listen, I'm too old to understand this stuff. Let me direct you at some of my colleagues. So he introduces some people like Avril Harriman, people investing some of the Rockefeller's family's money. And so these investors help them organize into a company. They give Edwin Land complete control of the company for 10 years, and then they decide to just rename the company the Polaroid Corporation. And this was happening in 1937. And the date 1937 is important because it wasn't until 1947 that Land actually does the

Starting point is 00:39:18 product demonstration for the very first instant camera. And so I want to fast forward to right before World War II, because I think this is really important. You have people that are incredibly smart, incredibly dedicated. They have a number of patents. They have a bunch of inventions that the world has never seen before, and yet they still have not achieved business success. And the reason this is important to know is because it's very likely that they would have been out of business if it wasn't for this Navy contract at the very beginning of world war ii so it says nothing told land that he had yet built a business that could survive let alone grow they had solid polarizer technology they could manufacture the sheet reliably and in quantity they had gathered

Starting point is 00:39:57 a suburbally talented group of scientists they had learned a lot about a lot of businesses the automobile business the nuvi business the optical goods businesses, the lighting business. These are all businesses they tried to sell into. OK, yet the land would not admit it. The only business they had mastered was the publicity business. So at the end of your party in 1940, he calls the entire Polaroid group together. It's about 200 people at this time. And he says the world was engulfed in war.

Starting point is 00:40:29 The United States was not any yet, but it would within, it would be in the war within a year. The Navy had offered Polaroid a research and development contract. Polaroid would devote its principal energies to defense work. And this is so important. What he did not tell them was that the United States Navy had saved the company. So he scales up from, you know, 200, 250 employees all the way to the 1300. You know, they do eight times, 10 times their revenue, but this he knows it's only going to be, this war is not going to last forever. I have a short window here. And on the other side of this war, I don't have any product I can sell to consumers. I have to invent my way out of this problem. And so the like founding myth of the Polaroid camera comes when he's on a short vacation in Santa Fe, New Mexico

Starting point is 00:41:09 with his family. He's going around for a walk. It says Landon, his three-year-old daughter, Jennifer, turned from a walk around the town carrying his camera. They had taken pictures and talks about, you know, take a picture of his daughter, of the scenery. And as they sat down, his little daughter asked, why can't I see them now? Land had no answer to the question. Their time together was cut short as he rose abruptly. He asked his daughter to look for her mother and he set out walking again alone, his head full of chaotic notions tumbling one after another. His mind was now a world. Jennifer's innocent query was the epitome of a

Starting point is 00:41:46 Landian question. So this is something that pops up over and over again in the books when you study Edwin Land. This is the definition of what they consider a Landian question. It took nothing for granted, accepted no common knowledge, tested the cliche, and treated conventional wisdom as an oxymoron. Remember Peter's job interview at the very beginning of this podcast where it's like, listen, he doesn't take a, he doesn't, he thinks everything through for himself, takes no, like doesn't believe in conventional wisdom and won't believe it until he's actually done the experiment himself. So it's like he accepts no common knowledge. He tests the cliche and he treats conventional wisdom as an oxymoron. His first thought was to wonder

Starting point is 00:42:23 why he had not asked the question himself. So it's in this night where he works out in his mind and it just so happens his patent attorney is also on vacation. So he meets up with them. They go over everything that Land is thinking about over three hours to document the process. This winds up becoming extremely important

Starting point is 00:42:39 because there's an entire book. I read this book. I think it's for Founders Number 134. It's called A Triumph of Genius. Land creates a technical monopoly protected by patents. That's why he has like a 60% profit margin. Kodak winds up violating the patent. So there's an entire book that I read.

Starting point is 00:42:53 It's very fascinating because it focuses on this huge patent. At the time, the largest patent infringement case between Kodak and Polaroid, which Polaroid wins. They win the largest judgment at the time. It has since been exceeded, but it was almost a billion dollars. And they won because of Edwin Land's testimony, which is covered in that book. And something that also is helpful that Land couldn't have known because this is, you know, 30 or 40 years into the future where we're in the book, but he always, every single process, they were dedicated to documenting everything. They had signed and dated timestamps for all the experiments they're doing. They wanted dedicated to documenting everything. They had signed and dated time

Starting point is 00:43:25 stamps for all the experiments they're doing. They wanted to prove that what they were doing, no one else was capable of doing and that they did it first. And that's why they deserve the patents. And so in the field of instant photography, the very first time they put pen to paper is this night in New Mexico. And so Land is on record saying, I can see it in my mind. Now we just have to figure out how to do it. And this is what he talks about. I'm going to just read one paragraph, but really I'm going to read the note I left myself first because I think this is very fascinating. This is the very practical reason why you should keep learning and keep collecting experiences.

Starting point is 00:43:55 You will use the knowledge for an opportunity far into the future, one that you cannot see yet. And Land describes that perfectly. Three years of work lay ahead of him, but he knew, he was sure he knew that what had to be done. And that's a direct quote from Land. What is hard to convey and anything short of a thick book is the years of rich experience that were compressed into those three years. So he's talking about the three years it took them for them to create the actual product so they could sell it. It was as if all that we had done in learning to make polarizers, the knowledge of plastics,

Starting point is 00:44:29 the preparation of microscopic crystals smaller than the wavelength of light, the laminating of plastic sheets. He's just describing a series of experiments and the knowledge derived from those experiences that he was doing for the previous two decades. Had been a school and a preparation both for that first day in which I suddenly knew how to make a one-step dry photographic process, so the invention of an instant photography camera, so we think about that, and for the following three years in which we made the very vivid dream

Starting point is 00:45:00 into a solid reality. Again, that is a very practical reason why you should keep learning, keep collecting experiences. You're going to use that knowledge for an opportunity you can't even see yet. So then they go into the detail of how to build the camera. A lot of this stuff I want to skip over,

Starting point is 00:45:16 but the important part is that there's a main theme that just reappears over and over again in the history of entrepreneurship, and that is the need for speed. They all move incredibly fast, and one way to go fast is to have tight feedback loops. So his main assistant on this project

Starting point is 00:45:31 is this woman named Doxy Muller, and this is the tight feedback loop. Each day, Doxy Muller's telephone rang at 6.30 a.m. sharp. Lan gave her his critique of the previous day's work and outlined her tasks for the current day. So Doxy's going to get this call at 630 before she leaves at night. She summarizes every single experiment, everything that the lab has done in this regard. Lan will wind up reading these pages at like midnight.

Starting point is 00:45:55 The guy doesn't sleep or he takes naps throughout the day. Like you'll find him in his office sleeping in the chair for like two hours. He'll just go for like 60 hours at a time. He's insane. So anyways, he's reading these reports at like, let's say midnight the night before, figures out what he wants to do the next day, calls her at 630. And then that feedback loop, there is not a single day that they're going to waste. They can't, they're going to go out of business if they don't figure this out. Before she went home, she wrote up her day's report for

Starting point is 00:46:19 the Essex 70 research filed. Land expected it on his desk that evening with any sample pictures clipped to it. Land lay in his reclining chair alone at midnight, studying each one like the fragment of a treasure map. And so the entire development process of this project, you can think of Land just constantly finding different ways to push the pace. This is what I'm reading to is like spread out over multiple, multiple pages. Okay. So this is how he talks about, you need to work with a sense of urgency. And he's like, listen, it is taking a big chance, but there's a possibility that the Navy contracts will be canceled. In any case, now that the war is over, we have to develop another

Starting point is 00:46:53 business as fast as we can. It will be a race, a close race. If we win, we survive a race to finish the camera before we run out of money. So they're having a conversation. There's another executive named Bill. And he says, you know, I'm going to call this guy tomorrow morning. And Land says, no, call them tonight. And so this goes on for a while, even with Land pushing the pace, even with Land working seven days a week. He gets, he understands, the note I left myself on this page is very fascinating. It says, burn the boats, a lesson on human nature. So Land would

Starting point is 00:47:26 do what he's about to do here several times throughout his career, and his employees hated it, but it winds up working. Everything seemed to Land to be moving with maddening slowness. He decided to light a fire that in fact he might not be able to eventually control. The winter meeting of the Optical Society of America had been announced for February 21st, 1947. Land told his employees at Polaroid that they would disclose the camera system in New York on that day. They were appalled by the audacity of even considering a date for a public demonstration. So in other words, the people that know how far along, they have intimate knowledge, how far along the product development and the project is going,

Starting point is 00:48:06 and they're appalled that you're even considering that. Land calmed their apprehension by describing it as an occasion to present a scientific paper. His associates did not believe that he would limit the presentation to just a paper, and he knew it. In truth, Land's plan extended well beyond the scientific paper. He is literally burning the boats. He knew how daunting were the hundreds of interlocking problems Polaroid faced. The survival imperative of the company was clear and present to them all.

Starting point is 00:48:34 They had no alternative but to succeed with the camera. Everyone left at Polaroid knew that. At the present rate of decline, the business, the company, and their jobs would not survive 1947. Land held on to this date as a weapon available for use against his own people, including himself, when their efforts slowed as he knew they would. That is why I wrote this is a lesson on human nature. Even committed men and women flagged. They needed an additional stimulus. Sometimes survival wasn't a sharp enough goad.

Starting point is 00:49:10 Public exposure could be compelling, even terrifying. His people were all capable of more than they knew. Land would prepare the paper, but there would be much more on the night of the 21st. They would succeed. They would overcome nature. They would be ready. So they get the camera finished. They can barely make any of them. They're like, we need to start selling them immediately. Remember, they need money. They're going to go out of business. So they make 56. Okay. And they have this fantastic product demonstration. I've explained it on a few other podcasts, but just in case you haven't listened to it, listen to those yet. They're like, hey, we're going to start in one department store it's jordan marsh's in boston and they're going to do they just do a product demo so that you know two guys from polaroid show up they have 50 i think they have 56 cameras and then one

Starting point is 00:49:56 display demo model if i'm not mistaken okay and they wind up like standing up on uh like the counter and saying hey look what we're doing. And just like the same response that the reporters and everybody at the demonstration where they gasp, please do this again. Anytime you would demonstrate instant photography in the case, they start doing it in Jordan Marsh. They do this all over the country in all different in all different like retailers and all different events. The public's response was always the same. They're like, how did you do that? I want it immediately. So they're going to wind up selling. Let me just read this because this is land's outrageous prediction for the first year sales.

Starting point is 00:50:33 And so land is talking to the people that are going to the department store the next day. This is the day after Thanksgiving. How many cameras are going to Jordan's tomorrow? Ask land 56. But obviously we won't need that many. And so the people are saying, hey, we're bringing 56. We're not going to need that many. so the people are saying hey we're bringing 56 we're not going to need that many there's no way we're going to sell that land said he didn't believe

Starting point is 00:50:50 that he's like well the salesman may need them all and then the response from his employees well they'll need them all eventually hopefully we sell out by christmas they don't sell out by christmas they sell out in a few hours people like clamor there's like shoving matches they're like just i'll take the demo if i have if you have it like i'll just give me like they were so blown away by the ability to take a picture and immediately see it that they sold out in an instant that is not really the reason i'm telling you this though because what's it's the juxtaposition between lan's thinking and his employees right they're like oh like, oh, you know, Land's like, they're probably gonna need them all. They may need them all. They're like, oh, hopefully we sell it by Christmas. And then they're like, well, how many, they have this

Starting point is 00:51:31 discussion. This is the night before the product demonstration. And Land just comes out and says, he's like, I think we can actually sell 50,000 cameras in the first year. And he says the grandeur of that statement set them both off. So at the same time, I'm reading this book, I'm reading Insistently on the Impossible, I'm reading this book, I'm reading insistently on the impossible. I'm also reading instant the story of Polaroid, that is going to be the next podcast. In instant the story of Polaroid, there's data that's not in the book that I'm holding in my hand. They do tell the same story where it's like, oh, he said 50,000. And people are like, this guy's freaking crazy. Lance, like, is he like, there's a thin line

Starting point is 00:52:03 between genius and crazy, right? We must be working for an insane person. He actually underestimated. If I'm not mistaken, they sold 900,000 cameras in five years. Think about how remarkable that is. You are on the precipice of bankruptcy if you don't get this done. Your company, the company you've been working for 20 years is gone. You go from that low point, that valley to within five years selling almost a million, a million cameras. And because you've invented the industry that you're operating in, it's not like, okay, if any, if anybody else sees somebody selling a million of anything, they'll jump in and compete. You literally can't jump in because he's patented everything. And so not only you're selling a million, you're going from nothing, almost the precipice of bankruptcy,

Starting point is 00:52:49 to selling a million units of your product, but you're selling them and the film at excessively high profit margins. So then we skip ahead to where Peter discovers Polaroid. Okay, this is several, this almost a decade later, they're hugely successful. Let's pick that up. He says he was told, so the Peter's told by friends, Hey, you should look into working at Polaroid. Peter was really gifted at advertising promotion. He loved, he says, like, I just like selling things. I like adding up the store, the score. That's what he was interested in. And so his friends are like, they're in Boston. He's like, you got to go check out this crazy company. It's like a one-on-one and it's run by this crazy genius.

Starting point is 00:53:27 Polaroid was a huge company in my eyes, with annual sales of $65 million in the photography business and the sunglass business. The two industries didn't seem very closely related, except that they were both consumer products. The company was run by a genius named Land. So that is the reputation that Peter is being told by his friends. And so Peter is wandering around all the offices of Polaroid. He's getting ready for that job interview that he wasn't even expecting to be a job interview that I read at the very beginning.

Starting point is 00:53:57 I just want to point out one thing because I think this is extremely important. So he walks around, he stumbles into like this giant library. He's like, what the hell is going on here? And so the guest, the host that's about to introduce him to his interviewer says, So he walks around, he stumbles into this giant library. He's like, what the hell is going on here? And so the guest, the host that's about to introduce him to his interviewer says, Peter says, I was looking at the library. And the guy says, it's the company library. Land has a thing about libraries. We've always had a company library as long as there's been a company.

Starting point is 00:54:21 He has a collection of photographic books in his own office, all cataloged through the central card file. There are two full-time librarians here. And I just want to pause here because this is a very important idea that pops up over and over again. If you even just forget going through all the 270 something books that you and I have covered on the podcast before, right? Let's just talk about the people that in the last like two months, entrepreneurs need a library. You probably already have one, whether it's on your phone, whether it's a collection of books, whatever it is. This the constant building and accumulation of books over your entire lifetime should never stop until you die.

Starting point is 00:54:53 It pops up over and over again. D. Hawk, founder of Visa, talked about on the podcast. He had five thousand books. Ben Franklin, the one I did on him and George Washington. He had four thousand books. Bob Dylan, the one I did on him and George Washington, he had 4,000 books. Bob Dylan talks about his... A huge part of his autobiography is him, first, he didn't have money, exploring his friend's library. J.P. Morgan, Jay Gold, John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Rick Rubin, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Edwin Land, Steve Jobs, they all had an extensive library that they utilized. It is a tool for an entrepreneur. There's several examples in this book where Lan is thinking about a problem.

Starting point is 00:55:28 He goes to the library and tries, like, I remember reading about this, and goes and finds it. In fact, before I started recording, I was rereading over past highlights this morning, and I came across something I had forgotten, and it comes from the autobiography of, or excuse me, the biography of Fred Smith,

Starting point is 00:55:44 the founder of FedEx. This was the book I covered all the way back on episode number 151. Fred Smith created one of the most difficult, if you listen to that podcast, you already know this. And if you read the book, you know it even more. He created one of the most difficult, FedEx was one of the most difficult businesses to create in history. And what was remarkable is as he's building, he's building it in the 1970s and 1980s, Fred is reading four hours a day while he is building his company. It says, Smith estimated that throughout the 80s, he spent at least four hours a day reading.

Starting point is 00:56:13 He found he relied quite heavily on his own vision backed by assimilating information from many different disciplines all at once. So this quote I'm about to read to you from Fred Smith is describing why in the midst of building his company, one of the most difficult businesses to build ever. He's thinking it's a smart idea to read four hours a day. He says the common trait of people who supposedly have vision is that they spend a lot of time reading and gathering information and then they synthesize it until they come up with an idea. So, again, if I read something, right, I spend my day.

Starting point is 00:56:44 I read every day for this podcast. If I come across these ideas that pop up over and over and over again, and the people don't know each other, they work in different industries, they existed in different parts of the world, and at different points in human history, and yet they're doing the same things, I am obligated to bring that to your attention. Entrepreneurs should have their own library. Okay, moving on. What is even more remarkable is, OK, you can have these excessive hours. He had when he was 17, more excessive hours when he's 37, the precipice of, you know, going out of bankruptcy. He never relented. This is many years later. We're in 1962. This is how more on how Land worked. Land was sleeping in his lounge chair.

Starting point is 00:57:23 His feet elevated. An old blanket pulled up under his chin. When I opened the door to his office, he had been working until a few hours earlier in the laboratory. He and a team of 12 had put in 18 hours uninterrupted, excuse me, 18 hours interrupted only for tea, cookies, and lamb chops. Land believed in feeding the brain. A lab technician might occasionally faint from exhaustion, but never from hunger. Land hated to stop working. He is a man obsessed. Once begun on a course of action, he wanted to experiment until the hypothesis was proved.

Starting point is 00:57:56 He would not entertain the assumption that his hypothesis might be disprovable until and unless it was actually disproved. He worked like a predator, stalking a solution with perpetual patience and perpetual energy. His intuitive leaps had landed him on the neck of his prey too often for him not to believe that he could do it the next time and the time after that. Although his assistants, this paragraph is going to remind me of Jeff Bezos in the early days of Amazon, and I'll tell you why in one second. Although his assistants were sometimes more than 20 years younger than him,

Starting point is 00:58:30 he regularly worked them to exhaustion and continued with fresh replacements for hours longer. Many of them had graduated with no scientific background. Land proved many times over that a bright young liberal arts student could learn the routines of the laboratory and the structure of a scientific discipline as rapidly as applicants with technical experience. He liked the fact that his students had little to unlearn, but he did not tolerate corner cutting or sloppiness. So this idea where he's working so hard, they're tiring out, they're passing out. Then he just gets in new recruits.

Starting point is 00:59:05 There is a line in Jeff Bezos' biography that says, if you're not good, Jeff will chew you up and spit you out. And if you're good, he will jump on your back and ride you into the ground. So 30 years after the invention of the first instant photography camera, they create thex70 which is considered the best like the the fruition of land's dream as he saw it 30 years earlier when he when his three-year-old daughter asked hey why can't i see the picture right now so it was constant iterative improvement for 30 years i just want to bring something to your attention because this happens over and over again like humans are really bad at predicting the future and that includes like we sometimes think that the market is smaller than it actually is. And so at this point in career, in his career, Peter has made

Starting point is 00:59:49 the head of marketing. The previous head of marketing is like, oh, you know, I'm going to leave Polaroid. I think we've saturated the market. He did like this, this market analysis. He's like, okay, we could only at the very most based on the size of the population and how many people have already bought cameras and how many people are just not interested in buying cameras. At most, we're going to sell 8 million more cameras in total. And Landon believed that and Peter didn't believe that at all. And he says, when I took over the marketing reins, we sold 3.6 million cameras that year. The next year, we sold 4.6 million cameras. We sold, remember this guy thought, we're at the top of the market, 8 million total, that's all we can do. We sold between 4 and 9 million Polaroid cameras a year every year for the next 10 years without reaching market saturation. From this evolved two theories.

Starting point is 01:00:38 First, Edwin Land was correct to ignore conventional wisdom. He was teaching the American public that the Polaroid camera was not a lifetime acquisition, but an evolving idea, an ongoing adventure, an exploration of technology. So you would buy one. Polaroid had like this cult following. You'd buy one. Three years later, you realize, oh, there's another, like they've made it a little better. So you buy another one.

Starting point is 01:01:00 Even without getting, in many cases, not even getting rid of the first one. And so in many cases, some of these people would have, some of these fans of Polaroid would have five, six, eight different cameras. And so the idea, it's like, it's not a lifetime acquisition. You don't buy one and you're done. It's an evolving idea, an ongoing adventure and exploration of technology. Second, we knew with considerable certainty that amateur-owned cameras had an average life of three years. Thus, if we continue to change camera designs every three to four years, the pattern would continue.

Starting point is 01:01:29 So now I want to tell you how Edwin Land was similar to Walt Disney. The SX-70 had, at Land's insistence, it was covered in leather and nobody wanted to put leather on a camera because it's kind of a pain in the ass, it's difficult. But Land thought that plastic wasn't good enough. it says this was so typical of land to insist that the camera be covered in leather not a leather look-alike plastic but real leather expensive

Starting point is 01:01:55 hard to handle difficult to bond to the surface of the camera body but it smelled good and it felt good land had an instinct for packaging. He listened to all the arguments about the cost, being $3 a camera more with leather, and then he overrode them, and he was right. So when I reread that part, since the first time I read this book, I read this fantastic book.

Starting point is 01:02:21 It's a biography of Walt Disney, but it focuses on, if you ask Walt Disney at the end of his life what he was most proud of, he didn't mention cartoons, animation, nothing. He said he was most proud of the fact that he was able to keep control of his company because he lost control of his first company, right? And the second thing that he was most proud of was Disneyland. He thought Disneyland was his greatest achievement. And Disney's Land, the book that I covered on episode number 158, is all about all the process that went into building Walt's greatest, the book that I covered on episode number 158, is all about all the process that went into building Walt's greatest, life's greatest achievement, right? And there's just a paragraph.

Starting point is 01:02:50 It's so funny how you never know. Like you just, like what you read, you read 400 pages and there should be a sentence or a paragraph that just somehow louches onto your brain and never leaves. And this is an example of that, where there's an insane amount of pressure that Walt Disney's under. He's got a deadline, just like Land had a deadline, running out of money. Nothing's on time, but he's going to open regardless. And there's this interaction between Walt Disney and one of his employees that I've never forgotten. I'm going to read from the book, Disney's Land. It's a fantastic book. It's written by Richard Snow. Highly recommend reading it. They were among the first of the park's attractions to be finished. So there's these stagecoaches that Walt and one of his

Starting point is 01:03:35 employees are working on. And this employee makes the mistake of trying to get Walt to compromise on quality, which Edwin Land would not. And obviously Walt Disney's not going to either. They were among the first of the park's attractions to be finished, but the pressure of time was already weighing on everyone. One day, John Hench stopped by to check the progress of the stagecoaches and had an idea, which he brought to his boss. Why don't we just leave the leather straps off, Walt? The people are never going to appreciate all the close-up detail. Disney refused and treated Hench to a tart little lecture. You're being a poor communicator. People are okay. Don't you ever forget that. They will respond to it and they will appreciate it. Hench didn't argue and he said, we put the best damn leather straps on that stagecoach you've ever seen. That is a point that came up in conversation the other day

Starting point is 01:04:25 that I was having with a friend of mine behind every single great long-lasting company. The Disneys, the Apples, the Rolls Royces, the Ferraris. You had somebody like that. The founder was like that. Unrelenting, refusing to compromise on quality down to the last detail, even on parts where, one,

Starting point is 01:04:46 it was impossible for the customer to see or unlikely for the customer to see. And then I want to pull out Edwin Land's deep belief in the individual capacity of greatness. And I think what he says here really speaks to why founders are so important. He extolled the importance of the individual's contribution. Ptolemy, Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Faraday, Maxwell, Einstein. Rather than science as a group effort, this is a direct quote from Edwin Land, there is something warm and appealing and cozy about this picture of the human race marching forward, locked arm in arm and mind to mind. There are insecure people

Starting point is 01:05:25 in life to whom this vision of progress by phalanx brings comfort and strength but I for one think this is nonsense socially and nonsense scientifically. I think human beings and in the mass are fun at square dances, exciting to be with in the theater audience, and thrilling to cheer with at the California Stanford or Harvard Yale games. At the same time, I think whether outside science or within science, there is no such thing as group originality or group creativity or group perspicacity. So I had to look up that other word, perspicacity. We understand he's saying this and there's no such thing as group originality, group creativity, that makes sense.

Starting point is 01:06:08 So, So he's saying there's no such thing as group shrewdness or group insight either. I believe wholeheartedly in the individual capacity for greatness. Profundity and originality are attributes of a single, if not singular mind. So profundity, I had to look up that word as well. That means deep insight,

Starting point is 01:06:33 great depth of knowledge or thought. So profundity and originality are attributes of a single mind. And then the book ends with this meeting between Peter and Edwin Land at Edwin Land's house. And it's absolutely fantastic. Land was asleep. He was talking to me and he fell asleep at the end of his sentence. His eyes closed for a moment, I thought, but then they stayed closed. I sat quietly and looked at him. He was no longer chairman of the board, chief executive officer, president, chief operating officer, or director of research. He had resigned and retired. He had

Starting point is 01:07:11 sold his stock. His last tie with Polaroid was a contract which guaranteed that the office and study that he had occupied for 40 years would be his for the rest of his life. I had left as well, he in August and I in October. I didn't have to ask him if he had regrets. He didn't have to ask me. We had both been at Polaroid for too long. Land for all of his life, I for 24 years. But of course, I told myself, the point is that only change is unchanging. We both had a longer ride than most people get. Land ran his company longer than any of America's great business leaders. Longer than Thomas Edison, longer than Henry Ford, longer than George Eastman. Giving it up had been the hardest thing he had done in his life. It had been an emotional trauma that engulfed everyone near him. None of us escaped.

Starting point is 01:08:03 We watched as Land tore himself away from the most important thing in his life. The lines in his face were deeper than they had been. His silences lasted longer. His eyes more often focused inward. He accomplished this surgery on himself as he did most things, in his own personal, unexpected, and passionate way. He had written something in one of the annual reports in the 70s that was hovering in the back of my mind, but I couldn't bring it forward. In 1940, he had been named one of the National Modern Pioneers. It was a singular honor. He was 31. He had worked without ceasing, without deviating, for 14 years since boyhood, to become what? A pioneer was as good

Starting point is 01:08:47 as name as I could put to it. He wanted to create new things. The polarizer and the instant camera would remain the best known, but perhaps his most original invention had been his company. It was no less the product of a conscious process of experimentation and insight and repeated failure and creation and ultimate success than had been the other inventions. In the slow of the depression, he was already shaping the idea of a new sort of corporation whose characteristics were so unusual as to be bizarre and almost ludicrous. At the time when steel companies, automobile factories, and textile mills were slowing to a halt, spilling workers into the streets, he was talking and thinking and writing about a company founded on science that would design new products not imagined by the public, which

Starting point is 01:09:40 would be attracted to the products because they filled an unperceived need. He wanted a company to create an environment for art at a time when many were worried about meeting the next payroll. He talked about a company where the work life would be so satisfying that workers would look forward to the day beginning and regret its end, while sweatshops were in their heyday and unions fought to establish basic rights on the job. These were the ravings of a pioneer. Land opened his eyes. He looked into me. I had the feeling of being examined. Interviewed.

Starting point is 01:10:18 You were asleep, Din, I said. I was a little concerned. Nonsense. I was resting my eyes for a moment. Why would you think I was a little concerned. Nonsense. I was resting my eyes for a moment. Why would you think I was asleep? Well, I spoke to you and you didn't answer. I was thinking. He smiled. There is nothing more refreshing than thinking for a few minutes with your eyes closed. I suppose that's how you survived all those board meetings, I said.

Starting point is 01:10:41 I rose to take my leave. Din, what was it you wrote in one of your shareholder letters about the future? About the past and the future? I can't bring it to mind. The smile disappeared. He brought it to mind instantly. The present is the past biting into the future. Why do you ask? And that is where I'll leave it for the full story. Pick up the book. Speaking about the importance of entrepreneurs building on a library, every entrepreneur's library, I think, needs to have at least one. I have, what, four or five books on land. And if you're only going to have one book or a book to start with, I would start with this. If you buy the book using the link that's in the show notes, you'll be supporting the podcast at the same time. That is 263 books down, 1,000 to go, and I'll talk to you again soon.

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Founders - #263 Land's Polaroid: A Company and the Man Who Invented It

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