Founders - Steve Jobs and His Heroes

Starting point is 00:00:00 Apple was founded 45 years ago today, and when I read that, I had the idea to do just a quick little episode for you that highlights the almost 40 different episodes of founders that I've done on Steve Jobs or the people that he was influenced by or looked up to. And the reason I wanted to do that is because I think Steve Jobs is one of the best illustrations of why Founders podcasts exist. And that's because Steve, like every single other of history's greatest entrepreneurs, all spent an excessive amount of time studying from and learning from the great people that came before them, and then use the ideas that they learned through that practice of study and reading to use those ideas in the company that they wind up building. And that is exactly why

Starting point is 00:00:45 Founders exists. If you listen to Founders, you are able to download into your brain the very best ideas of all of history's greatest entrepreneurs and their worst mistakes that you can avoid. And so the fact that you're hearing this, that means you're not currently on the Misfit feed. And that means you're only hearing partial episodes of Founders. You just hear about the first 30 minutes of some of the episodes that I've done. In order to access full episodes, you'll need to sign up by tapping the link that's in the show notes of your podcast player, or by going to founderspodcast.com. And once you do that, you get immediate access to 247 full-length episodes that are available nowhere else. And I add more episodes every week.

Starting point is 00:01:16 Every episode is ad-free, and it takes less than 29 seconds to set up. And so what I'm going to do right now is I'm going to go through about, I think there's like 37 episodes on this list that are related to either Steve Jobs himself or people he studied. I will leave all of the episode title and episode numbers in the show notes. So if you sign up, you can start with these episodes. Gives you like a fantastic blueprint or fantastic roadmap to start going through this extensive back catalog of founders. Because I've spent four years, about 6,000 hours, and I've read over 100,000 pages. So it's just so I can document and search for the very best ideas in the history of

Starting point is 00:01:57 entrepreneurship. I've distilled what I learned down to roughly about 400 hours. And by listening to the episodes I'm about to talk to you about, it'd be impossible for you to listen to them, learn the best ideas from these extremely talented, some of the smartest, most productive people to ever live and not get a return on your investment when you apply these ideas to your work. So I'm just going to start. First, I'm going to talk about the ones that are specifically on Steve Jobs. And so the very first episode I ever did on Steve Jobs was number five. It was based on Steve Jobs' biography. It was written by Walter Isaacson.

Starting point is 00:02:27 And this is where it really blew my mind because as I'm reading this book and Steve is working with the author, with Walter Isaacson, and he knows he's dying. And in this book, Steve introduced me to so many other founders I didn't even know existed. And he goes through at length about all the people that he admired, the people that he wanted to pick their brain, the one he read books about, what inspired him, and what ideas of theirs that he used to build Apple. So that's number five. Number 19, if you could only read, let's say you only had time to read one biography of Steve Jobs, this is the one I would recommend. And this is number 19. The book is called Becoming Steve Jobs. The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader.

Starting point is 00:03:11 And it was published after Isaacson's biography. So it also builds on some of what Isaacson wrote about. And what I loved about this book is it shows in the subtitle, it says, The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader. Steve Jobs was not born as one of the greatest entrepreneurs to ever live. He made himself, he built himself into that person. And so this book spends a lot of time talking about how he, the mistakes he was making in his 20s and 30s and how he corrected. He had the ability to, he was a learning machine, he had the ability to constantly learn and correct his behavior.

Starting point is 00:03:42 And without making those mistakes and mistakes and learning from his struggles, we would have never had things like the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad, the iMac, all of the things that now the gigantic Apple empire sits upon. And the book also has a fantastic introduction written by Marc Andreessen. If you go and look at the description, I have a quote from Marc Andreessen as the description of why I created Founders. And it's actually a quote I heard from Mark Andreessen in a different interview. And he talks about like why he's read hundreds of biographies, even to this day. This guy's a multi-multi-billionaire. He spends a ton of time reading.

Starting point is 00:04:18 He has like this comprehensive historical base of knowledge that helps him succeed in his work. And this is what Mark said about why he read and continues to read so many biographies. He says 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, come up with 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 your time, you can learn from someone's accumulated experience. There is so much more to learn from the past than we often

Starting point is 00:04:53 realize. You could productively spend your time reading experiences of great people who have come before you and learn every time. So that's the end of the quote. What I loved is when the pandemic happened and everybody was working from home, working remotely, I watched a few interviews that Mark did in his house. And this guy, the reason I point out the fact he's a multi-billionaire is not to glorify his wealth per se. It's the fact that at that level, you can learn from whoever you want. You can hire the world's experts. You can do whatever you want. And he chooses, he's showing us by his actions that how valuable reading and learning from biographies is. And it's just hilarious. You'd watch biographies is and it's just hilarious you'd

Starting point is 00:05:25 watch these videos of him and it's just mark in his house he doesn't have bookshelves like he's his book collection has outstripped his shelves you just have stacks of books on top of each other uh throughout his living room and wherever he's doing these interviews and i just like all right this is this i'm clearly on the right path like This is clearly a very high-value activity that we need to keep going on. So anyways, Mark Andreessen wrote the introduction to Becoming Steve Jobs. It's a fantastic book. I highly recommend reading it. Listen to the podcast first.

Starting point is 00:05:55 It's very helpful to listen to the podcast first and then read the biographies. A lot of people that listen to founders do that, and they say it really adds to their understanding. It makes the ideas that they learn stick even more. Then we go to number 76, and don't worry about if you don't remember all these numbers. Like I said, I'll list it down below as well. Number 76, this is a crazy book, too. It's called Return to the Little Kingdom, Steve Jobs and the Creation of Apple.

Starting point is 00:06:21 So Apple was founded in 1976, 45 years ago today, like I said. This book is written by Michael Moritz. At the time, Michael Moritz was a journalist for Time Magazine. He wrote this book. It covers the first six years. It's like a snapshot because it was a lot of the books I do on the podcast. You'll see they're very, very old books. A lot of them are very hard to find. That's another advantage that Founders gives you. Very few people are reading these books. Very few people are. You just have a complete edge because everybody's focused on like what's happening now what's what are entrepreneurs doing now and you're like why are you doing that not why are you doing that but like the greatest people in history studied the people that came

Starting point is 00:06:57 before them it's not that they don't pay attention to what's going on now but you like if you have to choose between let me listen to a podcast interview with an entrepreneur that's operating today, or let me study a great entrepreneur in the past. It's no question. The greatest entrepreneurs will tell you, choose the history first. It's not either or. You can do both, and you should do both. But without question, you should be building your own historical base of knowledge first.

Starting point is 00:07:21 That's what all of these people did. So anyways, the reason that this is interesting is because the book is, first of all, very, very old. And it shows at the end of the book, we don't know. Like Steve Jobs had not been kicked out of Apple yet. He's still in his 20s. We don't know what Apple is going to turn into. And then there's also an interesting point where Michael Moritz, he winds up after that book, he winds up transitioning from a journalist and a reporter to a venture capitalist. And fast forward to today, and he's actually a billionaire because he was really successful at investing in technology companies because that's what he was studying. Number 77.

Starting point is 00:07:54 This is Steve Jobs and the Next Big Thing. This is also an important book and also a very old book because it's another snapshot in Steve Jobs' career. And it only covers the 13 years between when he got kicked out of Apple and when he returns. These are known and referenced as Steve Jobs' wilderness years. The reason this book is important to listen to and the book is important to read is because you have what is arguably one of, if not the greatest entrepreneur to ever live, making one bad decision, one stupid decision after another. I think on the podcast it says, like, bizarro Steve Jobs. All the other books are like, copy these ideas because Steve, like, they're genius ideas. This is learn these lessons and do the opposite.

Starting point is 00:08:41 It is crazy how you could have somebody so smart and so talented. And I think it's important for all of us to remember that no one's perfect, right? Even the people that have wild success. And so this book is just fantastic. Let me give you one example. Steve talks over and over again about how important it is to make sure you have the highest talent level, especially at the beginning of your company. Because when you're starting a company, when the company's small,

Starting point is 00:09:04 it is affected by the quality of talent that it has more than a large company is. Because let's say you have 10 people and you hire two bad apples, well, 20% of your company sucks. Steve Jobs, one of the first 10 hires at Next, had nothing to do with software, nothing to do with hardware. He hired an interior designer for his office that's not that's not a joke that's this is a gigantic mistake the book is again fantastic very old book very few people now like your competitors are probably not reading that book this gives you an advantage um number 204 inside steve jobs brain this book was written after he written after he came back to Apple the second time, but before he died. It's absolutely fantastic. Number 214, I reread. This is also important,

Starting point is 00:09:51 not just to read a book once or listen to a podcast once, but you go back and you reread great books. You go back and you re-listen to podcasts, or great podcasts, that is, because the book stays the same, the podcast stays the same, but you change as a person. Now you've learned a ton. In between reading this book the first time, it was number five, this is number 214. That's 209 books I read that adds and knowledge compounds just like money does. And so now I pick up the book.

Starting point is 00:10:18 The words on the page haven't changed, but I've changed drastically. And so you start to notice things you didn't notice the first part. So that's 214. Then number 235 is To Pixar and Beyond, My Unlikely Journey with Steve Jobs to Make Entertainment History. Most of what I focus on is the fact that the building of Apple, right? But Steve Jobs became a billionaire not from Apple. The first time he became a billionaire was from Pixar.

Starting point is 00:10:39 He dumped $50 million into Pixar before it made a dollar. So this book is written by the first CFO of Pixar. He talks about what it was like to build that company into an asset, a business that was good enough to sell to Disney a couple years later for almost $8 billion. And the fact is we learn a lot about Steve's approach to company building in that book. And one of the craziest things is when Steve hires the guy who is Pixar's first CFO, and he writes the book after he leaves Pixar, obviously, he's looking at the books. He's like, wait a minute, we're losing money every month. And Steve Jobs has put in $50 million of his own

Starting point is 00:11:15 money. And this is not billionaire Steve Jobs. He had somewhere between like $70 and $80 million, thereabouts. This is not exact number. When he left Apple, he put almost all of it. And he was at Next at the time, so his company wasn't doing well. This was before he moved back to Apple. He put all of it, almost all of it, into Pixar. And he just had the patience and the belief that he had a small group of geniuses and they were going to change history. And he wound up doing that.

Starting point is 00:11:39 Then I have two bonus episodes. So I've done, I don't know, like 10 bonus episodes, somewhere like that. Eventually I wised up and realized I should number two bonus episodes. So I've done, I don't know, like 10 bonus episodes, somewhere like that. Eventually, I wised up and realized I should number the bonus episodes just like every other episode so you could actually find them. So the two I did on Steve Jobs was before I realized I should number them. And I was like, oh, I just won't number them because they're bonus episodes. But bonus episodes are not. Every single episode. Before I sit down, like Founders is one of the craziest podcasts

Starting point is 00:12:05 that you'll ever come across. Like there's no other podcast like it in the world. Think about how crazy the preparation. Before I sit down to talk to you, I have to read an entire book. And it's not like I'm taking long times between making new podcasts. I did 66 new podcasts last year. Like it's just insane the amount of preparation I have to do.

Starting point is 00:12:24 So this, the first book is insanely simple the obsession that drives apple success you can find it between episodes number 112 and episodes number 113 it is written by somebody it was written by somebody who worked at the ad agency that steve jobs used and he taught he gives us in he's like this is what i observed what makes steve special the the ideas that he used that were completely different. Because this guy is not only working for Apple, he's working for all these other technology companies. And he's like, there's nobody else that thinks like Apple. So he writes an entire book about what are these unique perspectives and ideas that Steve used.

Starting point is 00:12:58 It's a fantastic book. Then the other bonus I put was this book, Anybody Building a Product. I've read this book three times. It's called Creative Selection, Inside Apple's Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs. It is written by a programmer at Apple. You can find it between episodes number 110 and 111. You can read it in a weekend. I would buy it right now.

Starting point is 00:13:17 Even if you don't sign up for Founders, and I think not signing up for Founders is a gigantic, gigantic mistake. The value to cost ratio is insane just read I'll leave some reviews down below if you want to read what other people say it's it's absolutely crazy but this book is just fantastic gives you an insight into what it was like like this the author literally had to do product demos to Steve over and over again he helped build the first keyboard for the iPhone he helped build a the Safari browser. It's just, there's gold. There's like gem after gem after gem in that book. Okay. Now there's a series of other books I'm going to tell you about that have to do with a person that worked very closely with Steve Jobs and Steve

Starting point is 00:13:55 Jobs. So the first one is Johnny Ive and Steve Jobs. I read Johnny Ive's biography. It's number 178. Johnny Ive, the genius behind Apple's greatest products. I just found out that when Johnny Ive worked at Apple after Steve came back, there was only one person in the entire – Steve set up the company, so there was only one person in the entire company that could tell Johnny what to do, and that was him. And his base salary, Johnny's base salary was $30 million a year. That's how valuable Steve thought he was. So anyways, that's number 178, Johnny Ive, The Genius Behind Apple's Greatest Products.

Starting point is 00:14:26 Another fantastic book. Number 34, Creativity, Inc., Overcoming the Unseen Forces that Stand in the Way of True Inspiration. This is Steve's co-founder of Pixar, Ed Catmull, who's by all accounts a managerial genius, and also the person that worked the longest consecutive time with Steve Jobs. It was either 24 or 26 years straight.

Starting point is 00:14:52 I don't have the book in front of me, so it's one of those. The end of this book, there's like a 30-page afterward or 20-page afterward called Steve We Knew. It's absolutely fantastic, but you can learn a lot from Ed in general, but there's also Steve's, you know, obviously a main character in that book and in that podcast now there's two other books that i read that are on steve jobs and several other technology company founders number one or excuse me number 157 the innovators how a group of hackers geniuses and geeks created the digital revolution there's like 25 mad geniuses in there. Steve's in there a lot. And a lot of Steve's heroes are in there as well.

Starting point is 00:15:30 And then the other one is another example, a book on Steve Jobs and several other technology company founders is number 208 in the company of giants, candid conversations with visionaries of the digital world. Two MBA students at Stanford in the late 90s decided to write a book. And the entire book is just interviews with Steve and I think 15 other technology company founders,

Starting point is 00:15:48 like Bill Gates is in there, Steve Case, like just flat out geniuses. And so obviously if you listen to number 208, you'll learn a lot from Steve Jobs and other people as well. Now I want to get into Steve's influences. These are the people that he talks about over and over and over again. He has this world famous quote when Steve said,

Starting point is 00:16:07 Picasso had a saying, good artists copy, great artists steal. And we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas. But it's not that he just steals them. He gives credit to who these people are. So the most important person, I would study all these people because they're also very formidable individuals in their own right. But the person that has the single largest influence on Apple is this guy. I didn't know about him before I started doing this project.

Starting point is 00:16:32 His name is Edwin Land. He was the founder of Polaroid. He ran Polaroid for like 60 years and he was Steve Jobs' hero. Steve got to meet him. Edwin Land at the time was like in his 70s. Steve was in his 20s. And he said visiting Edwin Land was like visiting a shrine. I was shocked when I started reading. And I've read five books on Edwin Land for the podcast. I was shocked how many ideas I thought I had learned from Steve Jobs that he literally regurgitated and learned from Edwin Land. So number 40, Insisting on the Impossible, The Life of Edwin Land.

Starting point is 00:17:05 And there's another book. So on some episodes, I read two books. Number 40 is an example of that. So I read Insisting on the Impossible, The Life of Edwin Land. My opinion, the best biography of Edwin Land. And then Instant, The Story of Polaroid. So one's a biography of Edwin Land. One's the history of Polaroid.

Starting point is 00:17:19 Obviously, there is no Polaroid without Edwin Land. It's literally like he was the company. Then three more episodes without Edwin Land it's literally like he was the company uh then number two three more episodes on Edwin Land uh number 132 the instant image Edwin Land and the Polaroid experience number 133 Land's Polaroid a company and the man who invented it and number 134 a triumph of genius Edwin Land Polaroid and the Kodak patent work so right there because these are some giant books right there that is is probably, if I had to guess, almost 2,000 pages just on Edwin Land that I went through. Then we go through one of Steve Jobs' mentor, two of his mentors were the two co-founders of Intel. So technically, the two co-founders of Intel were Bob Noyce and Gordon Moore. But really, Andy Grove was considered an unofficial co-founder

Starting point is 00:18:06 and really one of the most important, probably the most important CEO of Intel. So Bob Noyce and Andy Grove, Steve Jobs talks about over and over and over again. Steve, when he was a young kid, Bob Noyce was like the godfather of Silicon Valley at the time. He'd go, he was in his 20s, he'd just show up at Bob Noyce's house and just have dinner with his family and stuff. It was hilarious. And Bob Noyce would constantly be chastising Steve about his bad manners and just the way he talks and everything. But Bob Noyce, Andy Grove.

Starting point is 00:18:34 So episode number eight, The Intel Trinity, How Robert Noyce, Gordon Moore, and Andy Grove Built the World's Most Important Company. Number 166, The Man behind the microchip robert noyce and the invention of silicon valley so it's bob noyce's biography and then 159 is the autobiography of andy grove and it's one of the craziest autobiographies because he winds up it's you know what i'll just read you i'm going to read you one of the opening paragraphs of the book it's beautifully written. It only covers the first 21 years of his life. But he says, I was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1936.

Starting point is 00:19:10 By the time I was 20, I had lived through a Hungarian fascist dictatorship. So this is everything that happened to him before he turned 20. I lived through a Hungarian fascist dictatorship, German military operation, the Nazis' final solution, the siege of Budapest by the Soviet Red Army, a period of chaotic democracy in the years immediately after the war, a variety of repressive communist regimes, and a popular uprising that was put down at gunpoint. He winds up escaping Hungary and making it to the United States and then becoming one of the most important founders and managers in the technology industry history by far.

Starting point is 00:19:46 But there's also a fantastic story that Steve Jobs tells in other books why Andy Grove was so important to his decision to return to Apple because at the time, I'll read this. This is Steve Jobs talking about this. And this gives you an idea of Andy Grove's blunt, no bullshit style. So it says, we'd just taken Pixar public and I was happy being CEO there. I never knew of anyone who served as a CEO of two public just taken Pixar public, and I was happy being CEO there. I never knew of anyone who served as a CEO of two public companies, even temporarily,

Starting point is 00:20:09 and I wasn't even sure it was legal. I didn't know what I wanted to do. I was enjoying spending time. This is all Steve Jobs talking, by the way. I was enjoying spending more time with my family. I was torn. I knew Apple was a mess, so I wondered, do I want to give up this nice lifestyle that I have? What are all the Pixar shareholders going to think?

Starting point is 00:20:24 So I talked to people I respected. I finally called Andy Grove. I gave him the pros and the cons. And in the middle, he stopped me and said, Steve, I don't give a shit about Apple. I was stunned. It was then I realized I do give a shit about Apple. I started it and it's a good thing to have in the world. That was when I decided to go back. So that's number 159 is Andy Grove's autobiography. Nolan Bushnell, next person. Nolan Bushnell is one of Steve Jobs' mentors. He was the founder of Atari and Chuck E. Cheese. Steve worked at Atari.

Starting point is 00:20:54 Nolan Bushnell hired Steve when Steve was 19 years old. And so there's an entire book. They met up in Paris in 1980. At the time, Atari and Chuck E. Cheese is way bigger than Apple is. And they wind up taking a walk for several hours. And Nolan and Steve are talking about the difficulties of building companies. That conversation, the ideas that came out of that conversation, Nolan turned into a book. It's number 36.

Starting point is 00:21:14 It's called Finding the Next Steve Jobs, How to Find, Keep, and Nurture Talent. Next person is the founder of Sony, Akio Morita. Not only did Steve steal ideas from him, he loved Akio. They went to a meeting. Akio also influenced heavily Jeff Bezos as well. He's got an unbelievable story. One of the best founders to ever do it by far. Number 102, Made in Japan, Akio Morita and Sony.

Starting point is 00:21:37 This is autobiography. It's fantastic. Walt Disney is another huge influence on Steve Jobs. He loved his dedication to the quality of his product, innovation, and more importantly, that he built a company to last. And that is right before he died. That's what his most important thing is like, I'm not worried about money, not worried about any of that I want to build. My goal was to build insanely great products and to build a company that will last. That was that's what my heroes like Walt Disney, Bob Noyce, all these other people did. That's what I want Apple to be. So Walt Disney is number two.

Starting point is 00:22:05 Walt Disney, The Triumph of American Imagination, number 39, Walt Disney, An American Original, and number 158, Walt Disney and the Invention of the Amusement Park that Changed the World. That was a really good book because it's all about Walt Disney at the end of his life. He was dying of lung cancer. He said he was most proud of two things,

Starting point is 00:22:21 starting a company and keeping control of it, and number two disneyland that was the favorite thing you ever worked on in that book on 158 it's all about the creation of disneyland uh another person from history that might surprise you that steve jobs studied and learned from was jay robert oppenheimer one of the leaders of the manhattan project he said he learned from jay robert oppenheimer the importance of only having the most talented people on your team that you have to be ruthless in the level of talent. And so that is number 215, the general and the genius, Groves and Oppenheimer, the unlikely

Starting point is 00:22:49 partnership that built the atom bomb. I read that book because Steve Jobs said that he studied and learned from Oppenheimer. So if Steve studied and learned from Oppenheimer, why wouldn't I? Why wouldn't you? I mean, these are just like the biggest no-brainer in the world, right? Henry Ford, another one of Steve Jobs' heroes, one of my favorite entrepreneurs. I've read five different books on Henry Ford. When Jobs is building the Macintosh, he's in his early 20s, he's saying he wanted to make it as simple as Henry Ford's Model T. There's all these other ideas that he took from Henry Ford. Number nine, I Invented the Modern Age, The Rise of Henry Ford. Number 26, Henry Ford's autobiography, My Life and Work.

Starting point is 00:23:29 Number 80, another book Henry Ford wrote called Today and Tomorrow. Number 118, My 40 Years of Ford. This is like one of Henry Ford's right-hand guys, worked for him for 40 years, named Charles Sorenson. That book is fantastic. A lot of crazy Ford stories in the book. And then number 190, the story of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison's 10-year road trip. Thomas Edison was Henry Ford's hero, and they wind up later in life becoming almost like best friends. So again, everybody has heroes. Everybody learns from somebody. Founders just exist to make this easier so you can do it easier and faster.

Starting point is 00:23:59 And if you pick the right heroes, it's going to change the trajectory of your life for sure. Steve Jobs says they had a heavy, heavy influence on him was the HP way, which was Dave Packard and Bill Hewlett. They built one of the very first technology companies in Silicon Valley back in like the 1930s. And a lot of people copied their management structure. Steve Jobs copied their management structure. He calls it the HP way just so happens that Dave Packard wrote a biography and he titled it the HP way. The HP way helped Bill Hewlett and I built our company. That's episode number 29. Another person that both Steve Jobs studied extensively and his hero Edwin Land studied extensively was Alexander Graham Bell.

Starting point is 00:24:35 You will hear in these podcasts and in these books Steve Jobs constantly refer and Edwin Land refers to the issues of creating something that's brand new that the world's never seen before. Just like Alexander Graham Bell did with the telephone, they used a lot of his ideas with the marketing of, in Edwin Land's case, the first instant camera that ever existed in the world. And in Steve Jobs' case, the Macintosh. He talks about this when he was in his 20s. That's what blows my mind. He had this deep historical knowledge and he had the understanding how important it was, Steve that is, early on. And I read a biography of Evan Spiegel, the founder of Snapchat. And I was shocked because when he's in his early 20s, he's saying, hey, I want to build a company and I want to model it after my two heroes.

Starting point is 00:25:16 And he said his two heroes was Edwin Land and Steve Jobs. And that's exactly what he's doing. It's just, again, I just have to point this out to you because I didn't know before I started this project. And I think most people don't know how much of history's greatest entrepreneurs just straight up borrowed ideas built upon the ideas of the people that came before them. They all do this. And the fact that Evan Spiegel, think about that. Now I think Snapchat's worth, I don't know, let's say $30 billion. He might have a private net worth of, I don't know, $6 billion or whatever. It's a lot of money, right? How valuable to Evan was learning and studying Steve Jobs in Edmonton?

Starting point is 00:25:51 Well, billions. That's not hyperbolic. That is a stone-cold fact. The fact that he learned from, let them influence the way his approach to his company is literally worth billions of dollars. And they all know this. Go back to Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger. There's a great book on Charlie Munger called Poor Charlie Zalmanak.

Starting point is 00:26:10 There's a quote in that book that I've never forgot. That's episode number 90, by the way. I don't want to tell you every podcast I've ever done. That'd be hours and hours. But in episode 90, I read Poor Charlie Zalmanak. There's a quote in that book that I've never forgotten. And Charlie Munger has read hundreds of biographies. He's a billionaire.

Starting point is 00:26:28 I don't think there's any billionaires that have not read a ton of biographies. It's crazy how much they all talk about it. Elon Musk, that's where I got the idea to do this podcast. I saw an interview with Elon Musk in 2012. And he was asked by this guy named Kevin Rose on this podcast that used to exist called Foundation. He's like, you came from, Kevin asked Elon, he's like, you came from South Africa, then you went to Canada, then you went to California. You're in your 20s.

Starting point is 00:26:49 Like, how did you learn how to build companies? Like, did you read a lot of business books? And Elon said something that I never forgot, and that's the initial idea to do this project. He said, no, I didn't read business books. I read biographies. He's like, I looked for mentors in historical context, books basically. I read biographies. He's like, I looked for mentors in historical context, books, basically. I read biographies. I thought they were helpful. And he talks about reading biography of Benjamin Franklin, Henry Ford, Nikola Tesla, obviously. He's read biographies of every single person who's ever built a rocket. And he's still doing this to this day.

Starting point is 00:27:17 How many other people do you know that are busier than Elon Musk, for God's sake? And this guy still takes time and spends time reading biographies. What does that tell you? This is clearly a high-value activity that you need to make a part of your life. So anyways, Alexander Graham Bell, 138. I don't know if I went off on a tangent there. Number 138, Reluctant Genius, The Passion of Life, and Event of Mind of Alexander Graham Bell.

Starting point is 00:27:42 I'm almost done. This is Robert Friedland. Okay, so Robert Friedland is the closest person I've ever covered that's like a cult leader. And he was actually running this like commune when when Steve Jobs was in Steve Jobs and him were friends in college. And people that knew Steve Jobs before he met Robert Friedland say that he wasn't very charismatic. He met Robert Friedman, who was extremely charismatic. So Steve starts becoming more charismatic and understanding the influence that charisma can have on other humans around you, right? They wind up having a falling out. Steve Jobs says he like crosses a line between being like a charismatic founder and like a cult leader and like a con artist.

Starting point is 00:28:17 But Robert Friedman winds up becoming a billionaire. I read this book, number 131, The Big Score, Robert Friedman and the voysey bay hustle and so robert makes money in mining like selling mining rights and so steve jobs is in this book uh as well they talk about the relationship that robert and steve had they're not they were not you know they used to be friends they never were after that uh but it was just a weird coincidence that two guys sitting in like an apple commune like this this communist like commune slash apple farm both hippies both dropping acid doing all this crazy stuff like both become billionaires one in technology building technology products and one in mining it was just

Starting point is 00:28:56 very surprising and then the the last is steve's best friend steve did not have a lot of like close friends he dedicated his life to to work but his best friend was Larry Ellison. I did a three part series on Larry Ellison in all these books. Steve Jobs is going to pull up is going to pop up rather because, you know, Larry talks about like he thinks Steve's one of the most important people to ever live. Like he just he almost like idolized him. And Larry is a crazy character too like i mean just insane and he's been running his company since the 1970s you know he's worth tens and tens of billions of dollars to this day but that's number 124 software an intimate portrait of larry ellison an article number 126 the billionaire and the mechanic that is a crazy book if you only read one book on larry ellison that that that's the book i would read the subtitle is how lar Larry Ellison and a Car Mechanic Teamed Up to Win Sailing's Greatest Race, the American Cup, Twice.

Starting point is 00:29:49 And finally, number 127, The Difference Between God and Larry Ellison. God doesn't think that he's Larry Ellison. So that's it. I'll list everything down below. I hope, I encourage you heavily to sign up for the Misfit Feed. Once you sign up,

Starting point is 00:30:03 you get immediate access to every full-length episode. I will leave this list down below so you have a good blueprint or map to start. There's no special app required. You're going to listen to the Misfit Feed and your favorite podcast player. It takes less than 29 seconds to set up. You can start learning from some of the greatest minds in history and you can upgrade now by

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Founders - Steve Jobs and His Heroes

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