Founders
About this creator
Founders is a podcast built around lessons from the biographies, decisions, and operating principles of exceptional entrepreneurs.
Why they're in the library
Included for clear, credible perspective as podcast built around lessons from the biographies, decisions, and operating principles of exceptional entrepreneurs.
Showing 412 digests for Founders.
Founder interviews
Podcast
What Barnett Helzberg learned running a family business before selling to Buffett
Founders
November 29, 2022
Founder interviews
10
Bootstrapping
7
Hiring & recruitment
6
Buffett skipped due diligence and closed the deal on instinct alone
Cutting weak stores and product lines grew both revenue and profit
Decisions compound across generations — your kids remember what you missed
Business operating systems
Podcast
Peter Thiel's Zero to One: Build something new, own the market
Founders
November 22, 2022
Business operating systems
10
Competitive analysis
9
Prospecting & outreach
6
Competitive markets destroy profits — monopoly is the only goal worth building toward.
Poor sales, not bad product, is the most common cause of startup failure.
Founders who plan decades ahead always outperform those chasing short-term growth.
Long-term planning
Podcast
Paul Graham's core ideas on wealth, design, and making great things
Founders
November 17, 2022
Long-term planning
9
Deep work & focus
8
Design thinking
7
Wealth is whatever people want — technology multiplies how much you can create
Relentlessness wins: unseen details accumulate into something stunning
Small teams beat big companies by making truly great products, not adequate ones
Deep work & focus
Podcast
Paul Graham's essays on thinking, working, and building startups
Founders
November 9, 2022
Deep work & focus
8
Identity & self-belief
7
Niche selection
6
Curiosity beats discipline — follow what you're curious about, not just what you love
Schlepp blindness hides the best startup ideas by making hard problems invisible
Founders repeatedly ignore the problem that will actually kill their company
Founder interviews
Podcast
Paul Graham's essays on startups, work, and determination
Founders
November 3, 2022
Founder interviews
10
Resilience & grit
9
Long-term planning
7
Why prestige and money derail almost everyone from work they love
Startups don't die from competition — they die from demoralization
Relentlessly resourceful founders outperform smart but hapless ones
Founder interviews
Podcast
Jim Clark: three billion-dollar companies and the engine of revenge
Founders
October 27, 2022
Founder interviews
10
Resilience & grit
8
Business models
6
Poverty and abuse fuelled a revenge-driven obsession with achievement.
Engineers create wealth — Clark spent three companies proving they should keep it.
The goalposts never stop moving: satisfaction is a tool Clark used, not a destination.
Resilience & grit
Podcast
Kobe Bryant's Mamba Mentality: obsession, study, and relentless improvement
Founders
October 26, 2022
Resilience & grit
9
Identity & self-belief
8
Deep work & focus
7
Greatness is built in private through obsessive, unglamorous work.
Kobe systematically sought out legends to download their knowledge.
Identify your weaknesses ruthlessly — then fix them until they're gone.
Identity & self-belief
Podcast
Kobe Bryant's obsessive pursuit of greatness and what drove it
Founders
October 19, 2022
Identity & self-belief
9
Deep work & focus
8
Productivity & habits
7
Belief before ability: Kobe declared greatness long before earning it.
Starting at 4am compounds into an insurmountable edge by year five.
Total commitment means sacrificing every relationship that slows you down.
Vannevar Bush: the individual, the inventor, and American science in wartime
Founders
October 12, 2022
Origin stories
10
Identity & self-belief
7
Management
5
Domesticate a technology and you explode the market overnight.
Bureaucratic education mass-produces mediocrity; individual freedom is the point.
Resourcefulness beats resources — the more competent side always outproduces.
Founder interviews
Podcast
Vannevar Bush: lessons from a six-decade career in science and leadership
Founders
October 6, 2022
Founder interviews
10
Management
8
Delegation
6
Personal relationships with decision-makers make you effective — or irrelevant.
The innovation pipeline: basic research → applied research → commercialisation, still shapes the world.
Inventors invent because they cannot help it — not for money.
Founder interviews
Podcast
Sam Zell: how a business rebel built a real estate empire from nothing
Founders
September 29, 2022
Founder interviews
10
Niche selection
8
Pricing strategy
6
Avoiding competition beats being a genius every time
Liquidity equals value — being asset-rich and cash-poor is existential
Sold a $39B real estate empire weeks before the market collapsed
John Malone: how a cable cowboy built a billion-dollar empire
Founders
September 21, 2022
Case studies
9
Cash flow management
7
Business models
6
Why Malone never reported a profit — and made shareholders rich anyway
Control distribution and demand equity: Malone's monopoly playbook
Owners think economics; managers fight for control — Malone's core distinction
Thomas Edison: lessons from a life of relentless invention
Founders
September 14, 2022
Origin stories
10
Resilience & grit
8
Pivoting
5
Edison's curiosity was his superpower — and his failure to focus his undoing.
Bad partners robbed him repeatedly; Gould made 30x in a day from Edison's work.
Menlo Park: the first lab built purely for commercial invention, his happiest years.
Henry Ford's one idea: build a great product at the lowest possible price
Founders
September 8, 2022
Origin stories
9
Business models
7
Identity & self-belief
5
Ford had one idea for 12 years before the Model T launched
Money comes naturally as a result of service — not the other way around
Why hiring experts is the surest way to kill a company's progress
Founder interviews
Podcast
Becoming Steve Jobs: How the Wilderness Years Made a Visionary
Founders
August 30, 2022
Founder interviews
10
Management
7
Resilience & grit
6
The dozen years exiled from Apple forged everything great about Jobs.
Ed Catmull taught Steve more about management than anyone else.
Time carries most of the weight — older founders dominate their younger selves.