Founders
About this creator
Founders is a podcast built around lessons from the biographies, decisions, and operating principles of exceptional entrepreneurs.
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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.
Henry Singleton: capital allocation genius behind Teledyne
Founders
February 10, 2020
Case studies
10
Bootstrapping
6
Long-term planning
6
Bought 130 companies in a decade, then never bought another one
Retired 90% of outstanding shares — shareholders gained 3,000%
Buffett called his capital deployment record the best in American business
Adi Dassler and the rise of Adidas
Founders
February 3, 2020
Origin stories
10
Competitive analysis
6
Identity & self-belief
5
Post-war cobbler invented sport-specific shoes, revolutionizing athletic performance through innovation.
Family feud between brothers split Adidas and Puma, creating 30-year distraction that cost both companies dominance.
Nike exploited Adidas's supply delays and dismissal of jogging, capturing the American market during the seventies boom.
How Jim Simmons Built a Money-Printing Machine
Founders
January 26, 2020
Origin stories
9
Hiring & recruitment
6
Resilience & grit
6
Outsider mathematician rejected intuition, built data-driven systems predicting market patterns.
Persistence through 20 years of failure until algorithm-driven Medallion Fund achieved 66% returns.
Treated trading as casino mathematics: 51% accuracy plus leverage equals billions from volume.
The Retail Revolutionary Who Shaped Modern Commerce
Founders
January 20, 2020
Origin stories
10
Business models
7
Culture building
6
How limiting product selection actually drives higher sales and profits
Paying employees double market rates cuts turnover and builds competitive moats
Founding three companies but selling early cost Sol Price billions in compounding wealth
Bill Walsh's philosophy on building organizational culture through excellence
Founders
January 12, 2020
Culture building
10
Resilience & grit
6
Management
5
Build culture by setting a high standard of performance before chasing results.
Innovation comes from necessity and studying how others solve problems differently.
Mastery requires relentless daily execution of fundamentals, not destination thinking.
Founder interviews
Podcast
Les Schwab: Building a Tire Empire on Profit Sharing
Founders
January 5, 2020
Founder interviews
9
Culture building
7
Bootstrapping
6
Built $1.8B tire company by treating employees as 50% profit partners.
No formal education; mastered business through obsessive study and customer focus.
Out-maneuvered bigger competitors by fixing dealer incentives, not cutting wages.
How Ingvar Kamprad Built IKEA From Nothing
Founders
December 30, 2019
Origin stories
10
Business models
6
Obstacle-driven innovation: every constraint forced IKEA to reinvent and outcompete.
Obsessive cost-cutting and supplier partnerships replaced industry middlemen for decades.
Problems are opportunities—a mail-order collapse led to the store model that built the empire.
Cash flow management
Podcast
Hetty Green: The Richest Woman in America
Founders
December 22, 2019
Cash flow management
9
Origin stories
7
Identity & self-belief
5
Built a $2B fortune by keeping cash reserves and buying when panic forced others to sell
Profited from every financial crisis for 60 years by studying history and patterns
Grew wealth through unglamorous discipline: extreme frugality, obsessive research, contrary investing
Building Japan's Future: Akio Morita and Sony
Founders
December 15, 2019
Origin stories
10
Long-term planning
6
Management
5
Post-war confidence: Morita rebuilt Sony's reputation by trusting his judgment over consensus and internal objection.
The Walkman bet: Staked his career on a product everyone opposed, sold 400 million units.
Long-term resourcefulness over quarterly profits shaped every business decision and company culture.
Long-term planning
Podcast
The timeless wisdom of Warren Buffett on business and investing
Founders
December 8, 2019
Long-term planning
9
Unit economics
7
Identity & self-belief
5
Concentrate capital in one exceptional business with durable advantage, not diversified portfolios.
Stop digging when in a bad deal; sunk costs don't justify throwing more money away.
Independent thinking beats crowds: build what you believe in, not what research groups suggest.
Founder interviews
Podcast
Warren Buffett: How an Obsessive Investor Built Berkshire Hathaway
Founders
December 1, 2019
Founder interviews
10
Unit economics
6
Identity & self-belief
5
Obsessive focus on business created $300B+ wealth but destroyed his marriage and family relationships.
His 'inner scorecard' philosophy and deep business thinking gave him unmatched confidence in judgment.
Berkshire's interlocked businesses, access to float, and capital allocation mastery proved the model's supremacy.
Henry Singleton: the capital allocator who taught Warren Buffett
Founders
October 20, 2019
Case studies
10
Exit strategy
8
Business models
7
Singleton bought back 90% of Teledyne's shares — at eight times earnings
Decentralisation into 129 profit centres eliminated tail risk entirely
If everyone is doing it, there is probably something wrong with it
Founder interviews
Podcast
Ed Thorp: mathematician, gambler, and hedge fund pioneer
Founders
October 13, 2019
Founder interviews
10
Unit economics
8
Competitive analysis
7
Having an edge means nothing if poor bet sizing wipes you out first
Thorp beat casinos, invented card counting, then beat Wall Street too
Enough money to live well beats maximising wealth at the cost of life
Ed Thorp and Claude Shannon: beating markets through unusual skill
Founders
October 7, 2019
Case studies
10
Fundraising & VC
8
Niche selection
6
Shannon outperformed 1,025 of 1,026 mutual funds with a single Apple II
Never accept any risk of ruin — Kelly Criterion over LTCM-style leverage
Casino math and cryptography directly shaped how both men beat Wall Street
Founder interviews
Podcast
Jim Clayton: from dirt-farm sharecropper to selling his company to Warren Buffett
Founders
September 29, 2019
Founder interviews
10
Resilience & grit
8
Bootstrapping
7
Born into genuine poverty; sharecropping had no known path to wealth
Bankruptcy taught him to close every knowledge gap — so he went to law school
A self-published memoir gifted to Buffett triggered a $1.7 billion cash acquisition