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.
Ray Kroc's McDonald's: persistence, franchising, and real estate genius
Founders
May 27, 2017
Origin stories
10
Business models
8
Bootstrapping
6
Kroc signed the McDonald's deal at 52, broke, with diabetes
McDonald's real value: a real estate business, not a burger chain
McDonald's brothers' $2.7M buyout was worth billions in hindsight
Founder interviews
Podcast
Sam Walton's principles for building Walmart from a single store
Founders
May 14, 2017
Founder interviews
10
Bootstrapping
7
Long-term planning
7
Obsessive competitor study was Walton's single biggest edge
Treating associates well is the root of Walmart's profit model
Walton died with no regrets — passion to compete defined his life
Founder interviews
Podcast
Steve Jobs: lessons from Walter Isaacson's biography
Founders
April 30, 2017
Founder interviews
10
Hiring & recruitment
6
Business models
5
Why great products must come before profits — always.
How Jobs turned near-bankrupt Apple into the world's most valuable company.
The A-player rule: one B player tolerated, and the whole team decays.
Joseph Kennedy: How an Irish Catholic outsider built a dynasty before 40
Founders
April 19, 2017
Case studies
9
Business models
7
Bootstrapping
6
Kennedy made his fortune running three Hollywood studios simultaneously at 36.
Closed doors forced him to find lateral routes into every industry he entered.
Irrevocable trusts set up before his biggest deals locked in generational wealth.
Thomas Edison: Autonomy, obsession, and the invention of modern celebrity
Founders
March 24, 2017
Origin stories
10
Identity & self-belief
7
Deep work & focus
6
Edison's real goal was autonomy — not wealth or fame
The phonograph made him famous before the light bulb did
Rivals Bell and Edison each accidentally invented the other's breakthrough
Walt Disney: obsession, control, and building an empire from nothing
Founders
October 10, 2016
Origin stories
10
Resilience & grit
6
Betrayed at 26, Disney vowed he would never work for anyone again.
Snow White became the highest-grossing film in history — universally predicted to fail.
Disneyland was conceived during a hobby obsession with backyard model trains.
Elon Musk: building Tesla, SpaceX, and a multi-planetary future
Founders
September 19, 2016
Origin stories
10
Bootstrapping
6
Musk bet his entire $180M fortune on three industries everyone said were impossible.
A spreadsheet built on a Moscow flight home became the founding document of SpaceX.
In 2008, broke and near-bankrupt, Musk bluffed investors to save Tesla on Christmas Eve.