Raymond Plank founded Apache Corporation with just $250,000 in 1954. 50 years later his company was worth $50 billion. This episode examines the life and entrepreneurial philosophy of Raymond Plank through his memoir A Small Difference Rather than presenting a conventional history of Apache, this episode focuses on the lessons, maxims, and beliefs Plank accumulated over seven decades in business. Written when he was nearly 90, the memoir reads like a lifelong diary of how to think about opportunity, courage, cost control, resourcefulness, and adaptation. Lots of wild stories in this one. Made possible by: Ramp: ⁠⁠⁠https://ramp.com⁠⁠⁠ Applovin: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.applovin.com⁠ Vanta: ⁠⁠⁠https://vanta.com/founders⁠ ⁠Add your email here⁠ and I will send you my top 10 quotes from every episode: https://davidsenra.substack.com

Obsession is the engine of Nolan’s career. This episode examines Christopher Nolan’s life, working methods, and philosophy through The Nolan Variations by Tom Shone. Made possible by: Ramp: ⁠⁠⁠https://ramp.com⁠⁠⁠ Applovin: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.applovin.com⁠ Vanta: ⁠⁠⁠https://vanta.com/founders⁠ ⁠Add your email here⁠ and I will send you my top 10 quotes from every episode: https://davidsenra.substack.com

This episode discusses Joseph Wechsberg’s 1966 book, The Merchant Bankers. Rather than recounting the histories of families like the Rothschilds, Barings, Hambros, Warburgs, and Lehman Brothers, I wanted to extract the principles they shared.

Merchant banking is fascinating. It's a very distinctive form of entrepreneurship. There is an old-school way of doing business that appeals to me.

The merchant bankers’ profiled in this book have a combination of:

• personal honor
• speed of action
• clear thinking
• independent judgment
• seamless webs of deserved trust
• discretion
• and willingness to make unconventional decisions.

The founder of every merchant banking dynasty was a merchant before he was merchant banker. Once they discovered financing transactions was more profitable than physically trading goods, their real products became credit, judgment, information, advice, access, and—above all—trust.

Their greatest asset was not money. Their greatest asset was their reputation.

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What I learned from reading Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel and Blake Masters (for the 3rd or 4th time)

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What I learned from reading Honda: The Man and His Machines by Sol Sanders.

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What I learned from reading Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print, and Power by James McGrath Morris.

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What I learned from reading Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple's Greatest Products by  Leander Kahney.

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What I learned from reading Steve Jobs in Exile: The Untold Story of NeXT and the Remaking of an American Visionary by Geoffrey Cain.

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Kelly Johnson’s “14 Points” read like a SpaceX operations manual — 60 years before SpaceX was founded. Kelly Johnson created Skunk Works, which he defined as: “A concentration of a few good people solving problems far in advance—and at a fraction of the cost—of other groups by applying the simplest, most straightforward methods possible to develop and produce new projects. All it is really is the application of common sense to some pretty tough problems.”

Kelly Johnson was a great engineer and system builder with genius for organizational design. His autobiography which he wrote when he was 75 years old is full of hard-earned wisdom from his 44 year career.

This episode is what I learned from reading Kelly: More Than My Share of it All by Kelly Johnson.

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What I learned from rereading Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike for the 3rd or 4th time.

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What I learned from reading Arnold: The Education of a Bodybuilder by Arnold Schwarzenegger.

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