This week, I caught up with a friend who’s an investor at a VC fund. We talked about what’s new and what we think about the state of entrepreneurship. But then the conversation turned to what we’ve learned lately. We shared not only what books we’ve read but also why they added value and what we learned.

The conversation struck a chord with me because sharing what we’ve learned through reading added depth to it. I felt like I walked away smarter and excited to read some of the books he mentioned. Hopefully, he felt the same.

I haven’t had many conversations like this, and I want to have more of them. Talking is different when two people who are avid about learning from reading share with each other. It’s hard to explain, but it’s different. I want to explore this to see if I can have more of these conversations and to gauge whether others are interested in having more of them. Maybe this could be the basis for a niche community?

In 2024, I challenged myself to accelerate my learning by reading a book (usually a biography) a week. To date, I’ve done it for 68 consecutive weeks. I wanted to share what I was reading and also keep track for myself, which was difficult (see here), so I created a Library section on this site. I added to it all the books I’ve read since my book-a-week habit began in March 2024, and I’ve committed to adding my latest read to the Library every Sunday (see the latest here).

That left the books I’d read before 2024 unshared and untracked. I set a goal to add my old reading to the Library over time. It began with a Memorial Day Challenge to add five books (see here) and continued with my challenging myself to add two books every weekend until my backlog is gone. This past weekend was my fourth weekend, and I added two more books:

• Where the Money Is: Value Investing in the Digital Age by Adam Seessel
• Investing for Growth: How to Make Money by Only Buying the Best Companies in the World by Terry Smith

That’s the latest update on my weekend goal. I hope that sharing these books will add value to others.

I’m a first-generation entrepreneur committed to learning as much about entrepreneurship as I can. The best way I’ve found to do that is to study entrepreneurs. So, every week, I share a book that I’ve read about an entrepreneur; most are biographies. I post my latest read every Sunday in the Library on this site.

Last month, I read A Short History of Financial Euphoria by John Kenneth Galbraith. It mentioned Ivar Kreuger and the scandal surrounding the loans he made to governments in exchange for national match monopolies. I was curious, so I read a biography about Kreuger, The Match King.

The biography is well-researched with a thorough bibliography and notes section. It’s somewhat dense because of the complexity of Kreuger’s empire, but the complexity is fascinating because it gave me context. It does a great job of detailing Krueger’s rise from working construction jobs to being one of the wealthiest men in the world to being one of the biggest manufacturers of matches (this was before most homes were wired for electricity), and also mastering finance and loaning money to foreign nations (with string attached).

I enjoyed learning more about how governments financed their deficits before central banks by borrowing from financiers like Kreuger, J. P. Morgan Jr. (Jack), and the Rothschild family. Learning about the massive debt of Germany and other nations after WWI, the boom of the stock market in the roaring 1920s, its bust in the 1930s, and the impact of all this was eye opening.

Kreuger’s story was pretty wild and full of cautionary tales. Anyone interested in Kreuger or the 1920s and 1930s might enjoy The Match King.

Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs and sharing what I learned from them

Mission: Create a library of wisdom from notable entrepreneurs that current entrepreneurs can leverage to increase their chances of success

Cumulative metrics (since 4/1/24):

• Total books read: 68
• Total blog posts published: 441

This week’s metrics:

• Books read: 1
• Blog posts published: 7

What I completed this week (link to last week’s commitments):

• Read The Match King, a biography of entrepreneur and banker to governments Ivar Kreuger, whose international empire crumbled and was considered by many a fraud  
• Added two more books that I read in 2023, these from Phil Fisher and Edward Chancellor, to the library on this site—see more here

What I’ll do next week:

• Read a biography, autobiography, or framework book
• Add two more books that I read in 2023 to the library on this site—see more here

Asks:

• If you know any senior full-stack developers interested in working on the software for my current project, please introduce us!

Week two hundred seventy-three was another week of learning. Looking forward to next week!

Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs and sharing what I learned from them

Mission: Create a library of wisdom from notable entrepreneurs that current entrepreneurs can leverage to increase their chances of success

What I struggled with:

• No material struggles last week

What I learned:

• No material learnings this week

That’s what I learned and struggled with last week.

A few days ago, I posted about the Los Angeles Lakers being sold for $10 billion (see here). The team was bought in 1965 for $5.175 million by Jack Kent Cooke (see here). What a crazy increase in value: $5.175 million to $10 billion over 60 years. Looking at the average rate of growth in team value per year, or compound annual growth rate (CAGR), it’s roughly 13.5%—over 60 years.

I wanted to see how this compares to the returns of great investors. The easiest comparative is Warren Buffett, since he began investing professionally in the 1950s and just retired. According to CNBC, Buffett took over Berkshire in 1965, and from then through the end of 2024, Berkshire shares rose 5,502,284%. CNBC says that equates that to a CAGR of 19.9%. See the details here.

So, owning the Lakers turned $5.175 million into $10 billion, and that was amazing, but investing with Buffett in Berkshire would have far outpaced that, assuming you invested $5.175 million and held the entire time.

Using a reverse CAGR calculator (see here), if you invested $5.175 million in 1965 and got Buffett’s 19.9% CAGR, you’d have $277.3 billion by the end of 2024.

Ten billion dollars and $277.3 billion. That’s the difference between compounding at 13.5% and compounding at 19.9% over 60 years. That 6.4 percentage-point difference is a $267.3 billion difference!

I recently listened to an interview clip with Sam Altman, co-founder of OpenAI and ChatGPT, in which he talks about his ideas on thinking more clearly. Given the success he’s had as a start-up founder, president and partner at Y Combinator, VC investor, and CEO of OpenAI, I was curious to hear his opinions. Here are a few takeaways:

• Altman, a big fan of spiral notebooks, takes tons of notes. He’s particular about the type of notebook he uses. The notebook is a way for him to capture things, and ripping pages out allows him to easily compare and think about what he’s captured. He creates piles of crumpled notebook pages as part of his process and goes through a notebook every two to three weeks.
• Writing is important to Altman because it’s a tool that helps him think more clearly. It’s important for people to learn to write so they can learn to think more clearly.
• Altman is better at generating ideas when he’s sitting alone and writing than when he’s conversing with others.
• Anytime he gets 11 minutes or more free, often in the back of a car, he writes and thinks.
• Figuring out the balance between being with people, getting ideas, and having time alone to think and write is important. His thoughts on this reminded me of the framework I read about in A Technique for Producing Ideas.
• His weekends, with long, quiet blocks of time to think and write, are important to him.

Altman’s process is surprisingly simple and low tech: a good pen (he recommends his favorites), a spiral notebook, and time to think and write.

Given OpenAI’s dominance in the AI market, it stood out to me that he believes writing is still critical as a thinking tool and he writes regularly using pen and paper, not ChatGPT.

The interview clip with Altman is short. If you’re interested in listening to or watching it, go here.

This week, it was announced that the Buss family is selling a majority ownership in the Los Angeles Lakers at a $10 billion valuation. That’s a huge sum for a sports franchise and reportedly the richest deal for a sports team in history (see here).

When I read the headline, I immediately thought about Jack Kent Cooke and Adrian Havill’s biography of him, The Last Mogul. Cooke built a fortune in newspapers and radio in Canada working alongside Roy Thomson (think Thomson Reuters), whose family is now the wealthiest family in Canada. Cooke then moved to L.A. and purchased the Lakers in 1965. He paid what was then a record price of $5.17 million. In 1966, he spent $17 million building the famous Forum in L.A. so the Lakers and the Kings, the NHL hockey team he also owned, could play in the same arena.

Jack signed Wilt Chamberlain to the Lakers. He traded for Kareem Abdul Jabbar. And he drafted Earvin “Magic” Johnson in 1979. The Lakers won a championship under Jack and were on their way to dominating the 1980s.

But Jack ended up getting divorced and, as a result, selling the Forum, the Kings, the Lakers, and his ranch to Jerry Buss in June 1979 for $67 million. Forty-six years later, the Buss family is selling the Lakers for $10 billion.

It’s wild to think about how the valuation of the Lakers has skyrocketed. In 60 years, the team has gone from being worth a little over $5 million to being worth $10 billion. That’s a roughly 13.5% compound annual growth rate—a striking example of the power of compounding (another example here).

If you’re interested in reading more about Jack, Havill’s biography is great. I also posted a series of posts about what I learned from the book. The Lakers deals are specifically covered here and here.

In 2024, I challenged myself to accelerate my learning by reading a book (usually a biography) a week. To date, I’ve done it for 67 consecutive weeks. I wanted to share what I was reading and also keep track for myself, which was difficult (see here), so I created a Library section on this site. I added to it all the books I’ve read since my book-a-week habit began, and I’ve committed to adding my latest read to the Library every Sunday (see the latest here).

That left the books I’d read before 2024 unshared and untracked. I set a goal to add my old reading to the Library over time. It began with a Memorial Day Challenge to add five books (see here) and continued with my challenging myself to add two books every weekend until my backlog is gone. This past weekend was my third weekend, and I added two more books:

• Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits and Other Writings by Philip A. Fisher
• Capital Returns by Edward Chancellor

That’s the latest update on my weekend goal. I hope that sharing these books will add value to others.

I’m a first-generation entrepreneur committed to learning as much about entrepreneurship as I can. The best way I’ve found to do this is to study other entrepreneurs. So, every week, I read a book about an entrepreneur, usually a biography. Then, every Sunday, I post my latest read in my Library on this site.

A few months ago, I read a biography about Albert Lasker, the entrepreneur who pioneered advertising techniques that helped usher in the era of American consumerism. I learned he teamed up with Adolph Ochs to help free a man charged with murder in Atlanta in 1913. They felt he was being wrongly accused because he was Jewish. Researching Ochs, I learned he acquired a failing New York Times (NYT) and turned the newspaper into an internationally respected paper.

I read a biography about Ochs, An Honorable Titan, in March, and I recently read a second biography about him, Printer's Devil to Publisher. The second one was written by Doris Faber, who worked at the NYT, albeit after Ochs had passed. It contains more of the details I craved—specifically, the early years of his life as an information entrepreneur selling directories of all the businesses in Chattanooga and the specifics of how he acquired his first newspaper, the Chattanooga Times, when he was broke and 20 years old. This book also details how speculating on land during a financial bubble ruined Ochs financially and led him to take the biggest gamble of his life: moving to New York City and buying majority ownership of the failing NYT with no money down.

This book isn't too long, but well researched. It gives readers a glimpse of the newspaper world of the early 1900s and explains how a high school dropout acquired one of the most prestigious media properties of that era and influenced the world.

If you’re interested in learning more about Ochs or the early days of the NYT, consider reading Printer’s Devil to Publisher.