Last year, I wrote a post (see here) in which I defined wisdom:

Wisdom is the ability to apply knowledge in a manner that aligns with the outcome you desire. Wisdom means changed behavior and improved decision-making—knowing what to do and when to do it. Wisdom is acquired from experience (yours or someone else’s).

Wisdom is the entrepreneur’s friend because it allows them to hit their goals (e.g., grow their company) faster. Acquiring wisdom from the experiences of other credible entrepreneurs is best because doing so saves a significant amount of time.

How entrepreneurs acquire wisdom from others is something I’ve given a lot of thought to—after all, I’m reading biographies to do just that. Entrepreneurs pay lots of money to be in communities with people going through similar experiences so they can learn from them (EO, YPO, Vistage, Hampton, etc.).

I’ve been thinking about the difference between first-generation and second- or multi-generation entrepreneurs and how the acquisition of wisdom impacts their respective velocities, which is more important than their speed (learn why here).

I’m going to learn more about this, but I hypothesize that second-generation entrepreneurs have a material advantage starting out because they’ve acquired significant wisdom through osmosis from being around and talking to family members who are entrepreneurs. They learn from an early age what works and doesn’t work, and why, from experiences of family. So, when they start their own companies, they have a better idea of what to do and when to do it. Does that mean a second-generation entrepreneur is more likely to be successful? I don’t know. Does it mean a first-generation entrepreneur competing against a second-generation entrepreneur needs greater learning velocity? Likely so.

I’m curious about this and excited to learn more. I’m going to talk to a few entrepreneur friends who grew up in entrepreneurial families to get a feel for whether my thesis is directionally accurate.

I’ve committed to learning as much as I can about entrepreneurship, and the best way I’ve found to do it is by studying entrepreneurs. Reading about their journeys is my preferred method. I read a book every week, usually a biography, and then share it in my Library on this site. Every Sunday, I post the latest book I read.

Last summer, I read Call Me Ted, an autobiography by Ted Turner. The book is a great recap of Turner’s entire career through 2008 or so. But when I read it, I could tell Ted was speaking from the perspective of a wiser man who had calmed down a lot. I enjoyed that perspective, but I wanted to hear from Ted in his prime, when he was full of energy and said outlandish things publicly on a daily basis.

I did some digging and found another book. Last week, I read a biography of Turner, Lead, Follow or Get Out of the Way by Christian Williams. Williams was attached to Turner’s hip throughout 1979 and 1980. He saw and heard a lot. He was even aboard Turner’s yachts for some of his famous and tragic races.

The thing I like most about this book is that it’s filled with quotations of things Ted said. He was brash and direct, to put it mildly. His words offer a unique insight about his thinking and mind during, arguably, his prime. A period when he was undertaking some of his most ambitious projects (e.g., launching CNN), fighting some of his fiercest battles with competitors and regulators, and racing yachts all over the world (and winning, too).

If you’re interested in learning about the early years of Ted’s journey, how he was thinking at the time, and the details of what he was doing, consider reading this biography.

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: 63
• Total blog posts published: 406

This week’s metrics:

• Books read: 1
• Blog posts published: 7

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

• Read Lead, Follow or Get Out of the Way, a biography about Ted Turner, the cable and media entrepreneur who created CNN, TBS, and several other cable channels, covering his early journey through 1980
• Tagged specific actions on my blog (with the help of my buddy) to start collecting data via Google Tag Manager
• Created the brand journey for this project (learn more about this framework here)

What I’ll do next week:

• Read a biography, autobiography, or framework book

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 sixty-eight 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:

• Instead of starting a newsletter from scratch for this project, I could acquire one at a reasonable price at places like Duuce, a marketplace to buy or sell newsletters.
• Gary Hoover is a serial entrepreneur and walking encyclopedia of business history. He has studied 35,000 business books and had a collection of over 70,000 books before a tragic fire. He sold BOOKSTOP to Barnes and Nobles. He took small business information publisher Hoover’s, Inc. public via IPO in 1999 and sold it to Dun & Bradstreet for $117 million. He’s the founder and executive director of American Business History, an interesting resource. I learned a lot from this interview he gave.
• The brand-journey framework exercise was very helpful. I like starting with a goal and working backward, so it was right up my alley. It made the concept of building a brand make logical sense to me and provided me with something that will make decision-making and saying no to things that don’t align easy. For a more detailed explanation of the framework, see here.
• Google Tag Manager (GTM) allows for much more granular tracking of actions and events on a website than Google Analytics. It’s more involved to set up, and I needed someone with experience in both tools to help me set up GTM. But the granularity of the data should be well worth the effort.

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

This week I caught up with a buddy who’s a software developer. He’s been working on a software idea that he hopes will become a large business. The scope of the project is sizable, so he’s had to hire a few developers to help him get it over the finish line. He shared with me that he’s learned a lot from the experience, the main thing being that he doesn’t want to work on any project that he can’t build by himself. He doesn’t want to manage other developers. He just wants the freedom to work on software ideas he’s curious about, launch them (and hopefully get revenue), and move on to the next project.

As I listened to my buddy, I thought about the indie hackers I’ve researched. The notable ones have one-person shops that have built a portfolio of several companies that collectively generate several million dollars in revenue each year (usually, one of them contributes the most revenue). From what I’ve learned, indie hackers love the process of building but also love new challenges. They don’t want to work on something indefinitely. They want to be individual contributors and work alone so they can move really fast. And most importantly, they want freedom—they want to be in the driver’s seat of their own lives.

I’m pretty sure my buddy is an indie hacker, but he might not realize it yet. I have a lot of respect for indie hackers. I think it’s amazing that they can do what they love; build cool, new stuff; turn it into companies; and generate enough revenue to give them financial freedom (in some cases, serious wealth). What I respect most about them is that everything they do is on their own terms.  

Not every software engineer wants to work at or build a large company. Some just want to continuously work on new ideas they find cool and be in control of their life. They don’t want to rule the world; they just want to live in it the way they see fit. I love it, and I think the indie hacker movement is a great part of the entrepreneurial ecosystem that will likely get much larger and well known in the years to come.

This week, I had a conversation with an early-stage founder building an AI company to help large companies manage software development. He recently completed a substantial fundraising round. He’s from Atlanta, founded his company here, and was splitting his time between San Francisco (SF) and Atlanta, but he recently moved full-time to San Francisco.

I was curious about why he moved, and he told me he had two main reasons:

• Talent – Only a few hundred people in the world know how to train large language models the way his company needs them trained, and those people are all in SF. He needs to be there to recruit talent.
• Ground zero – The biggest breakthroughs are happening daily in SF. When you’re there, you’re working alongside the people making them. Because you know what they’re working on, you can build complementary products six or eight months before other people—who aren’t even aware the breakthrough is coming. Additionally, being physically closer to large-model companies like OpenAI enables you to gain access to useful information such as product roadmaps, which allows you to stay ahead of the curve in your building and decision-making.

This founder’s perspective is unique, given his knowledge of and deep entrenchment in both cities. I found it helpful. I understand why he moved to SF, but I’m hopeful that Atlanta will attract and produce more AI talent over the next few years, making it feel like ground zero. If so, hopefully, talented AI founders won’t need to move to achieve outsize success.

Ever since I read James Webb Young’s  A Technique for Producing Ideas a few weeks ago, one of its ideas has been in the back of my mind: the importance of learning a principle before a tactic when trying to master something.

Here are a few passages from the book about this:

“In learning any art, the important things to learn are, first Principles; and second, Method.”

“Particular bits of knowledge are nothing, because they are made up, of what Dr. Robert Hutchins has called rapidly aging facts. Principle and method are everything.”

“We may know all these [advertising tactics] and still not be an advertising man, because we have no understanding of the principles and fundamental methods by which advertising works.”

“On the other hand, we may know none of these [advertising tactics] but have insight into advertising principles and method, so that employing technicians to help us we may produce advertising results.”

“Thus we sometimes see a manufacturer or merchant who is a better advertising man than his advertising agent or manager.”

I’m not sure how other people approach this, but I haven’t been intentional about learning principles first when I’m trying to master something. I’m intentional about focusing my reading and knowledge consumption on information specifically related to the topic. But I haven’t thought to prioritize starting with a book or podcast that explains principles. It happens sometimes, but it’s random.

The more I’ve thought about Young’s approach, the more sense it’s made. Principles are the foundation that isn’t likely to change, while tactics and methods evolve with the times. Understanding the principle is key to understanding why a current tactic is valid and to being able to experiment to find its replacement if it becomes ineffective.

I suspect that Young’s approach applies to learning in general, too. To understand concepts (even if you don’t plan on mastering something), it’s best to seek out and understand the principles and then seek out tactics that others have used. Doing so will result in better comprehension and retention, or so I think. I’m going to test this theory as I learn about copywriting this summer (see here).

I’ve been chatting with an early-stage founder and providing feedback about his pitch deck. He’s sharp and a go-getter, and I enjoy working with him. He’s looking to raise a seed round from a venture capital firm and wanted my thoughts, since I’ve been inside an early-stage venture capital firm.

One of the things I’ve been questioning is the problem he’s trying to solve. He wasn’t stating it succinctly—he alluded to it, mentioning other problems as well. It was up to me, the reader, to reach the correct conclusion about the main problem he’s solving. I’d talked to him, so I could do that, but what about the investors who see a few pitch decks a day and would see his pitch cold? They won’t take the time to try to figure out the problem; they’ll just say no and move on to the next pitch deck.

Businesses exist to solve a problem for their customers. Customers pay for that solution if it provides value to them. It’s that simple. The customer’s problem is the foundation of the business. Solve their problem in a way that customers value, and they’ll pay you for that value. If you can’t articulate the problem clearly, that failure cascades through all aspects of the business and makes everything harder. Raising money and closing customers is harder, and even recruiting may be more challenging.

Understanding the one main problem you’re solving and communicating it clearly is harder than it sounds. If you can’t articulate your problem in a way that people instantly understand (even if they disagree with it), consider spending some time refining it and getting feedback until you nail it. Getting this right as early as possible will give you a north star that will make decision-making, fundraising, and a host of other things easier (not easy!) down the road.

I love studying entrepreneurs. Reading about their journeys is the best way for me to do it. I’m reading a book every week, usually a biography, and then sharing it in my Library on this site. Every Sunday, I’m posting the latest book I read.

Last month I read Netflixed, a biography about—you guessed it—Netflix. The book mentioned Andre Blay and how he pioneered the VHS industry, which helped birth the home video rental industry. According to that book, Blay laid the foundation for Blockbuster and then Netflix.

This week, I read Blay’s memoir about his journey as an “entertainment entrepreneur.” Pre-Recorded History, published in 2010, describes how he became the “founder of the home video industry.”

Blay’s memoir was about more than his own journey; he delineated the backstory of the movie industry and provided a detailed timeline of each movie studio’s chain of ownership and significant events. He then described how working with Learjet founder Bill Lear (who also created the 8-track stereo system) and then at a tape-duplication company that acquired music rights from Motown Records gave him the idea for recorded movies on VHS.

Blay’s idea, combined with new VCR technology in the late 1970s, led to explosions of consumers watching movies at home and video rental stores to satisfy the demand. Between 1978 and 1985, around 20,000 video rental stores, mostly mom-and-pop outfits, sprang up across the country. In 1981, the first year data was recorded, pre-recorded home entertainment retail sales reached $500 million. By 1999, they were $16 billion, according to Blay.

If you’re interested in learning about how technology disrupted the way Hollywood distributed movies, leading to the rise of Netflix, or about how movie distribution deals are structured, consider giving this book a read.

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: 62
• Total blog posts published: 399

This week’s metrics:

• Books read: 1
• Blog posts published: 7

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

• Read Pre-Recorded History, a biography about Andre Blay, the entrepreneur who created the home movie industry and paved the way for Netflix, Blockbuster, and others
• Created an opportunity solution tree for this project using the framework I read about in Continuous Discovery Habits
• Ordered the books I need for my 2025 Summer Uncomfortable Challenge (see here)

What I’ll do next week:

• Read a biography, autobiography, or framework book
• Tag specific actions on each page of this site to start collecting data in Google Tag Manager
• Complete a brand journey framework for this project (learn 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 sixty-seven was another week of learning. Looking forward to next week!