Founders

• #396 The Obsession of Enzo Ferrari

  I've read hundreds of thousands of words about Enzo Ferrari. For this episode I distilled down his most important ideas into 1 hour. Ferrari was truly one of history's greatest obsessives. Episode sponsors: ⁠⁠⁠Ramp⁠⁠⁠ gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud ⁠⁠⁠by going to Ramp and learning how they can help your business control your costs and save time and money.⁠⁠⁠ https://ramp.com ----- Automate compliance, security, and trust with Vanta. Vanta helps you win trust, close deals, and stay secure—faster and with less effort. ⁠⁠⁠Find out how increased security leads to more customers by going to Vanta⁠⁠⁠. Tell them David from Founders sent you and you'll get $1000 off. https://www.vanta.com ----- Join my free email newsletter to⁠⁠⁠ get my top 10 highlights from every book⁠⁠⁠ https://davidsenra.com Sources: The Terrible Joys of Enzo Ferrari by Winthrop Sargeant. Published in The New Yorker January 7th 1966. The Story of Ferrari by Stuart Codling Enzo Ferrari: Power, Politics and the Making of an Automobile Empire  by Luca Dal Monte Enzo Ferrari: The Man and the Machine by Brock Yates Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari, and Their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans by A.J. Baime Selected highlights:  1. He who travels fast, carries little. 2. All masterpieces bespeaks the character of its creator 3. "When the driver steps on the gas I want him to shit his pants." 4. It is obvious that a Ferrari is the product of a sort of automotive watch-maker. 5. Ferrari has never taken a vacation in his life. 6. Racing is a profession for men who do not wish to die in bed.  7. If there was one essential quality about the man it was his ironbound tenacity, his fierce devotion to the single cause of winning automobile races with cars bearing his name. From 1930 onward, for nearly sixty years, hardly a day passed when this thought was not foremost in his mind. Win or lose, he unfailingly answered the bell. In that sense his devotion to his own self-described mission was without precedent. For that alone he towered over his peers. 8. “I was back where I had started. No money, no experience, limited education. All I had was a passion to get somewhere.” 9. Ferrari had two fundamental talents. He was an agitator of men and he was an absolute marketing genius.  10. "A Ferrari must be desired. It cannot and must not be perceived as something that is immediately available; otherwise, the dream is gone." 11. "I have never considered myself a designer or an inventor, but only one who gets things moving and keeps them running. My innate talent was for stirring up men." 12. Enzo Ferrari was the consummate manager of men— not docile, soft men, but proud, fiercely competitive, egocentric men.  13. He was a pathological competitor. A man with a diamond-hard will to win at all costs. 14. When asked how he wanted to be remembered, he replied: "As someone who dreamt of becoming Ferrari." 15. Ferrari was animated by an extraordinary passion that led him to build a product with no equal. 16. "I had the stubborn determination to capture the trust of those who work with me."  17. “I should not have married because a man dominated by a passion such as mine, can hardly divide himself in half and be a good husband. If I had listened to my wife, I would have been a clerk in a bus company.” 18. He understood that showmanship is salesmanship.  19. They were cars built by Italian artisans, every detail down to the steering wheel handcrafted using some of the same methods used to make Roman suits of armor and the royal carriages of the ancient kingdoms. 20. When asked about the root of his mania, his obsession with victory, Ferrari said, "Everything that I've  done, I did because I couldn't do anything less. One day I want to build a car that's faster than all of them, and then I want to die."

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• #395 How Geniuses and Speed Freaks Reengineered F1 into the World's Fastest-Growing Sport

  Those on the margins often come to control the center. That maxim ties together the three remarkable people profiled in this episode: Colin Chapman, known as “the mad scientist of F1”, did more to influence F1 design than any other person in history.  Bernie Ecclestone, known as “Supremo”, Bernie transformed Formula One from a disorganized, rag-tag, chaotic collection of racing teams, into the world’s premier motor racing series. He built the business of F1— and made billions for himself along the way.  Dietrich Mateschitz, founder of Red Bull, bought two Formula One teams and insisted on becoming the sport’s foremost disruptor. Determined to question every standard way of operating, Mateschitz’s unlimited ambition transformed his team of outsiders and mavericks into a dominant force, all while building one of the world’s most valuable private companies.  All three were outsiders. All three thrived on taking risks. All three insisted on doing things their way.  This episode is what I learned from reading The Formula: How Rogues, Geniuses, and Speed Freaks Reengineered F1 into the World's Fastest-Growing Sport by Joshua Robinson and and Johnathan Clegg. ------ ⁠⁠Ramp⁠⁠ gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud ⁠⁠by going to Ramp and learning how they can help your business control your costs and save time and money.⁠⁠ ----- Automate compliance, security, and trust with Vanta. Vanta helps you win trust, close deals, and stay secure—faster and with less effort. ⁠⁠Find out how increased security leads to more customers by going to Vanta⁠⁠. Tell them David from Founders sent you and you'll get $1000 off. ----- Join my free email newsletter to⁠⁠ get my top 10 highlights from every book⁠⁠ ----

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• #394 An Orphan Who Built An Empire: Leonardo Del Vecchio and The Founding of Luxottica

  Your dad dies before you’re born. Your mom can’t afford to take care of you. You grow up without a family and in an institution. You learn a trade and start working full time at the age of 14. You work all day and go to school at night. You’re precise, meticulous, restless, and work circles around everyone. You’re promoted to run the factory at 18 but the thought of working for anyone else terrifies you. For your entire life you’ll be obsessed with control. You’ll do whatever it takes to escape the harshness of poverty and the pangs of hunger. You organize your life around a simple principle: "I want to be the best at everything I do.” You start your own workshop, create the best product, and your biggest customer wants to become your partner. They underestimate you and abuse you. You destroy them. You take all of their customers. You’re not satisfied with being a subcontractor. You want everything. You make your own glasses, you buy your distributor, you list your company on the New York Stock Exchange, you complete hostile takeovers of much larger companies, you buy entire retail chains, and control everything about your product: from the raw materials to the relationship with the customer. Your competitors call you the hawk because you circle, wait, and then strike. You work 20 hours a day and fuse yourself with the factory. You get married four times, to three different women, and have six kids. You don’t look back, you don’t rest on your laurels, and you don’t go to sleep on wins. You make something great, then you do it again. Your biggest deal comes 60 years into your career. The only thing that could stop you was death.  You are Leonardo Del Vecchio.  This episode is what I learned from reading Leonardo Del Vecchio by Thomas Ebhardt and The Spectacle of Big Lens: How One Giant Company Will Dominate How the World Sees by Sam Knight. ------ ⁠Ramp⁠ gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud ⁠by going to Ramp and learning how they can help your business control your costs and save time and money.⁠ ----- Automate compliance, security, and trust with Vanta. Vanta helps you win trust, close deals, and stay secure—faster and with less effort. ⁠Find out how increased security leads to more customers by going to Vanta⁠. Tell them David from Founders sent you and you'll get $1000 off. ----- Join my free email newsletter to⁠ get my top 10 highlights from every book⁠ ----

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• #393 The Marketing Genius of the Michelin Brothers

  Your family asks you to take over a failing factory in a remote part of France. This “family business” comes with a stack of unpaid bills, a small team of workers who haven’t been paid in months, and a banker refusing to extend any more credit. You cut every unprofitable product and go all in on making rubber tires. You have no experience and don’t know a single thing about rubber manufacturing. You have a genius insight that selling tires is a waste of time and instead you should create the conditions for your product’s success. You organize the entire company around this core loop: encourage more driving → which leads to more movement → more movement leads to more wear → more wear leads to more tire sales. A simple and beautiful organizing principle emerges: a tire company will prosper if people travel more, so let’s help them do that. You make promiscuous use of the press. You write columns advertising the joys of the new activity of driving. You draw the maps, create the routes, and build thousands of road signs across France. All for free. Why? Because better signage means longer trips, more driving, and more tires sold. You publish the Michelin Guide — a free travel book with locations of hotels, restaurants, mechanics, and sites to see. You create the Michelin stars which become the global gold standard in fine dining and help people travel far for great food.  You stimulate demand through spectacle. You sponsor races, airshows, and contests with cash prizes. You make smart bets early so by the time cars appear in large numbers you already own the roads. You create the most successful company mascot of all time and create a family dynasty that lasts 100 years. You're not one person, but two. André and Édouard Michelin, two brothers and one of the greatest cofounder teams in history. This episode is what I learned from reading Michelin: A Century of Secrets by Alain Germain and The Michelin Men: Driving an Empire by Herbert Lottman. ------ Ramp gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud by going to Ramp and learning how they can help your business control your costs and save time and money. ----- Automate compliance, security, and trust with Vanta. Vanta helps you win trust, close deals, and stay secure—faster and with less effort. Find out how increased security leads to more customers by going to Vanta. Tell them David from Founders sent you and you'll get $1000 off. ----- Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book ----

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• #392 Michele Ferrero and His $40 Billion Privately Owned Chocolate Empire

  You take over the family pastry shop and transform it into one of the most valuable privately held businesses in the world. Your father dies young. Your uncle does too. Everyone is relying on you and this keeps you up at night. You insist on differentiation and refuse to make me too products. You obsess over quality. You run tens of thousands of experiments. The products you invent will sell successfully for decades. You shroud your entire operation in secrecy. You study your competitors but never tell them what you’re doing. You go to great — almost absurd — lengths to control everything about your business. You have no outside shareholders and no debt. You commute by helicopter so you can perform quality control in person. You insist on constant customer contact and invent new ways to collect information from the customers you obsess over. You build your own machines, control all of your raw materials, and invest so heavily in distribution and logistics that you own the largest private fleet of vehicles in Italy, second only to the Italian army. You love your business and don’t want to spend time doing anything else. When you propose to your wife you tell her that she is marrying a man who will always talk to her about chocolate. You believe creating wealth is a moral duty.  You are Michele Ferrero.  This episode is what I learned from reading Michele Ferrero by Salvatore Giannella. ---- Ramp gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud by going to Ramp and learning how they can help your business control your costs and save time and money. ----- Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book ---- Episode highlights: We create mythical products that create markets.  If a market is interesting, we must become the leader.  The product is put at the center of everything. All of the company's activities must revolve around it. He would repeat: If you want to go bankrupt just listen to everybody. He insisted that all shares remain in the family. He never wanted to have to justify his choices to anyone.  He insisted on continuous innovation, the refusal of repetition of the already known, the search for new paths, and the opening of new horizons by differentiating from others. One of his favorite metaphors: A good entrepreneur must be like a good skeet shooter: hitting the target by aiming not at the launch station, but further ahead—always with a long-term vision. Control everything you can – ingredients, process, technology – to safeguard quality and trade secrets. For me work is a spiritual necessity. I was accustomed to it from a young age and couldn't do without it. Focus on making well-crafted, high-quality products, and the rest will follow. I was able to do all this because of being a family business. This allowed us to grow calmly, to have long term plans, to know how to wait, and to not be caught up in the frenzy of the daily ups and downs. Mrs. Valeria (the name he gave to his customers) is the mistress of it all, the CEO, the one who can decide your success or your demise, the one you have to respect, never betray, and understand completely. He said that doing good for others is doing good for oneself. Michele Ferrero seemed to possess a genuine, childlike passion for bringing joy through his creations. He couldn’t resist spending time in the laboratory, dreaming up new delights. He was known to work through Sundays and even overnight, feverishly experimenting to perfect a flavor or texture. Our identity is based on our independence. If we had shareholders they would ask us to increase turnover. But it takes time to make a good product.  Many of the machines were invented and built in-house by Ferrero’s own engineering department. Ferrero pursued perfection with monastic devotion.

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