Becket U curates the best resources in Math, Physics, Computers, Microeconomics, Game Theory, and Persuasion. With this knowledge, you will understand how the world works.
Undiscovered #091: Lessons from History, Getty's Advice to Young Founders, 'Ideal Grocery Store'
#091: Thing One, Thing Two, Thing ThreeHi All! We are pleased to welcome you to this week's edition of Undiscovered, a newsletter with exclusive resources and insights expanding from the material found on our main site - becketu.com. This week, we will take a look at some of the most important lessons from history, J. Paul Getty's main advice to young entrepreneurs, the limiting factor for billion dollar companies, and more. Let's dive in: Lessons from the Lessons of HistoryGiuliano Mana shared his biggest takeaways after reading The Lessons of History by Will and Ariel Durant, widely regarded as one of the best recent books covering the last 5,000 years of human history: Some profound quotes from this book a friend lent me:
- The men who can manage men manage the men who manage only things, and the men who can manage money manage all.
- We conclude that the concentration of wealth is natural and inevitable, and is periodically alleviated by violent or peaceable partial redistribution.
- There is no significant example in history, before our time, of a society successfully maintaining moral life without the aid of religion.
- If the majority of abilities is contained in a minority of men, minority government is as inevitable as the concentration of wealth: the majority can do no more than periodically throw out one minority and set up another.
- Since wealth is an order and procedure of production and exchange rather than an accumulation of goods, and is a trust in men and institutions rather than in the intrinsic value of paper money and checks, violent revolutions do not so much redistribute wealth as destroy it.
- It may be true, as Lincoln supposed, that "you can't fool all the people all the time," but you can fool enough of them to rule a large country.
- The general smiles. "You have forgotten al the lessons in history," he says, "and all that nature of man which you described."
- He that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow, and in much wisdom is much grief.
- As long as there is poverty, there will be gods.
- Probably every vice was once a virtue.
- Other factors equal, internal liberty varies inversely as external danger.
Getty's Main Advice to Young EntrepreneursSage advice to young entrepreneurs from J. Paul Getty, the once richest man in the world, shared by David Senra of the Founders Podcast: "You're too focused on speculation and trading. The best entrepreneurs don't want to trade, they want to own. They know all the real money is in the long term." Most people are too impatient and incompetent to understand that. An example he uses in the book: a young man buys an oil lease on Monday for $4,000. He sells it to Getty on Tuesday for $8,000. The young man is bragging about doubling his money in 24 hours. Getty makes sense $800,000 on that lease over the next decade. Karpathy's Three Pieces of Advice to Young FoundersAn 2020 Andrej Karpathy tweet recently resurfaced from Matthew Berman, who emphasized how this advice to young founders contains words to live by: How to become expert at thing: 1 iteratively take on concrete projects and accomplish them depth wise, learning “on demand” (ie don’t learn bottom up breadth wise) 2 teach/summarize everything you learn in your own words 3 only compare yourself to younger you, never to others The Limiting Factor for Billion Dollar CompaniesCaring about the problem you are working on is the ultimate cheat code for success in life. It sounds obvious, but many people simply do not care deeply about their work. This was something I have believed for a while, which I think started around the time I read a quote from Marva Collins' autobiography where she mentioned, "You can pay people to teach, but you can't pay people to care." Chrisman, founder and CEO math tutoring app Synthesis, recently shared another short anecdote related to this idea: Friend of mine built a billion dollar company from scratch. Told me the limiting factor is not money, it’s fanatical people. You may not need to build a billion dollar company, but you can relentlessly pursue whatever it is you deeply care about. If you find that, the billion dollars may just find you. The 'Ideal Grocery Store'With all the advice above, I thought it would be fun to take a step in a slightly different direction: food. Here we have Andrej Karpathy again briefly mentioning the best food that would be sold in the 'ideal grocery store'.
The zones include: bulk pantry, produce, eggs, dairy, meat & seafood, bakery, ferments & pickles, fats & oils, seasonings, and beverages. For each of these zones, he outlines 'what's on the shelf' for your pantry, as well as permitted processing steps. This is a great starting point if you are looking for your next grocery shopping list or don't know where to start. P.S Can you please respond to this email and bring it into your 'primary' inbox? You can say 'Hi!', tell us the last book you read recently, or what your favorite resource was from above. We appreciate any feedback you are able to provide here. What do you want more or less of? Other suggestions? Feel free to reach out to us on Instagram and give us a follow there, tag your friends on our posts, and please forward this newsletter along to anyone else who would enjoy it. Disclaimer: Becket U is an Amazon Associate and purchases through Amazon links may earn a small affiliate commission, but the price is the same for you. We only recommend books we love and think you would love, too. Always wishing you the best, J.B. |
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Becket U curates the best resources in Math, Physics, Computers, Microeconomics, Game Theory, and Persuasion. With this knowledge, you will understand how the world works.
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