I interviewed Peter Diamandis, the founder of XPRIZE who's worked with (and studied) the likes of Elon Musk, Larry Page, Ray Kurzweil and Jeff Bezos.
Here are 5 mindset frameworks he believes any entrepreneur can learn from.
THREAD 🧵
0/ For Peter, mindset is an entrepreneur's most important asset:
"I posit that if you took away all of their money and all their technology, but you kept their mindset, they would regain a tremendous amount of success."
1/ FIRST-PRINCIPLES THINKING (Musk)
A mode of inquiry borrowed from physics, where you drill down to the fundamental truths of a problem and then draw conclusions.
2/ LONG-TERM THINKING (Bezos)
This is cliche at first glance but actually makes a lot of sense for Amazon. Since the organization experiments so much, it fails ALOT. Having a long-term mindset is the only way to stomach all the inevitable Ls.
3/ MOONSHOT MINDSET (Page)
Former Google CEO Larry Page dubs this framework "10x thinking" (creating products and services 10x better than existing options). Here's the rationale:
4/ EXPONENTIAL THINKING (Kurzweil)
The brain thinks in linear terms. It's important to grasp exponential growth.
never forget that episode of “Nathan For You” when he launched a fire detector product and tried to avoid import tariffs by turning it into a music device
One company that has been very good at navigating international food tariffs/regulations is Trader Joe’s. Built its dairy and wine businesses by finding workarounds.
If you are the person that did the un-aligned letters for the previous eBay logo, please contact the research app team. We are huge fans of how un-aligned the “e” is with the “y”.Bearly.AI
This article offers up reasons for popularity of simple font logos (mostly Sans Serif):
— Easier to standardize ads across mediums
— Improves readability (especially on mobile)
— The “brand” matters more than the logo velvetshark.com/why-do-brands-…
Berkshire Hathaway board member Chris Davis once asked Charlie Munger why Costco didn’t drop the membership card.
Let anyone shop and raise prices by 2% (still great value), thus making up for lost membership fees (and more).
Munger said the card is important filter:
▫️“Think about who you’re keeping out [with a membership card]. Think about the cohort that won’t give you their license and their ID and get their picture taken.
Or they aren’t organized enough to do it, or they can’t do the math to realize [the value]…that cohort will have a 100% of your shoplifters and a 100% of your thieves. Now, it’ll also have most of your small tickets.
And that cohort relative to the US population will probably be shrinking as a % of GDP relative to the people that can do the math [on Costco’s value].”▫️
I have a membership but have been guffing on the math for a few years tbh. They keep telling me to upgrade from Gold to Business but I’m too lazy (even if the 2-3% Cash Back on Business pays back after a few trips).
This is a long way of saying Costco’s membership price hike effective today — its first in 7 years — is annoying but when I decide to do the math in a few months, it’ll be worth it.
Anyway, here is something I wrote about Costco’s $9B+ clothing business my affinity for Kirkland-branded socks and Puma gym shirts. readtrung.com/p/costcos-9b-c…
Two notes:
▫️Meant “Executive” (not “Business”) membership
▫️Chris Davis was doing a pure thought experiment. Costco membership obvi high margin (on~$5B a year) and accounts for majority of Costco profits. Retail margin is tiny on ~$230B of annual sales (Costco would need like another $150B+ from letting anyone shop to make up membership profits)