Kodak controlled 85% of camera sales. Half of U.S. smartphone users had BlackBerry in 2008. Blockbuster had 90% market share.

Yet they failed because all 3 of them shared one common pitfall.

You think your company is winning? Here's why it may soon end up like them🧵 These companies weren't failures of innovation or competition.

Kodak INVENTED the digital camera.
BlackBerry SAW touchscreens coming.
Blockbuster was OFFERED Netflix for $50M.

They had everything they needed to survive.
But they made one catastrophic leadership mistake.

The way Ray Dalio runs world's largest hedge fund is insane:

•All meetings are recorded
•Open criticism is the norm (A 24-year-old rated him 3/10)
•Employee weakness is shown on baseball cards

Ray admits 25% of people can't handle this culture. Here's how it works🧵
An employee sent Dalio an email that read, "Ray - you deserve a D- for your performance today"

It's the type of note that could hardly pass in other organizations

Ray forwarded the email to the ENTIRE COMPANY as an example of ideal feedback and even included it in his TED talk

Tony Robbins owns 105 companies across 7 industries, generating $7 billion/year—while coaching billionaires, writing best-sellers, and speaking in seminars worldwide.

His answer to ‘How do you get so much done?’ reveals something most founders overlook.

A thread🧵 Tony Robbins has done it all:

- Hired by 4 US presidents, including Clinton
- Marc Benioff (Salesforce CEO) credits him for company's success
- Has companies from sports to biotech

And he still has time to focus on his health and family!
So what's his secret?

This photo is from the Paris Olympics. I was with my wife while:

My company hired >100 people. I serve as a chairman of a $3B company. My venture fund closed 2 deals

None required my attention. Younger me wouldn't believe it
Here's how I automated my life and how you can too🧵 Running a business that operates without you isn't a fantasy. It's a system.

Most founders can't step away for 2 days without everything falling apart. I was the same a decade ago.

The difference?
My 5-step delegation framework that transformed me from operator to owner.

Matt Mochary has been CEO coach to Naval, founders of OpenAI, Notion, Coinbase, Reddit.

His first requirement: Hire an EA
'Without one, you're trying to drive while juggling'

When asked why, his answer revealed something that separates top founders from the rest

A thread🧵 Mochary believes in what he calls "cognitive offloading" - your EA becomes your second brain.

They manage all the details and follow-ups so your mind stays clear for the hard problems only you are uniquely positioned to solve.

But what's the need?

The silent killer of 10X companies (from Apple to Google):
10 people: Founder's control
100: Management layers form
1,000: Systems collapses
10,000: Innovation dies

I bet your company is already in one of these phases.
Here's the exact system you need before it's too late🧵 When you start a company, YOU are the company. You make every decision, know every customer, approve every expense.

But this model breaks as the company scales:
• 8 employees (first manager needed)
• ~60 employees (management layer required)
• ~150 employees (Utter chaos)

The space industry is designed to kill private companies:
• $500M to start
• 89% failure rate
• 20+ bankruptcies since 2015

Yet SpaceX thrived, launching 4X NASA's total satellites in last 3 years at 1/10th the cost

Here's how SpaceX outperformed all competition by 100X🧵 Space industry: A graveyard for private companies

Most VCs need a team of 20.

My friend Fabrice has >$300M in exits as a solo investor, backing SpaceX, Stripe, and Spotify (1000+ deals).

How? Ruthless delegation of everything that's not investing.

Here's his process that outperforms billion-dollar funds🧵 1. Email and Calendar management
(Saves: 1 hour/day)

Fabrice doesn't coordinate, doesn't research his email threads for context, and doesn't schedule.

His assistant Rose, finds mutual times and schedules, mentions the context for the meeting, and makes a spreadsheet.

In 2008, Intel was about to end Nvidia:

• Announced dedicated graphics chips
• Would make Nvidia's gaming cards worthless
• Stock in free fall (-80% from its peak)

But Nvidia was saved by Stanford research labs.
A crazy story no one has heard of🧵 In 2008, Nvidia was on the verge of bankruptcy.
The company was witnessing a crisis like no other:

In >60 years, Singapore went from:
・$517 -> $85K per capita income
・70% people in slums -> Most powerful passport in the world

Success leaves clues and the founder of Singapore left some invaluable lessons that even China gave orders to copy.

Here’s the story🧵
When Singapore separated from Malaysia in 1965, they had:
- No army
- No resources
- No drinking water

Just a tiny island of 2M people living in slums.

Lee Kuan Yew (former Prime Minister) broke down during the press conference announcing their independence

Sequoia's track record is mind-numbing:
- Funded three (AAPL, GOOGL, NVDA) out of the top five $1T+ companies
- 1400 investments with 460 successful exits
- Their portfolio companies account for >25% of NASDAQ's value

Having raised $100M+ from them, here's what I've learned🧵 Sequoia has made some of the best VC bets in history:

AAPL(1978): $150K --> $6M (40x)
NVDA (1993): $1M --> $ XB (undisclosed)
GOOGL (1999): $13M --> $20B (1500x)
YOUTUBE (2006):$11M --> $500M (43x)
WHATSAPP (2011): $60M --> $3B (50x)

Elon used to spend most of his time interviewing every Zip2 engineer

At SpaceX and Tesla, he used the same 2 questions from 1995

Today he has spotted the top performers for running his six multi-billion dollar companies using the exact questions

Test yourself with this🧵 Elon has always held an exceptionally high bar for hiring top talent at his companies.

He believes the output of a business is the vector sum of the people within it.

Either we get the best people in the world or we get whipped👇

Peter Thiel is a kingmaker in the shadows

He backed Trump in 2016 and now 7 of his ex-colleagues(JD Vance, David Sacks, Elon, Vivek) are running the US government

Once you understand how Thiel spots winners before anyone else, you'll build influential networks like no other🧵 Peter Thiel today is at the center of all talent in Trump's cabinet.

He has quietly built a Peter Thiel Cinematic Universe.

The kind of power that could transform the US government and Silicon Valley.

But how did Peter Thiel orchestrate this?

There’s speed of light, and there’s speed of Elon:

- xAI doubled to 200K NVIDIA Hopper GPUs
- Deployed 3200 satellites in 3 years
- Produced ~1.8M vehicles in 2024

Once you study how he does it, you'll understand how broken traditional ways of running a company are 🧵 What Elon and his team have achieved is superhuman

Jensen said this recently when discussing how the team built supercomputer Colossus

A supercomputer would normally take:
3 years to plan --> deliver the equipment --> 1 year to get it all working

It was done in about 19 days

The coolest company you've never heard of:

- $70B conglomerate that acquires 100 companies/year.
- On the way to produce 500 millionaire employees
- Acquired 1000+ companies to date.

Founder refuses any media interviews.
Here's a deep dive on how he does it🧵 Constellation software, a company like no other:

- Debuted in 1996 with a valuation of $70M (~ increased value by 100,000%)

- Generates a free cash flow of ~$1.6B on $8.4B in revenue

- Acquired 52 companies from Apr to Nov 2024.

Here's how Mark Leonard(founder) does it 👇

Elon Musk once said:

"If I make slightly better decisions, I could affect the outcome of my companies by a billion dollars."

The marginal value of his time is >$100M/hour.

Here's how Elon makes decisions and innovates 10x better than everyone else 🧵 From payments to electric cars to commercial space travel, Elon has disrupted every field he has entered.

Today he runs 6 billion dollar companies and every company has disrupted it's respective industries

Here's his 5-step process on how he does it👇

In 1958, Toyota was bleeding money in America, losing $500 on every car they sold.

By 1975, they'd conquered the US market as the #1 import brand.

Their secret?
It was so brilliantly simple, it became the blueprint Harvard Business School still studies today🧵 Toyota had just entered the US market in 1957 and was struggling to compete with giants like Ford and Chrysler

So much so that they their estimated losses in the initial 3 years were over $1.5M

They needed to improve:
- Efficiency
- Reduce defects
- Cut down on wasted resources

Is being a billionaire the ultimate goal?
Not when you ask actual billionaires.

Buffet believes money has no utility in front of time

Gates, Bezos, Branson – all after the same thing:
More time.

They have implemented systems that help them buy it.
Here's how🧵 1. Bill Gates

Early in his career, Bill memorized the license plates of every employee to keep tabs on them 😂.

He used to micromanage everything.

The result?
Microsoft was a high-stress environment because Bill drove others as hard as he drove himself

But then he learnt 👇

Nvidia keeps crushing because Jensen runs it unlike other CEOs:

- No 1:1s
- No 1 or 5-year plans
- No status reports
- 60 direct reports

Once you see why he does it, you can't unsee it

And it explains everything wrong with the traditional way of running a company🧵 Jensen points out the more direct reports the CEO has, the fewer layers in the company.

And when you have 60 people in the room who know what moves the needle for the company, it unleashes faster speed.

Elon runs six multi billion-dollar companies simultaneously (SpaceX, Tesla, X, xAI, Neuralink, and Boring Company)

Most founders can’t run one.

Walter Isaacson (who spent a year shadowing Elon and wrote his biography) explains ‘How Elon does it’ on a podcast

Thread 🧵 Elon doesn't juggle Tesla, X, SpaceX simultaneously, but rather in cycles of extreme focus.

Here's how he does it 👇

Apple was in dire straits when Steve Jobs came back as interim CEO in 1997.

Losing money, had a confusing product line, and struggling to compete in the market.

Here's what he changed to set Apple on a path of consistent growth, even long after his departure🧵 When Steve Jobs returned, Apple had just completed a fiscal year where they lost about $1 billion on $7 billion in revenue.

With Job's comeback the company went from losing $1.04 billion to turning a $309 million profit within a year.

But it wasn't achieved going easy...