Henry Ford’s autobiography is jam packed with brilliant ideas so far:
Give the customer the best possible deal. Every year Henry Ford reduced prices on vehicles.
Pay employees more. Henry Ford paid double the going average wage.
Focus intensely. Henry Ford only built one car: the Model T and tried to make it as simple, reliable, and inexpensive as he could.… read more “Brilliant ideas: Henry Ford’s autobiography”
The antiwork movement is extremely popular online. Supporters of this view are brigade downvoting any view they see as opposed to this: especially if it suggests that government handouts result in people not wanting to work.
I think the desire for better pay and better work conditions are well founded. Most of our Fortune 500 companies are run by hired gun CEOs, not founders, that are trying to extract maximum short term profits at the expense of employees and customers and the environment.… read more “Antiwork and the Labor Shortage”
Apparently most early corporations like the Dutch East India companies engaged in raids, pirating, and outright warfare. Warfare. Could you imagine modern corporations with military divisions? I think I’d be most afraid of Oracle as that company has no soul.
Google started started out as righteous, but after the founders left turned evil.
A study should be required to be replicated by an independent party prior to publication.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_B._Selden
This guy was one of the original patent trolls. Held back the auto industry for years until a real entrepreneur took him on.
I listened to my economic history lecture while riding my bike. I learned that most nations in the 1500-1700s believed in mercantilism, basically the theory that wealth in the world was fixed and the only way to make a nation wealthy was to export more than it imported. Adam Smith disagreed (rightly) and theorized that labor * labor efficiency was what created wealth.… read more “Lecture on Economic History”
The bottom line is that mergers and acquisitions destroy companies. Removing the founder and reducing the power of key executives destroys the soul of a startup. Almost every company I have seen be acquired by a larger company has died.
Founders, don’t sell your companies. An exit is not the goal. Your business is our baby, what monster would sell his baby?