Jeff Bezos: The founder’s job is to build a “heavy” company
Jeff Bezos recalls how Amazon’s stock price fell from $113 to $6 when the Internet bubble burst.
“Shareholders were upset; employees were nervous; their parents were calling our employees and asking if they were ok,” Jeff remembers.
“This was an environment of great nervousness. But I looked at the numbers in the business and every month — as the stock price went from $113 to $6 — our number of customers went up, our gross profits went up, and our losses as a % of sales went down. Every single business metric we were monitoring for that entire period (new customers, repeat purchases, etc.) kept getting better.”
He offers founders the following advice:
“As entrepreneurs, you’re focused on the fundamentals of the business. The stock price is an ultimate output that you have very little control over. The great investor Benjamin Graham is famous for saying that the stock market is a voting machine in the short run but a weighing machine in the long run. As founders, entrepreneurs, and business people, our job is to build a heavy company. We want to build a company that when it is weighed, it is a very heavy company. We do not want to focus on the stock price. That would be misleading because [the stock price] can be disconnected from the fundamentals.”
Source: @Reuters (Oct 2025)
Yasiin Bey (AKA Mos Def) and Ye pulled up to PlaqueBoyMax stream and he got some some advice from Yasiin Bey as well 🔥🔥🔥
“Black artists need to study black art, study the history and don’t just study the stuff you’re into study the history of great black art the whole median.. the painters, the writers and the architects”
FALSE. The user experience of Apple devices is far more intuitive than Windows. You also get the benefit of having your PC in the same ecosystem as your iPhone.
Kevin O'Leary says Apple's genius is making people pay 5x more for a laptop they could buy for $350
"you can buy an Apple laptop, average price about $1,800, or you can buy the same functionality for $350 on a Windows laptop"
"but you still pay $1,800. Why? Brand"
"you're paying a 5x multiple in some cases for something that is exactly like a Windows machine"
"I put that out to people, they say, yeah, but it's not an Apple. So there is the genius of Jobs"
There is some truth to this. That’s why you have to use discernment and be selective with what you read. I typically read books recommended by people who I deem to be “successful” in the subject-area of said book.
Otherwise, I read fiction for enjoyment.
Clavicular drops a brutal blackpill during a conversation with a Nick Fuentes female fan. 👀
“I don't read books, they're meaningless.”
“Most writers are just jesters hiding in a room typing stuff they never lived. Real wisdom comes from observation and life experience, not books”
.@PalmerLuckey: "Patents are Chinese instruction manuals" and we need to reinvent the US patent system:
"Stop patenting everything."
"The Founding Fathers never predicted a world where you'd have a globalized economy, and the entire patent office could be downloaded every single morning, ripped off, and then used to fight a war against you."
" We need to really fundamentally revisit the patent system."
"I think we need to massively expand the national security patent process. You can obtain a classified patent. You can get a patent on something that you are not allowed to disclose to anyone, but you still maintain the exclusivity on those rights."
" We need to massively expand that program."
Via @HooverInst