Stan

[Noah @xbtnoah]

If you had watched this Jeff Bezos lecture in 2005, you might be competing with Amazon today.

Long before Amazon became the giant we know now, Bezos stood at Stanford and explained the principles behind its success. The entire 50-minute lecture is still available, and most people have never seen it.

He explains why Amazon deliberately made failure cheap, how an obvious website improvement actually hurt sales, and why he kept a feature that was costing the company money.

Then he recalls the moment Barnes & Noble, a much larger competitor, entered online retail. Bezos gathered his employees and told them they should wake up terrified. Not of Barnes & Noble. Of their customers.

He also shares a question that shaped Amazon's strategy: instead of trying to predict what will change in ten years, figure out what won't. Lower prices, more selection, and greater convenience.

The fascinating part is that Bezos wasn't looking back on a finished success story. He was explaining how he made decisions while Amazon's future was still uncertain.

Most people will scroll past this because it's 50 minutes long. Don't. Bookmark it now and watch it when you have an uninterrupted hour.

Follow me for more rare interviews and stories from the people who built the world's biggest companies.

[Stan @iamStatsNerd]

@xbtnoah the part about keeping a feature that reduced sales is the one that stuck with me. customer obsession sounds easy until it costs you money

[Stan @iamStatsNerd]

@limalemonnn Disappointed that he left his place as chairman at Berkshire

[Stan @iamStatsNerd]

@mrcsxbt I don’t think that Buffet made this mistake for one more time, he learned from Rose

[Noah @xbtnoah]

Michael Bloomberg would rather hire someone who worked three shifts at McDonald's than someone with a Harvard degree.

And his reasoning is not what you might expect.

Speaking alongside Warren Buffett and Goldman Sachs' former CEO, Bloomberg described his ideal candidate: someone whose father was never around, whose mother was in drug treatment, and who had to work three shifts at McDonald's just to support their siblings.

He wasn't looking for the most impressive résumé. He was looking for someone who had already learned what responsibility, sacrifice, and hard work actually mean.

Then he went further.

Why he avoids hiring friends and relatives. Why he tore down the walls at Bloomberg to create an open office. And why a prestigious university degree doesn't necessarily tell you who will succeed in business.

These are the principles behind the company he built from scratch into a global financial powerhouse with 20,000 employees.

Nearly 9 minutes of Bloomberg explaining how he thinks about people, hiring, and building a business.

Bookmark this so you don't forget to watch the whole thing later.

[Stan @iamStatsNerd]

@xbtnoah A Harvard degree tells you someone got in working three shifts to keep your family afloat tells you what they do when theres no one left to rely on

[Stan @iamStatsNerd]

@xbtnoah Post more of him, love this dude

[Noah @xbtnoah]

Charlie Munger said this on camera, weeks before he died:

"I don't regard Elon Musk as truly rich, because I don't think it's sure that everything he's working on can work."

Then he went further.

"I would not invest in Elon Musk myself."

Munger's reasoning wasn't about Tesla's product or Musk's talent. It was about pattern.

"He's used leverage so much that he's doubled down right to the edge of extinction maybe two or three times."

Asked how many times Musk had walked that edge without falling in, Munger's answer:

"he's done it three times. Maybe he's got six more."

This is coming from a man who spent six decades building Berkshire on the opposite principle.

Munger and Buffett deliberately took smaller stakes than they could have afforded, using less leverage than was available, specifically so a bad stretch would never wipe out the people who trusted them.

Munger used the phrase "two hard pile" for things he'd rather not spend time thinking about, things he can't fix himself. He used it earlier in the same conversation for the risk of nuclear war. Elon Musk went in the same pile.

"I never met with him," he said. "As far as I'm concerned, he doesn't exist."

[Stan @iamStatsNerd]

@xbtnoah Well, that explains a lot about the present day.

[Noah @xbtnoah]

Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger explained an oil market problem in 2023. The 2026 crisis is showing why it matters.

At Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meeting, Buffett was explaining something easy to miss about American shale oil.

A new well can produce a huge amount at first. But its output falls quickly. Producers have to keep drilling just to replace the barrels that existing wells stop producing.

Then Buffett turned to Munger.

“It really dies fast, those shale wells. If you like quick death in your oil wells, we have them for you.”

Munger went on to describe how much technology it took to produce that oil at all. Companies had spent decades learning to drill deep underground and then miles sideways through rock.

They were not predicting a war or calling the price of oil. They were explaining why producing more oil is harder than watching its price go up.

That distinction matters in 2026.

Disruptions in the Middle East have restricted oil exports. Producers elsewhere have increased output, and alternative routes have helped move some barrels. But those responses have not fully replaced the missing supply. Inventories have been drawn down, while higher prices and shortages have also reduced consumption.

A higher price can make another shale well worth drilling. It cannot complete that well today, reverse the decline of existing wells, or instantly reopen a disrupted export route.

The market has three ways to absorb a shortage: find more supply, use stored oil, or consume less. When the first two cannot respond fast enough, more of the adjustment falls on the third.

Buffett and Munger were talking about the physical limits of oil production in 2023. Today’s crisis is a reminder that a price signal is not the same thing as an available barrel.

[Stan @iamStatsNerd]

@xbtnoah the real skill is knowing when you've lost the room and how to bring people back

[Noah @xbtnoah]

A dead MIT professor accidentally destroyed the $20 billion executive coaching industry with one hour of lecture, and ten million people have already watched him do it.

He filmed it once in January 2018 and died eighteen months later.

Executive coaches charge fifteen thousand dollars a session to teach a third of what he covered in that one hour for free.

His name was Patrick Winston. He ran the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory from 1972 to 1997 and wrote the AI textbook every computer science major in the world read for thirty years.

Every January for four decades, he gave a lecture called "How to Speak."

His entire framework fits on a napkin.

Do not read. Be in the image. Keep images simple. Eliminate clutter. Start with an empathetic connection. End with a punch line the audience can repeat over dinner. Never open with a joke. Never end with "thank you."

That last rule alone has probably cost the executive coaching industry a hundred million dollars.

"Your success in life will be determined largely by your ability to speak, your ability to write, and the quality of your ideas. In that order."

That is the actual opening line of the lecture. Winston believed it strongly enough to spend fifty years teaching computer scientists how to talk.

Founders spend $80,000 on an MBA and then hire a communications coach to teach them the same material Winston filmed once for free. Engineers write brilliant code and lose promotions to teammates who watched this lecture on the train.

The lecture is free on MIT OpenCourseWare. The textbook is free on his page.

Winston died in 2019. Almost none of the ten million viewers have actually implemented the four rules on the napkin.

The napkin is free. The willingness to actually use it in your next meeting is the entire edge.

[Stan @iamStatsNerd]

@TheGlobal_Index Two of the world’s most powerful are the Sinaloa Cartel and CJNG. Both operate far beyond Mexico’s borders.

[Stan @iamStatsNerd]

@stats_feed He was learning one language per Grand Slam… until 2016. Then he got a little too busy winning more.🤣

[Stan @iamStatsNerd]

@Suspense1023851 @stats_feed Vikings are born when they are 5 years old.