James J. Hill was one of Charlie Munger’s favorite founders. A few notes from his biography:
1. He had unlimited energy, was stubborn, had a temper, was supremely arrogant and he did more to transform the northern frontier of the United States than any other single individual.
2. He read a a lot of biographies of Napoleon. He believed in the strength of will and the power of one dynamic individual to change the world. He loved the conquering hero. (That’s the word he used. He said that the railroad entrepreneurs “conquered” the distance between remote communities in the American west)
3. He said he accustomed himself to handle a large workload.
4. He was able to hold people’s attention. He engaged them in rapid-fire, highly animated conversation, gesturing expansively with his hands.
5. He was the embodiment of high energy.
6. He worked incredibly hard. He’d fall asleep at his desk, get up, go for a swim in the river, then go back to work.
7. He was greatly disturbed by inefficiency.
8. He loved eliminating steps.
9. He called vertical integration “rational integration.”
10. He read incessantly.
11. He permitted himself few distractions in his relentless drive to achieve wealth and status.
12. He said the railroad he built was his monument. He said that he made his mark on the surface of the earth and no one could wipe it out.
13. He said it pays to be where the money is spent.
14. He possessed a priceless advantage compared with most other nineteenth-century rail titans. Rather than coming from the outside world of finance, as most of them did, he arose from the inside world of freighting and transportation. He knew this world and all its complexities.
15. He destroyed competitors who built in ignorance of their costs. He built carefully and watched every penny.
16. He simply could not delegate authority and live with the outcome.
17. He had an easy to understand organizing principle for his company. Hills credo was: What we want is the best possible line, shortest distance, lowest grades, and least curvature that we can build.
18. He practiced a policy of plowing large percentages of profits directly back into the property. He did this because he believed that the best defense against invading railroads was a better-built system that could operate at lower rates.
19. He built with deliberate thrift and brutal efficiency. His railroad would become among the most profitable in the Northwest. He didn't need JP Morgan the way other railroad executives did. (Financial strength was kryptonite to JP Morgan)
20. He cared most about freight, never frills.
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The life of James J. Hill demonstrates the impact one willful individual can have on the course of history. Listen to episode 371 to learn more.
Fifteen years ago, the most valuable companies in the world were worth $300b to $400b . Today, several are worth $4t to $5t . The distance between planting a seed of an idea and building something truly legendary has grown by more than 10x. There is no reason to think the trajectory will slow.
Meanwhile, the average human lifespan has barely moved. We have roughly the same number of moments, chapters, and pages as our predecessors did. To build something legendary, we now have to cover more than 10x the distance in that same fixed time, and in the next 15 years, we might have to cover an additional 10x the distance.
If the game has gotten harder, the question is not how to work more hours. The question is which moments, chapters, and books are worth writing at all. Every choice to work on one thing is a choice not to work on something else. The opportunity cost of our attention has never been higher.
More than 5 million people have opened a slice savings account in the past year. All of them earn 100% of the repo rate daily, 5.25% p.a. right now
Today, we’re rolling out slice atom, our newest addition to slice savings account, because savings is much more than expenses 😸
Your savings hold much more than spending money. It's your emergency buffer, your next trip, your goals, your spare change. We are unbundling it for India, so you have full control and clarity over your money
You split your one balance into separate atoms, one for each thing you care about. The money in an atom keeps earning the same 5.25% as the rest of your account. You can take it back the moment you need it, no penalty, and it lands in your main balance within seconds, ready for UPI transactions or a transfer
An atom can fill itself, too. Set it to take in a fixed amount every day, week or month, or to round your spending up to the nearest ₹10 and quietly set the difference aside
Millions of people trust slice with their savings now. People work hard for that money. So the least we can do is keep paying close attention to what they actually need. atom meets one of those needs!
Redpoint has a presentation out that says 67% of enterprises are running open-source models in production (vs 23% in 2025).
Expect more enterprises to adopt the Dara approach. Use expensive models to explore. Bring in cheaper models/open source to optimise spends.
While it is a minority view, there is a chance that OpenAI/Anthropic may find revenue plateauing sooner than expected coz per token costs on a blended basis across models drops fast.
Airbnb stuck their entire customer journey up on their office walls.
Drawn by a Pixar animator, pinned where everyone walks past them daily.
30 frames.
15 for hosts.
15 for guests.
They call it "Snow White."
Chesky stole the idea from a Walt Disney biography in 2011.
Every new product idea has to answer:
→ "Which frame does this serve?"
If it fits a frame, that determines the owner, who prioritises it against their KPIs.
If it doesn’t fit a frame, it doesn’t serve the customer, and doesn’t get shipped.
🇺🇸🇦🇷 Peter Thiel spent Saturday playing rapid chess at a local club in Buenos Aires and finished third.
The typical entertainment of billionaire geniuses 😂
This is absolutely insane.
President Trump is currently flying to China with all of the following people to request "deals" with China's President Xi:
1. Elon Musk, Tesla and SpaceX CEO
2. Jensen Huang, Nvidia CEO
3. Tim Cook, Apple CEO
4. Larry Fink, BlackRock CEO
5. Stephen Schwarzman, Blackstone CEO
6. Kelly Ortberg, Boeing CEO
7. Brian Sikes, Cargill CEO
8. Jane Fraser, Citigroup CEO
9. Larry Culp, General Electric CEO
10. David Solomon, Goldman Sachs CEO
11. Sanjay Mehrotra, Micron CEO
12. Cristiano Amon, Qualcomm CEO
President Trump also says there are "many other" CEOs joining him on the trip who have not yet been disclosed.
Never in history has such a trip even remotely near this scale and caliber occurred.
This Trump-Xi meeting is far bigger than most realize.
My current mental model basis what I am seeing around me and at InfoEdge in all our verticals - Naukri, 99acres, Jeevansathi and Shiksha.
1) AI is fundamentally deflationary for businesses.
2) When the cost of intelligence drops toward zero, the cost of doing many things drops with it.
3) Everyone becomes more productive but no one stays differentiated for long.
4) The natural outcome? Price compression. Margin pressure, Commoditization.
5) We’ve seen this with the internet, cloud, SaaS. AI is doing it to cognition itself.
But this is only half the story.
6) AI is deflationary for existing markets
and expansionary for new ones
The big mistake
7) Using AI just to do the same things cheaper. That’s a race to the bottom.
8) The real question is, What becomes possible now that was previously impossible?
Three ways I see AI creating real advantage
1) Solving problems that were too expensive to solve or not solvable earlier
2) Serving customers who couldn’t be served before
3) Delivering experiences and quality that wasn’t possible to deliver before
In other words
Don’t just lower costs. Expand the market. Because when capabilities commoditise , value shifts to,
– Distribution and Customer Relationships
– Brand
– Trust
– Proprietary data
– Ecosystems
The winners in the AI era won’t be the most companies which are the most efficient.
They’ll be companies with the best imagination
I was skeptical, but now I’m completely convinced. Fencing will become super popular due to this one very particular improvement to the sport.
“Sword tip visualization” It’s going to debut at the summer olympics.
Every single duel will look like a bloody lightsaber fight
Map of Chongqing's metro system in 3D.
Chongqing is called the "mountain city". Building metro here is more difficult than in plain cities.
Chongqing’s metro total length ranks 7th in the world, with over 550 km.