Founders
Episode 239 #239 The Wright Brothers
Founders

Episode 239: #239 The Wright Brothers

Founders

Episode 239

#239 The Wright Brothers

David Senra is the host of Founders, where he studies history's greatest entrepreneurs. This is what he learned from rereading The Wright Brothers by David McCullough.

What I learned from rereading The Wright Brothers by David McCullough.

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[3:40] Relentlessly Resourceful by Paul Graham

[4:11] If I were running a startup, this would be the phrase I'd tape to the mirror. "Make something people want" is the destination, but "Be relentlessly resourceful" is how you get there.

[5:35] Everybody engaged in complicated work needs colleagues. Just the discipline of having to put your thoughts in order with somebody else is a very useful thing. —Charlie Munger

[6:44] No bird soars in a calm.

[10:30] Neither ever chose to be anything other than himself.

[11:36] Wilbur was a little bothered by what others might be thinking or saying.

[11:46] What the two had in common above all was a unity of purpose and unyielding determination.

[15:09] Every mind should be true to itself —should think, investigate and conclude for itself.

[17:53] My Life in Advertising (Founders #170)

[19:33] Overdrive: Bill Gates and the Race to Control Cyberspace (Founders #174)

[19:39] Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire (Founders #140)

[23:56] I wish to avail myself of all that is already known.

[30:32] Like the inspiring lectures of a great professor, the book had opened his eyes and started him thinking in ways he never had.

[34:29] In no way did any of this discourage or deter Wilbur and Orville Wright, any more than the fact that they had had no college education, no formal technical training, no experience working with anyone other than themselves, no friends in high places, no financial backers, no government subsidies, and little money of their own. Or the entirely real possibility that at some point, like Otto Lilienthal, they could be killed.

[36:07] When once this idea has invaded the brain it possesses it exclusively.

[38:23] I’ve never found anybody that didn’t want to help me if I asked them for help. I called up Bill Hewlett when I was 12 years old. He answered the phone himself. I told him I wanted to build a frequency counter. I asked if he had any spare parts I could have. He laughed. He gave me the parts. And he gave me a summer job at HP working on the assembly line putting together frequency counters. I have never found anyone who said no, or hung up the phone. I just ask. Most people never pick up the phone and call. And that is what separates the people who do things, versus the people who just dream about them. You have to act. —Steve Jobs

[41:47] You wanted to start a company. You knew that it was going to be hard. What are you complaining for?

[42:17] Jay Z: Decoded (Founders #238)

[42:56] They had their whole heart and soul in what they were doing.

[46:28] You should follow your energy.

[53:49] The Wright brothers have blinders on mentality. They don't care what other people say. They just say I'm working at this. I don't care what other people think.

[54:16] The brothers proceeded entirely on their own and in their own way.

[58:21] This is the blueprint they are using: Test. Iterate. Test. Iterate. Work long hours. Concentrate and ignore the naysayers.

[1:00:31] Wilbur was always ready to jump into an argument with both sleeves rolled up. He believed in a good scrap. He believed it brought out new ways of looking at things and helped round off corners.

[1:00:57] Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire (Founders #180)

[1:02:26] Pour gasoline on promising sparks.

[1:04:14] It is very bad policy to ask one flying machine man, about the experiments of another, because every flying machine man thinks that his method is the correct one.

[1:08:46] Stephen King On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (Founders #210)

[1:10:26] They were always thinking of the next thing to do. They didn't waste much time worrying about the past.

[1:11:05] Look around, just about any person or entity achieving at a high level has the same focus. The morning after Tiger Woods rallied to beat Phil Mickelson at the Ford Championship in 2005, he was in the gym by 6:30 to work out. No lights. No cameras. No glitz or glamour. Uncompromised. — Driven From Within (Founders #213)

[1:12:56] They would have to learn to accommodate themselves to the circumstances.

[1:20:42] The best dividends on labor invested have invariably come from seeking more knowledge rather than more power.

[1:27:37] He went his way always in his own way.

[1:31:45] A man who works for the immediate present and its immediate rewards is nothing but a fool.

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#239 The Wright Brothers

Introduction

At exactly 10:35, Orville slipped the rope restraining the flyer and headed forward. At the end of the track, the flyer lifted into the air, and Daniels, who had never operated a camera until then, snapped the shutter to take what would become one of the most historic photographs of the century. The course of the flight, in Orville's words, was extremely erratic. The flyer rose, dipped down, rose again, bounced, and dipped again like a bucking bronco. The distance flown had been 120 feet. The total time airborne was approximately 12 seconds.

"Were you scared?" Orville would be asked. "Scared," he said with a smile, "there wasn't time. It was only a flight of 12 seconds," he said, "and it was an uncertain, wavy, creeping sort of flight at best, but it was a real flight at last." Wilbur took a turn and went off like a bird for 175 feet. Orville went again, flying 200 feet. Then on the fourth test, Wilbur flew through the air and a distance of 852 feet over the ground in 59 seconds.

It had taken 4 years. They had endured violent storms, accidents, one disappointment after another, public indifference and ridicule, and clouds of demon mosquitoes. To get to and from their remote sand dune testing ground, they had made 5 round trips from Ohio, a total of 7,000 miles by train, all to fly a little more than half a mile. No matter, they had done it. Success, it most certainly was, and more. What had transpired that day in 1903 in the stiff winds and cold of the outer banks in less than 2 hours' time was one of the turning points in history. The beginning of change for the world far greater than any of those present could possibly have imagined.

Being the kind of men they were, neither ever said the stunning contrast between their success and Samuel Langley's full-scale failure just days before. Langley's project had cost nearly $70,000, the greater part of it, public money, whereas the Wright Brothers' total expenses for everything, from 1900 to 1903, including the materials and travel to and from Kitty Hawk, came to a little less than $1,000, a sum paid entirely from the modest profits of their bicycle business.

Of those who had been eyewitnesses, John T. Daniels was the most effusive about what he had felt. "I like to think about that first airplane," he said. "The way it sailed off in the air, as pretty as any bird you ever laid your eyes on. And I don't think I ever saw a prettier sight in my life, but it would have never happened," Daniels stressed, "had it not been for the 2 "workingest boys" he ever met. It wasn't luck that made them fly. It was hard work and common sense. They put their whole heart and soul, and all of their energy into an idea and they had faith."

That is an excerpt from the book that I just reread and the one I'm going to talk you about today, which is The Wright Brothers, and it was written by David McCullough. I've read this book for the first time 4 years ago, and I actually did a podcast. It's Founders #28 on it. And I wanted to reread it because I think it's the single best illustration of this idea that I learned from Paul Graham. Paul Graham is a prolific writer. He is also the founder of Y Combinator, and his website is just fantastic because he's got all these great essays. And he wrote an essay back in 2009. And I just want to read the first paragraph and the last paragraph also leaving in the show notes, in case you haven't read it. It's fantastic. And Paul has seen a ton of start-up founders through his mentorship and his investments.

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