Business Masterclass

Investing Wisdom
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The best business teachers never taught a class. They wrote letters to shareholders, sat for interviews, spoke to students, and testified before Congress, and what they left behind is a better education than most of what gets taught about business. Business Masterclass works through that record. Letters read in full, talks and interviews in the leaders' own words, from the founders and executives who built the companies that shaped the modern economy. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episodes

  1. 22h ago

    Jensen Huang - AI, Computing, Culture, Leadership

    Jensen Huang speaks at Columbia Business School about the founding of Nvidia, the bet on accelerated computing, and how artificial intelligence became the industry it did. He walks through the original business plan he says he would never fund today, since the technology, the market, and the killer application all had to be invented at once, and explains how the search for a domain wide enough to fund the research but narrow enough to stay a hundred times faster than a CPU became the company's whole strategy. He talks through what it actually takes to train a large model, argues that a billion dollar cluster is a cheap check against a general purpose data center that generates nothing, and describes the shift from mining tokens to generating them. He also explains why Nvidia has never fabricated its own chips, why the company selects itself out of commodity markets on purpose, and why hiring the best people means choosing problems that are hard enough to discourage everyone else. The conversation closes on Moore's law, the effect of export controls and sovereign AI on the business, and his advice for anyone who thinks AI is coming for their job. Recorded oct. 2023. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  2. 3d ago

    Jeff Bezos letters to Amazon Shareholders 1998

    Jeff Bezos's 1998 Amazon shareholder letter, written as the company exploded from an online bookstore into a fast-growing e-commerce platform, adding music, video, gifts, and international stores in the UK and Germany, plus the launch of Amazon Auctions. Bezos explains why he wants employees "afraid" of customers rather than competitors, shares his famous three-question hiring philosophy ("Will you admire this person?"), and doubles down on Amazon's long-term, invest-aggressively strategy over short-term profits. A great listen for anyone into Jeff Bezos, Amazon's early history, startup culture, and long-term business thinking. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  3. 4d ago

    Steve Jobs (1983): Personal Computing, Design, Innovation, Company Culture

    Steve Jobs speaks at the 1983 International Design Conference in Aspen about personal computing as a new medium, and asks a room full of designers for help before the objects get ugly and stay that way. He argues that computers will soon occupy more of people's daily attention than their cars, that most consumer objects are no longer designed in America, and that making a computer look great costs nothing extra. He walks through the electric motor analogy behind Apple's existence, explains why every new medium starts by imitating the old one, and describes what a computer program actually captures compared to a television broadcast. He also lays out the plan to shrink Lisa from a breadbox into a book with a wireless link within five to seven years, predicts software will be sold down phone lines with free samples first, and talks about the free computer Apple was putting into every school in California. The session closes with his views on privacy, the workers displaced by automation, and why Apple keeps only three layers of management. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  4. Aug 27

    Elon Musk 2007 Interview: Space exploration, Entrepreneurship, Electric vehicles & Innovation

    In 2007 Elon Musk sat down to explain why he moved from internet companies to rockets and electric cars, and what he thinks it takes to make humanity a multiplanetary species. He talks through the Falcon 9 and Dragon program that would replace the shuttle in servicing the space station, why he considers a return to the moon the wrong target, and why the energy required for orbital flight puts SpaceX in a different technological league from suborbital rivals. He also lays out the full Tesla roadmap years before it happened, starting with an expensive roadster and stepping down to a mass market car around thirty thousand dollars, and argues the company is worth more as an example to the auto industry than as an acquisition. Along the way he describes the three areas he identified after college as most likely to shape the future, why sitting on a beach would be torture, and what it is actually like to work in a cubicle while building a rocket company. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  5. Aug 24

    Jamie Dimon - Management and Leadership Masterclass

    Jamie Dimon speaks to JPMorgan's senior leadership about killing complacency, bureaucracy, and arrogance before they kill the company. He walks through the companies that disappeared over the last thirty years, why he distrusts P&Ls and expense allocations, and the specific habits he wants managers to adopt. Along the way he covers the 10% efficiency target, the mistakes he owns including the London Whale and his resistance to the cloud, and why he fired 500 coaches and brought the bank's guards back onto the payroll. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  6. Aug 23

    Jeff Bezos: Conversation with Charlie Rose - 2001

    Jeff Bezos sits down with Charlie Rose in Aspen to discuss customer obsession, brand building, and what it takes to run e-commerce at scale. He talks through the gap between Amazon's collapsing stock price and its improving fundamentals, the fulfillment and logistics problems he wants the company to own, and the innovation he believes will make online shopping compelling over the following decade. Along the way he explains why a brand that stands for a product category is worth less than one that stands for something abstract, describes how the Toys R Us partnership divides the work, and calls the investments in pets.com and wine.com his biggest mistake. He defends the land-rush mentality that made those bets rational while admitting the company held onto it roughly two years too long. The conversation closes with his cash position, the Q4 operating profit he was aiming at, and his claim that 99% of a startup's early survival is luck. The interview is from 2001. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  7. Aug 20

    Jeff Bezos: Conversation with Charlie Rose - November 2012

    Jeff Bezos, C.E.O. of Amazon.com, explains why we're still in the Internet's infancy, the threat of cyber warfare, and how Amazon has made a business out of their cloud-computing platform. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  8. Aug 19

    Jeff Bezos letters to Amazon Shareholders 1997

    Amazon's first annual letter to shareholders is the most imitated document in modern business writing. Nearly every founder letter since has borrowed its structure, its long-term framing, or its language directly. It is worth hearing what it actually said. Nineteen ninety-seven was a year in which Amazon sold one hundred and forty-seven million dollars of books, grew revenue by more than eight hundred percent, and reported a loss. Bezos used the letter to explain why the loss was the plan. He told shareholders the company would prioritize growth over profitability, take cash flow over favorable accounting, make bold investments knowing some would not pay off, and measure itself on customer growth and repeat purchase rates rather than earnings. He closed by warning that competition was aggressive, execution risk was real, and the company still had a great deal to learn. He also promised that the letter would be attached to every future annual report. It was. Read in full Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  • 8 Episodes

About

The best business teachers never taught a class. They wrote letters to shareholders, sat for interviews, spoke to students, and testified before Congress, and what they left behind is a better education than most of what gets taught about business. Business Masterclass works through that record. Letters read in full, talks and interviews in the leaders' own words, from the founders and executives who built the companies that shaped the modern economy. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Information

  • Creator
    Investing Wisdom
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    8
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Investing Wisdom
  • Show Website
    Business Masterclass