Founders: #431 How Henry Singleton Worked

pod.wave.co · 9,508 words · saved by 1 readers

What I learned from reading Distant Force: A Memoir of the Teledyne Corporation and The Man Who Created It by George Roberts and The Outsiders by William Thorndike. Made possible by: Ramp: ⁠⁠https://ramp.com⁠⁠ Applovin: ⁠⁠https://www.applovin.com Vanta: ⁠⁠https://vanta.com/founders Some of my favorite quotes: 0:00 — "He aggressively repurchased his stock, eventually buying over ninety percent of Teledyne's shares." 0:45 — "He was known as The Sphinx for his reluctance to speak with either analysts or journalists." 1:25 — Charlie Munger: "Singleton's financial returns were a mile higher than anyone else's, that they were utterly ridiculous." 2:00 — Buffett: "The heads of many companies are not skilled in capital allocation. Their inadequacy is not surprising. Most bosses rise to the top because they've excelled in an area such as marketing, production, engineering, administration, or sometimes institutional politics." 4:10 — Singleton: "Our conclusion was that the key was cash flow. Our attitude towards cash generation and asset management came out of our own thinking. It is not copied." 4:30 — Buffett: "Henry Singleton has the best operating and capital deployment record

[00:00] A: Henry Singleton was a remarkable man with an unusual background for a CEO. A world class mathematician who enjoyed playing chess blindfolded. He had programmed MIT's first computer while earning a doctorate in electrical engineering. During World War II, he developed technology that allowed allied ships to avoid radar detection. And in the 1950s he created a guidance system that is still in use in most military and commercial aircraft. All of that before he founded the conglomerate Teledyne in the early 1960s and became one of history's greatest CEOs. Conglomerates were the…

Founders: #431 How Henry Singleton Worked

related reading