Founders

#69 Charles Goodyear: An Inventor's Obsession and the Struggle for a Rubber Monopoly

What I learned from reading <a href="https://amzn.to/2XRfYyI">The Goodyear Story: An Inventor's Obsession and The Struggle For A Rubber Monopoly</a> by Richard Korman.An obsessive quest to find the recipe for rubber (0:01)Charles Goodyear epitomized the spirit of the upstart American technologists (6:15)the early life of Goodyear's family (20:10)coming up with the idea for a domestic made only hardware store (29:00)a crushing failure + debtor's prison (35:20)accidentally finding his life's work (38:18)optimism + positive mental attitude (44:30)Patent #3633 (1:03:30)why Charles did what he did (1:11:30)—“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — GarethBe like Gareth. Buy a book: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/shop/founderspodcast">All the books featured on Founders Podcast</a>

Learn from history's greatest entrepreneurs. Every week I read a biography of an entrepreneur and find ideas you can use in your work. This quote explains why: "There are thousands of years of history in which lots and lots of very smart people worked very hard and ran all types of experiments on how to create new businesses, invent new technology, new ways to manage etc. They ran these experiments throughout their entire lives. At some point, somebody put these lessons down in a book. For very little money and a few hours of time, you can learn from someone’s accumulated experience. There is so much more to learn from the past than we often realize. You could productively spend your time reading experiences of great people who have come before and you learn every time." —Marc Andreessen