My First Million
The best business ideas come from noticing what's working and doing it better, faster, or for a different audience.
Family Heirloom Business Model
Viewing your business as a family heirloom to be passed down through generations rather than an asset to be optimized for sale.
Decision Rule
When making business decisions, ask 'How will this affect the company 50 years from now?' rather than 'How will this affect next quarter's metrics or exit valuation?'
How It Works
Long-term thinking enables sustainable competitive advantages, better customer relationships, and compound returns that short-term optimized businesses cannot achieve.
Failure Modes
Becoming too conservative and missing growth opportunities
Ignoring market changes due to attachment to legacy approaches
Failing to adapt business model to new realities
Example Decision
“Rejecting a $10B acquisition offer because you want your children to inherit and continue building the company you've spent decades creating.”
Related Knowledge
Most products in the world are mediocre and this mediocrity offends truly great entrepreneurs
Product quality obsession isn't just about customer satisfaction but about personal values and standards.
Anti-Business Billionaire Framework
A framework identifying five core traits of entrepreneurs who build massive companies by being contrarian to typical business advice: high disagreeableness, extreme self-confidence, product obsession, total control retention, and refusal to sell at any price.
Edisonian Principle of Design
A product development approach focused on rapid experimentation, immediate feedback, and constant iteration rather than master planning.
Maintain freedom to work on what you love while building a successful business
Ability to work exclusively on projects you're passionate about, declining lucrative distractions, and having money follow from doing what you love rather than chasing money directly.
Go Slow Now to Go Fast Later
Deliberately limiting initial growth to deeply learn fundamentals, enabling exponentially faster growth later when you apply accumulated knowledge.
Fuck you. This is a family heirloom.
Dyson's response to acquisition offers, treating his company as something to pass to future generations rather than sell for profit.