Brad Jacobs keeps buying companies in boring industries like garbage and equipment rentals, then turning them into billion-dollar machines. Elon Musk put his last cash into SpaceX after a third failed launch while Tesla burned cash fast enough to kill both companies. Sergey Brin and Larry Page tried to sell Google to Excite, got rejected, then built a trillion-dollar empire anyway. John Malone transformed rural TV antenna service into the backbone of the internet. These stories run through my April reading list because they all begin with people seeing value where others saw nothing.
Zoom out and the lessons repeat: think bigger, move faster, ignore conventional wisdom, and endure discomfort longer than everyone else. For more stories like these, check out my reading lists.
How to Make a Few Billion Dollars
Brad Jacobs distills the mindset behind building multiple billion-dollar companies into lessons on scale, speed, and execution.
He covers using fear to your advantage, building elite teams, running “electric” meetings, and outmaneuvering competitors.
You can picture Jacobs walking into an overlooked industry, spotting inefficiencies everyone else accepts as normal, then moving faster before competitors realize what happened.
What stuck with me:
- Keep your head clear when everyone else is emotional
- Every problem is a chance to remove friction
- Accept reality quickly
- Update your beliefs when the facts change
- Obsess over what matters most
- Stay humble
- Hire people smarter than you
- Listen closely
- Never hide bad news
📚 How to Make a Few Billion Dollars
Elon Musk
For two years, Walter Isaacson followed Elon Musk through meetings, factory floors, and private moments with family and colleagues.
The result is a rare look at Musk as both builder and chaos agent.
At one point, Musk is sleeping on factory floors while Tesla burns cash and SpaceX fights for survival. Most people would have folded long before that moment.
What stayed with me:
- Take risks others won’t
- Build things that genuinely matter to you
- Simplify relentlessly
- Question every assumption
- Speed is a competitive advantage
- Great products create their own momentum
- Go straight to the source
- Use discomfort to stay sharp
In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives
In the Plex explains how Google turned engineering talent and relentless experimentation into one of the world’s most powerful companies.
The book also shows Google’s failures, internal fights, and what happens when a company stops obsessing over users.
Early on, Brin and Page care less about building a company than building a better search engine. The business model comes later.
The lasting lessons:
- Focus on long-term value over short-term gains
- Build products so good they market themselves
- Hire exceptional people who want to build something ambitious
- Move fast and make yesterday obsolete
- Obsess over the user
- Don’t chase competitors
- Launch early and iterate often
- The real failure is never attempting something bold
For more on Google and its founders, read:
📚 In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives
Born to Be Wired: Lessons from a Lifetime Transforming Television, Wiring America for the Internet, and Growing Formula One, Discovery, Sirius XM, and the Atlanta Braves
In Born to Be Wired, cable cowboy John Malone walks through the deals that reshaped media, entertainment, and the internet.
It’s the story of how a copper wire went from delivering television to rural America to powering the internet itself.
Malone recounts launching cable networks, structuring industry-defining deals, and finding value in complexity where others saw chaos.
At one point, Malone controlled a web of companies so complex even insiders struggled to map it, yet it created billions in value.
What stayed with me:
- Adapt to new technology or become obsolete
- Character matters more than reputation
- There’s no pause button with your kids
- Trust is hard to earn and easy to lose
- Do what you say you’ll do
- Strip things down to essentials
- Always ask “what if” before major decisions
- Play to win without sacrificing principles
- It’s better to own a piece of something great than all of something mediocre
- Assess downside risk and live to fight another day
- Long-term growth beats short-term gains
April Reading List
Brad Jacobs built billion-dollar companies by spotting value in places most people ignored. Elon Musk reshaped the automotive and space industries by risking everything repeatedly. Sergey Brin and Larry Page reshaped the internet by building for users instead of competitors. John Malone helped build the backbone of the internet by seeing value years before everyone else did.
