Lessons from Joe Mansueto, Founder and CEO of Morningstar

Tonight, I had the pleasure of meeting Joe Mansueto, the Founder, Chairman and CEO of Morningstar, Inc. at the closing ceremony of the Chicago Careers in Business Program. The evening started with a cocktail reception, and followed with a delightful dinner. His talk was preceded by Keith Dipple, Director of the Business Program; John Boyer, Dean of the College of the University of Chicago, and Sunil Kumar, Dean of Booth School of Business, and two of our fellow students.

Mansueto is a graduate of the College and Graduate School of Business of the University of Chicago. An approachable and charismatic philanthropist, Mansueto laughed when I suggested that a few friends and I were starting "Eveningstar", a late night version of his company.

In this post I want to share the 5 lessons he left us with towards the end of his speech:

1- Be a contrarian. Look to where other aren't looking. Rousseau has a famous saying, "take the course to contrary to custom, and you will always do well". Mansueto sees great value in a person who doesn't follow the crowd when it comes to interests, career choices and research. After all, that is partly how he made his money.

2- Finish what you start. Plan meticulously and don't overreach. Napoleon once said: "If you start to take Vienna... Take Vienna". I guess what Mansueto was trying to say is, at some point commit and go really deep.

3- Work with people you admire. Find a good environment, and a "good business" (a Warren word). Mansueto describes this good business with a nice metaphor, insisting on the importance of its brand. Find a castle that has a moat (ditch around a castle), and from there learn to build your personal moat. Topping it he quoted Lynch "You want to invest in a business that an old idiot could run, because odds are, someday, an old idiot will run it".


4- Be patient. Take your time. Spend it with one, go deep and enjoy it.


5- Think independently. Analyze your sources independently. 

Lessons learned by Max Levchin, founder of PayPal

Max Levchin is the Founder of PayPal. I met him in California a few weeks back...

This is my rough note transcript of what he had to say. Enjoy!

To me entrepreneurship is about running a company.

I left PayPal to go cycling, and my fiend quit Goldman Sachs to solve a hydration problem, one we both faced when cycling, with an innovative water bottle... He flies to the Tour de France and runs dressed as a bottle. Crazy marketing.

In space no one can hear you scream. This quote reminds me of startup life

It's a lot easier to build a startup if you're not the only founder. Otherwise, when you say we're fucked, no one will respond "oh no we're not". And then you will be.

The reason you cannot hire a cofounder is because the level of honesty and connection, trust needed can't be bought!

You then need a team! Don't have that much diversity! Most people will tell you I'm wrong.  

There are lots of things in a startup that create friction. The only thing you can actually do well is move very quickly. That can only be impulses by education. Many times we go for it wrong. We had four techies from Urbana, and two businesseys from Stanford. We were all the same and could read our minds. Yet, we never fought!

The flipside, you will experience some problems perhaps adding the first woman on your team, or people of diverse backgrounds. But the first slope of similar people is worth it! We would yell at each other all the time, but we had a lot of respect for each other. Fight, fight but don't doubt each other!

At Slide, people would say "I really like you" and to me that meant "I don't respect you for shit". So when there's doubt, there's no doubt. It's time to runaway from the situation if there's lack of respect.

Best way to fire someone smart who screwed up is to ask them to resign. If they are unethical, improper or failed harshly, even worst a low performer, ask them to resign.

Why Silicon Valley? We have infrastructure. To find another place that is as conducive as The Valley is really hard. But just because you're not here, you posses knowledge of whatever happens on the valley that is typically lost once they come here. I was reassured of that after I saw a farming pitch.

Favorite lesson: a very common engineering fallacy is confusing the causality between difficult and valuable. Most things are valuable are pretty hard to do. It normally means you have to work hard. Yet if you are working hard, that does not mean you are creating value! 

Investors: the one thing hat is abundant anywhere is cash. It is so easy to get cash today. You will raise money. But the key thing is what will happen when you need more, who will bridge you when cash is tight, etc. that's when their true colors really come out. 

The other thing: you will hear many times how awesome they are. Yet you will probably be interacting with only one person. Try to make sure they help you with what you need. Identify their strengths.   Failure shpeel is bullshit. It sucks. No one rewards you, you're out of cash. The thing that's worth remembering is the lessons learned. Write up your failures. Type them, read them over, keep them. Keep a failure diary. Irrelevance. Your greatest worry is and should be to becoming irrelevant. That's the opposite of success. If you're thinking about go this way or go that way. Choose bigger and hope you succeed.

 Sent from an Akinin device.