I'm a good way through Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.

So far it has given a lot of insight into his upbringing and general history that would be the bedrock of his philosophy. Hopefully it gets into how he identified and executed on his business strategies.

Titan is a great read. For a more throughout book of the oil industry there is also Yergin's The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power.

I can never forget reading Titan for the first time. Extremely bleak in many ways but worryingly plausible.

Have you ever read Ron Chernow bios? I've read Titan (Rockefeller):

https://www.amazon.ca/Titan-Life-John-Rockefeller-Sr/dp/1400...

and Alexander Hamilton:

https://www.amazon.ca/Alexander-Hamilton-Ron-Chernow/dp/0143...

Both incredible.

I admit I've never been terribly interested in Grant, maybe I should give him a look. Tough when there's an infinite abundance of great literature. We're truly spoiled.

I'll have to say Neuromancer by William Gibson. Changed my worldview and what I thought was possible. I'm a huge fan of Ian M Banks, Charlie Stross, Ian MacDonald, Cory Doctorow, Peter Watts and older (90's) Stephen Baxter. Baxter's Titan is a great piece of writing - makes you feel the isolation of being millions of miles from humanity

Founders at Work
Hackers and Painters

(Disclaimer - I am moonlighting on my startup idea, but have these books to be a huge source of inspiration. Also, Joel's list is highly recommended. Another book, and it may seem off-topic is Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. It helps to study the lives of those who have managed to pull off very successful businesses)

Another sci-fi novel about a manned mission to Titan is Stephen Baxter's Titan. It's somewhat depressing though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_(Baxter_novel)

Biographies of the very rich and successful who started with nothing are usually very good. I look for common themes and key points in their lives. A few of my favorites:

Carnegie by Peter Krass, http://www.amazon.com/Carnegie-Peter-Krass/dp/0471468835/ref...

"Titan, The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr." by Ron Chernow, http://www.amazon.com/Titan-Life-John-Rockefeller-Sr/dp/1400...

"iWoz", by Steve Wozniak, http://www.amazon.com/iWoz-Computer-Invented-Personal-Co-Fou...

Associated read: "Titan" by Stephen Baxter. Hard SF describing a manned mission to Titan using present-day level tech; great attention to detail, but be warned that the overall tone is rather depressing.

Myself, I'm absolutely fascinated by the confirmed hydrocarbon lakes and rivers on Titan and can't wait to see actual optical images from up close (so far we only got synthetic-aperture radar images [0]).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_(moon)#Lakes

Of course tastes differ but I didn't see much that immediately grabbed my attention (a bit of a letdown because it was the first thing I clicked on this morning). I guess ultimately that's a good thing because my backlog is still fairly long. Titan and the Nike book look interesting but I'm currently not in the mood for a "this amazing person/company" type of book.

I might pick up "City of Gold". "Make it so" could also be interesting those are the only two that immediately grabbed my interest.

Standard Oil. It's a bit long-winded, but I recently read and would recommend "Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.".

That you don't know what business Rockefeller was in would please him greatly beyond the grave. The man went to great lengths to obscure his business activities, and there was a concerted effort late in his life and by his descendants to ensure that people remembered the family for their charitable activities, and not the business activities that precipitated the largest anti-trust action in history.

I think the example of the railroad is biased by the exact same phenomenon. From 1900, In the next 10 years you would see the mass production of automobiles and the invention of the airplane. Basically it’s the story of disruption told from the perspective of the disrupted technology.

In the 1920’s standard oil subsidiaries were still an effective monopoly for petroleum in the us market. Therefore a reasonable proxy for the future profitability of the entire industry in that market assuming that their ruthless anticompetitive behavior allowed them retain their market dominance. Additionally they were profiting off the same disruption in transportation that you are citing, which as we are both acknowledging was massive.

The book Titan is awesome context for this. Wonderful read.

Unlike the technology such as railroads, natural resource commodities and vertically integrated supply chains tend to not be disrupted as easily (very unfortunate for us).

I’m not saying that it couldn’t have gone wrong, but clearly an asymmetrical risk reward at 3-5 PE. So in general you are right, but I think if you find a company that has a great business model, is a monopoly, and is disrupting a massive market, at reasonable price, you have a recipe for outlier returns.

The author recommends Titan V - without justifying its $3k price. The 1080 series is less than half that price with comparable benchmarks. Am I missing something?

A great read is Titan, which follows his rise to the "Titan" he was. He was a genius with engineering (re-designing physical oil barrels), operations, finance, scale, industrialization, almost everything.

He is credited with creating modern medicinal research (though he detested it himself), and all around, was a highly unique character in history.

Not withstanding him destroying his competition and consolidating the market, with the goal of lowering kerosene (I may have the wrong oil-type here) by 95% as a goal for "giving to the masses."

Still many, many, many despicable acts, but a multi-dimensional man of course.

http://www.amazon.com/Titan-The-Life-John-Rockefeller/dp/140...
* While providing abundant new evidence of Rockefeller's misdeeds, Chernow discards the stereotype of the cold-blooded monster to sketch an unforgettably human portrait of a quirky, eccentric original. A devout Baptist and temperance advocate, Rockefeller gave money more generously--his chosen philanthropies included the Rockefeller Foundation, the University of Chicago, and what is today Rockefeller University--than anyone before him. Titan presents a finely nuanced portrait of a fascinating, complex man, synthesizing his public and private lives and disclosing numerous family scandals, tragedies, and misfortunes that have never before come to light.

In no particular order.

Empires of Light, by Jonnes. Titan, by Chernow. The Wright Brothers, by McCullough. His Excellency, by Ellis. The Wizard of Menlo Park, by Stross. I Invented the Modern Age, by Snow. Dealers of Lightning, by Hiltzik. Margin of Safety, by Klarman. Masters of Doom, by Kushner. Andrew Carnegie, by Nasaw. Infidel, by Hirsi Ali. Buffett, by Lowenstein. Where Wizards Stay Up Late, by Hafner. Shoe Dog, by Knight. The Making of the Atomic Bomb, by Rhodes.

Rockfeller saw the benefits of consolidation. At the time, he witnessed the oil business (refineries) being terribly unprofitable. They often went bankrupt and failed. But he figured out that by reducing competition through consolidation, he would be able to gain market share and expand margins. One of the ways he did this was by cutting a deal with the railroad companies, that way his oil could be transported at costs lower than the competition.

Other interesting things he did -
Horizontal integration: buying up refineries in every state
Vertical integration: acquiring pipelines, home delivery systems, etc
Free: in some cases Rockefeller gave away things for free or below cost. In China they had never used kerosene lamps, so Rockefeller gave away the lamps for free in order to get the Chinese to start using them and eventually buy Standard Oil's kerosene
-He also would undercut competitors in the refinery biz (sometimes below cost) in order to drive them out of business and force them to sell their refineries to him.

How is any of this useful?

Some people argue that Bill Gates is an iteration of Rockefeller's monopolist approach to business. By creating standards (Windows as the go to OS for PCs) he would be able to get consumers to use MSFT's related products - Office, Internet Explorer, etc.

There is a great book called Titan by Ron Chernow where you can read an excellent account of how Rockefeller rose from being a lowly accountant to founding and operating Standard Oil.

Let's take Standard Oil. They never had a monopoly - at their peak they had a 90% market share. SO's market share slid steadily throughout the years of the anti-trust trial, and Rockefeller was unable to stem the slide. (The competition figured out how to beat him.)

See "Titan" by Ron Chernow

> pretend

I know what the popular wisdom is. But dig a little deeper and you'll find it is not correct.

> General Motors

was formed in 1908. The Sherman Antitrust Act was in 1890, so GM could not have been the reason for it.

Did you ever read about Titan Rain? http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1098961,00....

It talks a bit about how one person tracked attacks through multiple countries back to China.

Stephen Baxter's Titan (a fairly bleak novel but not totally outlandish given current world events) ends with astronauts that long ago perished on Titan being resurrected by the sentient race that eventually evolves there. In preparation for the death of our star, they are preparing a rocket to send genetic matter from our solar system to other parts of the galaxy, in some way continuing our lineage.

I believe in some genetic personality, but you can't hold that against or for someone really either. I realised after reading a few autobiographies how much chance was involved but I still read them to learn how things in history happened. I recommend Titan by Ron Chernow, it's JD Rockerfeller and the oil industry in America, amazing writer, I recommend all his autobiographies.

Ida Tarbell's father was an oilman who was ruined by Rockefeller and Standard Oil while she was a girl, which is important to keep in mind when contextualizing her work. She lived her life in part as a crusade against Standard Oil and Rockefeller. Obviously she was heavily biased, this being instilled in her early on.

For a less biased look at the history of the American oil industry by way of Rockefeller and Standard Oil, I strongly recommend Titan by Ron Chernow - author of Hamilton - which is an excellent account of Rockefeller and Standard Oil, both the good and the bad.

The Black Swan (anything by Taleb really), Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, Letters from a Stoic by Seneca, Epictetus' Discourses, Fish that ate the whale by Rich Cohen, Man's Search for Meaning, Titan, Principles by Ray Dalio (not really a book, but really worth reading, plus it's free), 4HW by Tim Ferris, The Strategy Paradox.

Also Teddy Roosevelt's biography has been very influential.

So, "cyberwar" can happen once (we fix stuff so the second time doesn't happen), and the cyberwar has to happen all at once, with no preliminary "skirmishes", and no warning "shots", otherwise, we fix stuff so it doesn't happen again.

And yes, I've read about Titan Rain, Ghost Net, Operation Aurora, Coolswallow, Giving Wings to the Tiger, The Dark Visitor, Estonia's "Web War One" and more. All of this talk of "cyberwar" strikes me as merely a modern-day regurgitation of Cold War Boogie Man Stories, like Missile Gaps, and Bomber Gaps, Bears in the Forest, and Yellow Hordes, and stoic Spetznaz supermen. The emergent behavior seems to be lining up a successor magic funding word to "terrorism", should bin Laden die.