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Founders

#108 Jim Simons (Money Printer)

Founders

David Senra

History, Entrepreneurship, Business, Technology

4.8 • 2.4K Ratings

🗓️ 26 January 2020

⏱️ 75 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

What I learned from reading The Man Who Solved The Market: How Jim Simons Launched The Quant Revolution by Gregory Zuckerman  ---- The story of the greatest moneymaker of all time [0:01] Simons prefers to move in silence [1:40] Unknown Unknowns > Known Knowns / Wise people always know exactly why something won’t work. That is why I never employ an expert in full bloom. —Henry Ford [2:42] A one word summary of the book: PERSISTENCE [4:15] Simons’ early life / Only the arrogant are self-confident enough to push their creative ideas on others. —Nolan Bushnell [4:44] Advice from his father: Do what you like in life, not what you feel you should do. [6:16] Personality: Jim had a persistent and burning desire to be wealthy [7:20] A seed has been planted + Jim’s existential crisis [9:55] Lessons from codebreaking that Jim applies to his business later [14:08] Jim Simons at 29 years of age: Fired, father of 3 young children, no idea what his future holds [20:00] Jim Simons at 33 years of age: Genius and madness are next-door neighbors [21:44] Jim Simons at 40 years of age: Jim finally makes the jump. Only misfits understand misfits [22:55] Jim’s first trading style [28:00] We all go through times like this: DON’T QUIT! [29:15] Jim Simons at 44 years of age / Jim’s partner doesn’t see the point in developing automated trading system / Giant success followed by giants failures [34:30] Back to being filled with self-doubt [37:15] Our mind loves playing tricks on us [38:00] Jim Simons studied the past to gain an information advantage [41:00] Finally, the new strategy starts working! / Even with wild success people will tell you that you are wrong [46:55] Business is like nature, it doesn’t care if you arrive at the right answer from the wrong reasoning. [52:50] Emperors want empires [57:02] Life advice from an 82 year old Jim Simons [1:02:40] ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- “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. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

Transcript

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0:00.0

All the way back in 2019 I received a message that changed the direction of this podcast forever.

0:04.6

It was from Tristan who is one of the co-founders of Reed Wise.

0:08.0

He said, hey, I love the podcast and he told me about the Reed Wise product.

0:12.4

I responded, thanks Tristan, love the idea behind Reed Wise. and he told me about the Reed-Wise product.

0:12.5

I responded, thanks Tristan, love the idea behind Reed-Wise,

0:15.2

I will definitely check it out.

0:16.3

I had no idea that I would become a super user of his product.

0:20.8

And so over the years, I've added my highlights and notes for over 300

0:23.7

books I have over 20,000 highlights and notes for the books that I read for the

0:28.3

podcast and because I can search every single thing I've ever done I use ReedWise every day. I never

0:36.1

close the browser tab. The tab on ReedWise is always open because as I'm

0:40.5

reading, as I'm thinking, as I'm researching researching I'm constantly going in

0:44.7

and re-reading all my notes and highlights.

0:47.3

And you might already know this because every other podcast I go on I talk about

0:49.5

Reedwise, I tweet about it, I post about it

0:51.6

constantly, I've been saying for years it is the best

0:53.9

app that I pay for. And because I go around shouting about how great it is from the mountaintops,

0:58.8

I get a bunch of messages. Nearly every day people have asked me, hey is there a possibility that I can actually get access to your readwise?

1:05.6

And this happened so much for so long. And I thought it was like a superpower of mine.

1:09.3

So I was like, no, no, no, no. And then I started thinking, it was like, well, why is everybody

1:12.3

want this? Like like why do they keep

1:13.7

asking for this and I thought about it's like well if you think about this is like has anybody else in the world

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