andrew engler
@aerockrose • 2,634 subscribers
3x founder, CEO https://t.co/TDxnDsbqvl. Built 3 $100M insurtech businesses. I dream of insurance, ml, and self organizing criticality.
Videos
Steve Ballmer reveals the interview test Microsoft used to separate problem-solvers from gamblers: "I'm thinking of a number between 1 and 100. First guess, I give you $5. Then $4, $3, $2, $1. After that, you pay me." "There are far more numbers on which you lose than win."
andrew engler4,379,557 Aufrufe • vor 1 Monat
Starbucks' new CEO explains the brutal math behind the mobile-order mess: "The beverage will be ready in 3 minutes. Well, you physically can't get there in 3 minutes." One WSJ stat in the clip: in early 2024, 1 in 8 app users abandoned orders because of wait times.
andrew engler1,757,121 Aufrufe • vor 1 Monat
Costco's CEO reveals the uncomfortable math behind keeping prices low: "We always wanted to have great prices. Never do it on the back of your people. Pay good wages." "Employees 10 years or more make almost $29/hour. Our average wage is almost $25/hour." The cheapest operator is not always the one squeezing the most. Sometimes the edge is retention.
andrew engler1,661,522 Aufrufe • vor 1 Monat
Jensen Huang reveals the operating rule behind NVIDIA's speed: "I don't like going into a problem and somebody says, 'It takes 74 days to do this today, and we can do it for you in 72 days.' I'd rather strip it all back to zero and say, 'Explain to me why 74 days in the first place.' Oftentimes, you'd be surprised. It might come to six days." That is the difference between improving a process and interrogating the constraint. After building $300M+ businesses, this is the part I have seen repeatedly: elite operators do not just ask for a better version of the current system. They ask whether the system should exist in its current form at all.
andrew engler489,697 Aufrufe • vor 1 Monat
Mark Cuban reveals how he kept the sale from becoming a dot-com disaster: "Yahoo paid $5.7 billion. It was all stock. It wasn't cash." "I did this thing called hedging." Most people remember the headline. The clip is about surviving the headline. Mark Cuban
andrew engler143,439 Aufrufe • vor 18 Tagen
In 2011, Ford CEO Alan Mulally gave a 52-min masterclass on leading a turnaround when everything is broken. He walked into a company losing $17B a year. His frameworks: - The data sets you free - One Ford, not 97 distractions - Weekly truth-telling at 7 a.m. 12 lessons:
andrew engler513,054 Aufrufe • vor 2 Monaten
In 2013, Nassim Taleb gave a 53-min Stanford masterclass on why chaos makes some businesses stronger. His ideas: - The coffee cup that survives 4 million hits - Why helicopter engineers ride their own machines - The country where nobody knows the president 12 lessons on risk:
andrew engler513,983 Aufrufe • vor 2 Monaten
In 2017, Harvard professor Michael Porter gave a 72-minute masterclass on why most companies fail at strategy. His frameworks: - "There is no best company" - The IKEA test he hated every minute of - Why happy customers mean you're in trouble 12 lessons on strategy:
andrew engler435,944 Aufrufe • vor 2 Monaten
Marc Andreessen reveals the hidden math behind why the best markets look small at first "The market for Uber and Lyft must be the market for taxi cabs." "The market for GPUs must be the market for people who like to play games." His rule: when the supply side changes, the market can get 10, 100, or 1,000 times larger. The mistake is sizing tomorrow's company with today's map. Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸
andrew engler163,918 Aufrufe • vor 1 Monat
2 months ago, a16z co-founder Ben Horowitz gave a 49-minute Sequoia masterclass on what makes a great founder. Most CEOs don't fail from stupidity. They fail from avoidance. He explained: - decision debt - the VP Sales trap - running from truth to preserve feelings 12 lessons:
andrew engler207,951 Aufrufe • vor 1 Monat
In 2025, DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis gave a 60-minute Cambridge lecture on AI as a discovery engine. This is bigger than chatbots. He explained: - The "Move 37" method - A billion years of PhD time - Biology as an information system 12 lessons that will blow your mind: 🧵
andrew engler109,119 Aufrufe • vor 1 Monat
In 2018, Nassim Nicholas Taleb gave a 61-min masterclass on why systems fail when decision-makers don't share the downside. 685K views. His frameworks: - No downside, no discipline - Moral hazard with better branding - Fragility hides in incentives 12 insights: 🧵
andrew engler108,498 Aufrufe • vor 2 Monaten
Andy Jassy explains why Amazon is willing to look inefficient for years: Cramer: "You spend $200 billion and you actually believe it is going to pay off." Jassy's answer is the part most operators miss. AI is not being treated like a normal product cycle. He compares it to AWS: After 3 years, AWS was at about $56M in revenue. After 3 years, Amazon's AI run-rate is over $15B. 260x larger than AWS at the same point. That is why Amazon is willing to absorb short-term capex pain. The public market sees a giant expense line. The operator sees infrastructure being built ahead of monetization. This is one of the hardest parts of company building: Knowing when the numbers look ugly because the bet is wrong... and when they look ugly because you are early to a compounding curve. After building $300M+ businesses, this is the pattern I respect most: The best operators are not reckless. They just understand the cash cycle better than the audience judging them. They know when a cost is actually an asset in disguise.
andrew engler47,581 Aufrufe • vor 28 Tagen
Steve Jobs explains why Pixar was never just a computer graphics company: "Snow White" was released in 1937. "A few years ago, they re-released it on video and sold 28 million copies." "Probably around a quarter billion dollars of profit 60 years after its initial release." "People are going to be watching Toy Story in 60 years. Not because of the computer graphics, but because of the story."
andrew engler16,663 Aufrufe • vor 10 Tagen
Peter Thiel reveals the uncomfortable rule behind why competition is for losers "We think of capitalism and competition as synonyms. I believe they are antonyms." "In business, all happy companies are different because they figured out something unique to do. And all unhappy companies are alike because they fail to escape the essential sameness that is competition."
andrew engler43,108 Aufrufe • vor 1 Monat
In 2024, Stanford's Yann Dubois gave a 104-min masterclass on how frontier LLMs are actually built. 99% of people still don't know this. His frameworks: - Data beats model cleverness - Perplexity isn't product quality - Alignment changes behavior, not IQ 12 insights: 🧵
andrew engler66,856 Aufrufe • vor 2 Monaten
Morris Chang explains the hidden math most CEOs miss in layoffs: "If in a year you have to hire people back, you shouldn't lay off. The separation expense is usually half a year. And it takes at least half a year to train a person." The cost is not just payroll. It is trust, severance, training, and speed.
andrew engler25,143 Aufrufe • vor 24 Tagen
In 1996, Intel CEO Andy Grove gave a 65-minute MIT masterclass on strategic inflection points. Miss one and your business can enter the "valley of death." - The 10X force - Walmart as warning flare - Let chaos reign Here are 12 insights (be prepared to have your mind blown):
andrew engler36,189 Aufrufe • vor 2 Monaten
In 2013, Harvard professor Clayton Christensen gave a 59-minute masterclass at Oxford on why smart companies destroy themselves. His frameworks: - The seminary of new finance - The steel mill death spiral - The $35 plastic box that changed India 12 lessons on disruption:
andrew engler41,335 Aufrufe • vor 2 Monaten