#110 Henry Singleton (Teledyne)

**David Senra** (0:00)
I want to tell you about a one-time only limited event that I don't think you're going to want to miss. I am doing a live show with Patrick O'Shaughnessy from the Invest Like the Best podcast in New York City on October 19th. Patrick has interviewed over 300 of the world's best investors and founders for his podcast. I've read over 300 biographies of history's greatest entrepreneurs for my podcast. We'll be talking about what we learned from seven years of podcasting, sharing our favorite ideas and stories, and doing a live Q&A. There will also be special event-only swag. If you live in New York City, I think it's a no-brainer. But if not, I think it's a great excuse to fly in. I've already heard from a bunch of people that bought tickets, they're flying in from other cities. Some people are flying in from other countries. That's setting the bar really high, so I will have at least four shots of espresso or four energy drinks before or during the show so we can make it a night that you'll never forget. If you're interested in attending this unique live event, I will leave a link down below. I highly recommend you get your tickets today. I hope I get to see you in New York on October 19th. In 1960, Henry Singleton formed a company named Teledyne to capitalize on the coming revolution in which digital technology would replace analog devices and systems in everything we could touch and imagine. They would apply semiconductors and digital technology to many fields of commerce. That company grew from $10 million in sales in 1962 to $3.5 billion in 1984
Henry was much more than a salesman, mathematician, engineer, inventor, and chess champion. He was a student, an observer of the history of manufacturing, of the progress and growth of corporations from the days of Henry Ford, the growth of General Motors, the manner of successful corporations and growing by acquisition.
In the 1940s and early 50s, he had spent days in the offices of brokerage houses in New York and elsewhere watching the ticker, thinking how to more efficiently get capital rolling, how shares are valued and traded, how companies with a steady growth rate are rewarded with an ever-increasing price-to-earnings multiple.
On the way, Henry retold me of the GM story, reported by none other than Alfred Sloan in a 1964 book. GM had no financial connections in 1919 and suffered a failure. Bailed out by the Duponts, it was near disaster.
Get a strong national reputation with some financial institutional ownership, Sloan advised, and Henry did.
Henry made me preach and teach ethical behavior in every way, in every day, in every meeting that we held.
Arthur Rock, who assisted in the early financing of Teledyne, had this to say, Henry reminds me of de Gaulle. He had a singleness of purpose, a tenacity that is just overpowering. He gives you absolute confidence in his ability to accomplish whatever he says he is going to do.
Yes, he is rather aloof operating more or less by himself and dreaming up ideas in his corner office.
Let me tell you this, that corner office produced a cornucopia of ideas.
The man we memorialize today was born in Haslett, Texas in 1916 on a ranch where his father raised cotton and cattle.
The 49 years together we spent as friends and associates have not removed this great man from his love of ranching, cattle, and the great west.
As the third largest landowner in the United States, he still had an occasional brush and contact with a cow.
You know the saying, you could take the boy out of Texas, but you never take Texas out of the boy.
We have lost a genius, heaven has just gone digital, and I know it's full of apples named Macintosh.
All right, so that is actually the eulogy that the author of today's book, George Roberts, gave for his friend and longtime associate, Henry Singleton. So there's a bunch of things that were happening in that excerpt that I want to just point out. Let me go back a couple pages. First, he talks about his insane financial performance from $10 million in sales in 1962 to $3.5 billion in 1984 But also that is that Henry very much, like most of the founders that we cover, spent time doing exactly what we're doing, which is learning from entrepreneurs and founders and great people of the past. He talks about Henry Ford, talks about the people that started General Motors.
But I want to specifically hone in on what Roberts is saying there, that Henry is reading this book. I think it was written by Alfred Sloan and it was published in 1964 I have to go back and actually find which book was published in 1964 because if I could find that book, then of course I'll turn it into a future founders episode. But where he talks about Alfred has very specific advice based on what he learned through experience of building GM, and Henry took that advice and ran with it, and that was a huge, maybe cornerstone is the right word, for how he built Teledyne. And then the second, the last thing I just want to point out is the very end where it talks about heavens full of apples named Macintosh. An interesting thing to know about Henry Singleton is first he programmed one of the first computers at MIT, but not only that, he, his main tool that he used to work were early, were early apples. In fact, I'm going to talk a lot about that in the book today, but he was an early investor in Apple as well. All right, so let me jump into the book, I'm going to start in the acknowledgement section because I think this is now George talking about, you know, this is a very, this is very different than the other biographies. It's way, way, way more detailed on like the day to day and processes of the company. And it's in large part because George was a meticulous note taker and he describes this process here. He says, I have always been an invariant note taker and keeper. I still have most of the small black notebooks in which I recorded the day to day details of manager meetings, profit plan presentation and other business matters. And they have been invaluable to me in putting this document together.