#260 One from Many: VISA and the Rise of Chaordic Organization

**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, and I hope I get to see you in New York on October 19th. It is 1993, nine years since I abruptly severed all connection with the business world for life on the land. It is still hard to believe. Turning my back on Visa in 1984 and walking away at the pinnacle of success was the hardest thing I have ever done. The reason is still difficult to explain, but it's not complicated. That inner voice that will not be denied once we learn to listen to it had whispered since the beginning. Business, power, and money are not where life is about. Founding Visa and being its chief executive officer is something you needed to do, but it's only preparatory. Each time I resisted. You're crazy. Preparatory for what and why? There was no answer. Only silence. In time, the voice became incessant and demanding. Visa's not an end. Give it up. And the business world as well. Completely. Now. In time, you will understand. It was frightening. It was maddening. I felt a damned fool to even think about it. A rational, conservative, 55 year old businessman who had never smoked a joint or dropped a drug, listening to inner voices? Absurd. Throw away a lifetime of work, success, money, power, prestige, as though it had no value in the vague hope that life had more meaning? Madness. But the voice would not be silent. This was not my lifelong friend and companion, the rational old monkey mind, the certified expert of logic talking. This was another voice entirely. And I knew it was right. I abruptly left Visa and severed all connections with the business world, offering the only possible explanation. I feel compelled to open my life to new possibilities. No one believed it. Why should they?
I could scarcely believe it myself. I hadn't a clue what those possibilities might be, but I intended to be open to them. The nine years since I left Visa and opened my life to new possibilities have been good years, filled with things I deeply love. Family, nature, books, isolation, privacies, the infinities of imagination.
More than enough to make a fine life. Life is not about control. It's not about getting. It's not about having. It's not about knowing. It's not even about being. It is a magnificent, mysterious odyssey to be experienced.
That is an excerpt from the book that I reread and the one I'm going to talk to you about today, which is One from Many, Visa and the Rise of the Chaotic Organization, and is written by Dee Hock. I originally read the book for the first time about four years ago. It was episode 42 of Founders. Dee recently passed away, and it hit me kind of hard because after I read the book for the first time, I thought the way he thought was so interesting. I went and found other books written by him. And so he has two books of maxims. They're called Autobiography of a Restless Mind, Volume One and Volume Two. And for the last several years, Volume One has been on my nightstand next to my bed. I pick it up, if not every week, a few times a month. I just pick it up, turn to a random page, and just read a few of his thoughts. And to me, that experience was like having a wise old man, like a wise old grandfather figure, pull you aside for a few minutes, and just teach you little bits of knowledge that he's learned not only from his very unique life of founding and starting Visa, but also reading thousands and thousands of books. And so when I heard he died, I was like, okay, the only like the small way in which I can honor somebody who I've spent a lot of time learning from, is I'm going to reread the three books that I have of Dee, and I'm going to do podcasts. So I was originally going to put it all on one podcast, but the Autobiography of Restless Mind, Volume 1 and 2, each one is about 200 pages, has about 1200, 1300 different maxims in each book. So that's 400 pages, maybe 2,500 maxims, something like that. So I'm going to do this episode today, just on One from Many, and then another episode I'll release very soon, as soon as I make it, on Autobiography of Restless Mind, Volume 1 and Volume 2 And so before I jump into the book, I want to give you this overview. This is, I'm pretty sure how I found out that he died. I've said over and over again that, you know, most of the founders that I pay attention to are all like throughout history, don't really try not to pay too much attention to what's going on today. I use time as a filter. It's the only way I can tell if like the ideas are good or not. But one of the most impressive to me, founders in present day is Patrick Collison of Stripe. And he was the one that tweeted out, and this is what he said, and I want to read this to you because I think it's a good overview of why Dee Hock is so important to study. And so Patrick says, Dee Hock, the creator of Visa, died this week in 93 He was a very underrated innovator and someone who inspired me and my brother, who's also Patrick's co-founder. David Stearns is the author of the definitive book about Visa, who now works at Stripe. So David now works for Patrick and he shared this below. And then Patrick linked to three paragraphs that David Stearns wrote about overview of why Dee Hock is so important. And having read all of these books multiple times, I think this is a really fantastic overview of why he's so important and why I think people, formidable entrepreneurs like Patrick, spent time studying and learning from him. So I'm going to read that to you right now. Dee Hock realized something in the late 1960s that few others really understood. Computers and telecommunications would soon make it possible to build a global electronic value exchange system that would enable consumers to pay for goods and services anywhere you want to be. But his true brilliance was realizing that such a system would require a fundamentally different sort of organization than the traditional franchise model that the bank AmeriCard had been using. Don't worry about these terms. I'll get into them later, but that's the precursor, almost like two steps before Visa. And it was called Bank AmeriCard because it was created originally by Bank of America. So he goes into what is going to be required. A truly global payment system required something akin to a financial United Nations, a social structure in which multiple competing institutions could cooperate just enough to build something far bigger than any one of them could build alone. I'm going to pause right there, think about the term or the title of the book that we're going to go over. One from Many. Just said a truly global payment system would require something akin to a financial United Nations social structure in which multiple competing institutions could cooperate just enough to build something far bigger than any one of them could build alone. That is what makes Visa special. Why did he see what others failed to see? And this is why when I read this paragraph that describes really not only what he did, but the person behind him, considering that every single person that we study is a misfit, a rebel, some kind of outsider, you'll clearly see why I was like, oh, okay, this guy has a lot to teach me. Let me go and buy every single book that he has and not just read them once and read them casually, but read them over and over again. So it says, why did he see what others failed to see? Or what made him successful where others had previously failed? Part of the reason was that he was an outsider. He was not your typical banker. He grew up poor in rural Utah. He didn't go to the right schools, nor did he have a prestigious internship at a large financial institution. He thought from first principles and questioned everything, even down to the nature of money itself. Now, that one sentence is going to appear. Remember that for later, because that appears over and over and over again. You won't even believe how this guy thinks. He thought from first principles and questioned everything, even down to the nature of money itself. He uses that tactic over and over again. He was disappointed in most social institutions, but he saw the potential for thriving chaotic systems, like those he observed in Nature. Another main theme of the book that we'll get into. He saw a better way of doing things, and he didn't listen to folks who said it couldn't be done. So, that one sentence real quick. Dee has in common with almost every single, we're up to what? 260, something like that. 260 biographies of history, just great entrepreneurs, they all could be described that way. He saw a better way of doing things, and didn't listen to the folks who said it couldn't be done. And most importantly, he hired and inspired a group of people who shared his vision, and were truly excited about it. The passion that he has for doing this is, there's a line in the book that I'll share later on where I wrote a note to myself, it's like it's impossible to read this section of the book and not be fired up. From our current perspective, it's difficult to appreciate what Hock and Visa had accomplished. And why is that the case? Because we're living in the future that he foresaw many decades before today, right? Today, I can hop on a plane to almost anywhere in the world and use my Visa card to purchase goods and services, regardless of the language spoken by the merchant, the currency of the merchant's bank account, or the time zone difference between the merchant shop and my issuing bank. In the early 1960s, this was simply unthinkable. Today's magic was yesterday's dream. That's a great line, by the way. Today's magic was yesterday's dream. And Hock was one of the biggest dreamers of them all. Rest in peace, Dee. You will be missed. So, with that, I want to jump into the introduction of the book. This is where Dee himself tells us, hey, this is what the book is about. In 1969, Visa was a little more than a set of unorthodox convictions about organization slowly growing in the mind of a young corporate rebel. But this book is much more than the story of the barely believable events that brought Visa into being. It is also the story of an introverted, small town child, passionate to read, dream, and wander the woods, the youngest of six, born to parents, with but an eighth grade education. It is a story of crushing confinement and boredom in school and church, along with sharp, with the sharp rising awareness of the chasm between how institutions profess to function and how they actually do. So, this book is almost 20 years old. This idea where he has, he's dedicated, if you go to his personal website, it's dwhawk.com, he starts with this idea. There's three questions that he has been, his life has been obsessed with, and he's writing the words on his website when he was 90 And so his whole career in kind of intellectual odyssey, is the way he would put it, is trying to answer these three questions. Number one, why are institutions everywhere increasingly unable to manage their affairs? Number two, why are individuals everywhere increasingly in conflict with and alienated from the institutions of which they are a part? Number three, why are society and the biosphere increasingly in disarray? So those are the three questions he's going to repeat over and over again. It is a story of lifelong search for the answer to those questions, which had everything to do with the formation of visa. It is a story of harboring four beasts that inevitably devour their keeper, ego, envy, greed, and ambition. And it is a story of a great bargain trading ego for humility, envy for equanimity, greed for time, and ambition for liberty. So what he's talking about there is the fact that he founded and ran visas at CEO for 16 years. And then that voice, which I started the podcast with, just made him give it all up. And so that's when he goes on his website. He's got a fantastic like outline, very simple outline of his entire life. And that time period, it's from 1984 to 1992 This is how he describes himself. And he's very gifted with language. And he gets right to the point. Ranch owner, recluse, student, and philosopher. And so when I do that other podcast on the Autobiography of a Restless Mind, volume one and volume two, he goes into detail what his daily schedule is like. This is extremely fascinating. So that's coming after this, okay? So it says, it's a story of events impossible to foresee that sent a man of 70 on a journey more improbable than Visa and infinitely more important. Beyond all else, it is a story of the future, of something trying to happen, of a 400-year-old age rattling in its deathbed as another struggles to be born. It is not just my story, although I am in it. It is not just your story, although you're in it. It's a story of us all.