#42 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, after 16 years of intense conflict with industrial-age command and control corporations, after 35 years dreaming of new concepts of organization and experimenting with them, after two impossible years bringing one of those dreams into being, after 14 grueling years leading it to maturity, after all that, 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 is not complicated.
That inner voice that will not be denied, once we learned to listen to it, had whispered since the beginning, business, power, and money are not what your 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 where, and why? There was no answer, only silence.
In time, the voice became incessant and demanding. Visa is not an end. Give it up. And the business world as well. Completely, irrevocably, now.
In time, you will understand.
It was frightening. It was maddening. I felt a damn 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.
That is from the introduction of the book that I want to talk to you about today, which is One From Many, Visa and the Rise of Chaotic Organization by Visa's founder, Dee Hock. Before we jump into that, I want to tell you how I found this book. A little while ago, I saw this thread on Twitter, and it was talking about that Visa has a $328 billion market cap today, bigger than virtually every other bank on earth, and yet it started out as a non-profit owned by banks. And this guy starts to do a Twitter thread on how that happens. Like, how did it become more valuable than its parents? And it says, Since Visa's intermediate rates between banks and clear transactions between issuing banks and acquiring banks, it is the ultimate central ledger or platform for finance.
It was originally part of Bank of America, called Bank AmeriCard. But to syndicate this platform beyond BOA, it became a consortium, Visa. Independence, to ensure that central platform didn't take too much economic rent, was insured via non-profit ownership structure. And then it goes on to talk about that, that's how it was organized up until 2008, when it went public, and it was the largest US IPO of all time. So the thread continues, but that sparked my interest. I was like, do I even know who the founder of Visa is? So I did some research, and I learned that the founder of Visa is this guy named Dee Hock. And if you go to his Wikipedia page, I found one of the most curious quotes I've ever come across from any entrepreneur that I've studied so far. And I'm just going to read it to you. So it says, In May 1984, Hock resigned his management role at Visa, retiring to spend almost 10 years in relative isolation, working a 200-acre parcel of land on the Pacific Coast.