Famous entrepreneurs and their lessons.

• Obsession with one customer problem, usually for a decade-plus.
• Direct contact with the work. Walton in stores, Jobs in Cupertino labs, Honda on the factory floor.
• Personal frugality at scale. Most great founders ran cheap long after they were rich.
• An unfair distribution edge. Network effects, brand, regulatory moats, or sheer logistical density.
• A long-tenured No. 2. Munger to Buffett, Wozniak to Jobs, Woolard to Iger — the second person matters as much as the founder.

• Premature scaling before product-market fit is durable.
• Refusal to hire above oneself in finance, ops, or sales.
• Letting a co-founder dispute fester past year two.
• Raising too much capital and losing capital discipline.
• Failing to plan a real CEO transition before burnout.

Read across eras and industries. A lesson that holds for both Andrew Carnegie (steel, 1880s) and Daniel Ek (streaming, 2010s) is more likely to be a real principle than a contemporary fad. The archive is organised chronologically partly for this reason — see the chronology.