John D. Rockefeller

“Rockefeller got so much richer in his retirement from his shares of Standard Oil, which became, you know, the things that powered us moving around the country in cars than he ever got from kerosene.”

“And he's right. He's totally right. Just like you know, Jeff Bezos would probably say the same thing today or with Amazon or the like.”

“Which is, by the way, a great way to do it. Like, if you've got a partnership that's blowing up, like, all right, whoever wants to pay more to buy the other person out is the person that should get to own the whole thing. And so the idea of a bidding war betwe…”

“And get this, for the rest of Rockefeller's, like, eighty-plus-year life, He celebrates September 26th as his job day.”

“Rockefeller and standard oil as a organization, but Rockefeller as a person is really like the prototype of so much of American culture today. Like he is, he was simultaneously viewed as this like, you know, sinister villain and as this great hero. And like pe…”

“Remember there's one million dollars in total capital that gets put into this, into the structure. They pay a 105% dividend at the end of the year. Including also reinvesting tons of cash flow back into the business and, you know, expanding and buying other co…”

“So yeah, John Dee becomes the wealthiest person in like, you know, modern human history before gasoline.”

“In every dimension, wealth, power, control, philanthropy, impact. John D makes like, you know Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg look like just children.”

“When Sherman runs for reelection in Ohio, the very next year in 1891, do you know who once again, one of his biggest donors was? It is John D. Rockefeller.”

“It is this incredibly unique thing about John D. Rockefeller where when you describe him as one of the wealthiest businessmen of all time and a philanthropist, it's very different than the way that you would describe today's billionaires as wealthy people, and…”

“And it's, when we say invent philanthropy, they invent the sort of systematic and organizational giving away of money. They don't invent tithing, you know, like that's a biblical concept, but they really do invent modern philanthropy.”

“Precisely because he lost the antitrust suit, Rockefeller was converted from a mere millionaire with an estimated worth of net worth of three hundred million in 1911 into something just short of history's first billionaire.”

“He really just has this, like, self-perpetuating wealth because he owns 257,000 of the 973,000 shares of Standard Oil. So he owns a quarter of Standard Oil”

“That point when he's worth two hundred million in, in 19 oh two, the GDP of the United States at that point was twenty four billion dollars. So even at that point, this is like, you know, there's still a lot of, there's still a decade before a standard oil get…”

“So by the time of his death in 1937 his remaining fortune, of course, which is largely tied up in various family trusts, was estimated to be about four 1.4 billion in 1937 dollars. So that's about one and a half percent of GDP. It's about 315 billion of today'…”

“In a roundabout way, he ends up owning a significant amount Iron mining and ore deposit operation that ends up getting rolled up into U.S. Steel when J.P. Morgan rolls up U.S. Steel. J.P. Morgan, not the bank, the person, rolls up U.S. Steel. Which is, of cour…”

“Rockefeller placed the scientists at this institution, not the trustees in charge of expenditures, and this was revolutionary.”

“The low cost structure thing, that's not, that's a Walton thing. That's a sole price thing. That's a Jeff Bezos thing. That's a Rockefeller thing. That's the most common theme in the history of entrepreneurship.”