Opinion
Mackey: Musk and Rockefeller are among the greatest heroes in history
“And somebody like Elon Musk, he gets a very, very, very tiny sliver of the value that he creates for the whole world. I mean, He's created, he and people like Rockefeller, they're lambasted as the villains when they are the greatest heroes that have ever, ever…”
Insight
Mackey: Founders Must Never Give Up Control to VCs
“I always tell young entrepreneurs, don't give up control of your business to the VCs. They may talk a good game, but they're not fundamentally aligned with you.”
Insight
Mackey: VCs Wreck Good Businesses by Forcing Rapid Scaling
“The game VCs are playing is, is that it's kind of a blockbuster model. They're looking for exponential growth, and when they hit, when you get an Apple, or you get a Nvidia, or an Intuitive Surgical, or you get one of these Companies that just compound and com…”
Disclosure
Mackey: Whole Foods Went Public to Escape Venture Capitalist Control
“We needed to go public to, because I didn't want the VCs to get control of the business.”
Opinion
Mackey: Elon Musk is a master strategist far ahead of public perception
“I think you got to put Musk in that category as well. People don't understand what a master strategy, strategist Elon is, and think about the way SpaceX has evolved in a way. It's, he's so many steps ahead of where people realize he is in terms of thinking it …”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Mackey: Supermarkets ignored Whole Foods until its NYC Columbus Circle store opened
“Whole Foods flew under the radar. The supermarkets never took us seriously for decades. It wasn't until we opened up in Columbus Circle in New York City.”
Insight
Mackey: Supermarket chains ignored Whole Foods because they feared Walmart
“They were hypnotized by Walmart. They were so scared about Walmart that they ignored us.”
Opinion
Mackey: Most Founders Are Short-Term House Flippers, Not Long-Term Builders
“The most common entrepreneur is a serial entrepreneur. They just start businesses, and they do them for five years and flip them. They're like somebody remodeling a house and then flipping it. And so in these cases, they're really creative. They're good at ger…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Mackey: Whole Foods Had 20 to 25 Years of Competitors Ignoring Them
“We had, you know, 20, 20 to 25 years where nobody paid any attention to us, and that allowed us to scale and compound, and they just dismissed us.”
Assertion Supported
Mackey: VCs owned 34% of Whole Foods before IPO and another round would forfeit control
“The founding investors still had a majority of the stock. The VCs on 34%. But if we'd done another round, they would have gotten control of the business, and they had different agendas.”
Insight
Mackey: Innovation is almost always recombining existing ideas, not inventing from scratch
“You could always, almost say nobody hardly invents anything, because they're always taking some other ideas and putting them together in interesting new combinations.”
Assertion Supported
Mackey: Whole Foods gave stock options to all employees, creating many millionaires
“So many of our team members became millionaires through our stock option program. If you're on a winning team that grows, you can make a lot of money, even if you're not the most senior executives. We gave stock options to everybody that worked there.”
Opinion
Mackey: The American Dream is better than ever before
“The American Dream is alive and well, and it's never been better. It's, in fact, the dream is not only not dead, it's much better than it's ever been before, only The intellectuals in the media cannot see it.”
Assertion Partly supported
Mackey: 74% of Americans Are Overweight and 43% Are Obese
“74% of Americans are overweight, and 43% are obese, and that has not peaked. It is still going up.”
Insight
Mackey: Serial Founders Leave Because Scaling Creates Bureaucracy
“For them, the fun part is creating the business, and then as you start to staff it up and you build a bureaucracy, they're, they feel trapped by their own creations in a way. They're just, they're not wired to They fit within that kind of corporate structure t…”
Insight
Mackey: Regional retail acquisitions build geographical platforms cheaper than hiring from scratch
“The acquisitions were key because they created a platform, a geographical platform for us. To go into a new geography and create a team of people is very expensive.”
Assertion Supported
Mackey: Whole Foods avoided opening stores in competitors' home markets
“But I didn't compete directly with anybody else in stores ever. I didn't, I never did it. I didn't go to Portland for that reason, because Nature's was there. I didn't go to Boulder until Alfalfa's and Wild Oats had sort of partnered up.”
Insight
Mackey: An acquisition is the only liquidity path for most businesses
“I mean, the reality for most businesses is they're never going to be big enough. They either have to sell the, to get liquidity, they have to sell the business because most of them can't go public. And how else can you get liquidity? Either, you're going to ei…”
Assertion Supported
Mackey: 250 years ago 94% of humanity lived on under $2/day
“250 years ago, 94% of everyone alive. 94% lived on less than two dollars a day. 94%, and that's in today's dollars. 88% of the people alive were illiterate. 88%. The average lifespan was 30.”
Insight
Mackey: Most popular brands are built by early cult-like customer evangelists
“I think you will find that most brands that are really popular Particularly in their early days, they were kind of cults. They were cult cults, meaning they had a following, because I think most brands are ultimately built by the evangelist enthusiasts of thei…”
Insight
Mackey: Charismatic entrepreneurs use reality distortion fields to suspend skepticism
“I think most persuasive entrepreneurs, charismatic entrepreneurs have a reality distortion fields. They're able to get people to spend their normal skepticism, and for a moment, they let them into their vision, and they catch a little bit.”
Opinion
Mackey: Phil Knight should have written a sequel to Shoe Dog
“He should have written, in my opinion, he should have written a follow-up book, because I think so much of the Nike story takes place after that occurred.”
What-if
Mackey: Selling Whole Foods stock post-IPO cost me substantial wealth
“I sold it because he advised me to do it, and I trusted my dad, but in retrospect, that was a mistake, and I really believed, and I should have compounded it, and compounded it. Still made a, I'm still really a wealthy guy, but I could have been a lot wealthie…”
Disclosure
Mackey: Firing my father from the Whole Foods board was my hardest decision
“The most difficult thing I ever did was firing my dad from that board.”
John Mackey