#188 - The Business Vault
- May 2
- 3 min read
Building My Business Vault: Lessons from the Greats
A good friend recently asked me what books and investors have shaped my thinking around investing, business building, and personal portfolio construction. It’s a great question because the principles I have learned over time are really a mosaic of lessons, mental models, and frameworks gathered over 10+ years from experience, studying history, and learning from the ‘greats’.
Over time, I’ve built what I call my “Business Vault”: a personal library of material sourced from legendary investors and entrepreneurs. The goal has been simple—to learn how to think clearly, avoid bias, and see opportunities (and risks) with a broader perspective. While experience is a great teacher, the compounded wisdom of others simply can’t be matched.
This vault isn’t just about investing; it’s about decision-making at every level—whether deploying capital, structuring deals, leading teams, or understanding macroeconomic shifts. Over the years, I’ve pulled lessons from Buffett’s value discipline, Munger’s mental models, Graham’s margin of safety, Dalio’s principles, Bezos’ obsession with customers and long-term thinking, and many, many more. I’ve also learned from builders who scaled businesses in unique industries, teaching me to respect cycles, capitalize on timing, and design structures for resilience.
At the heart of my personal investing philosophy is the idea of investing in durable, compounding assets—whether that’s a great public company, a well-located piece of real estate, or a private business that I operate. The goal is to balance growth and optionality, which has meant holding some cash, owning world-class public businesses, investing heavily in my own ventures, and staying disciplined about valuations and competitive advantages. This mindset is a direct result of over a decade of reading and studying the greats - an ongoing education that blends theory and practice.
In addition to the Business Vault, I have a long list of books I could recommend, but for the sake of brevity, I will try to distill the list to a shortened list that offers the biggest frameworks for how to think about the world.
Ben Graham’s Security Analysis and Intelligent Investor
Ron Chernow’s John Rockefeller and JP Morgan biographies
Naval Ravikant’s Navalmanack
Peter Thiel’s Zero to One
Robert Greene’s 48 Laws of Power & The Laws of Human Nature
Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People
Robert Cialdini’s Influence - The Psychology of Persuasion
Sun Tzu’s The Art of War
Porter’s Five Forces
Buffett’s Essays to Corporate America
Ray Dalio’s Principles and The Changing World Order - Why Nations Succeed and Fail
Strauss and Howe’s The Fourth Turning
Charlie Munger’s Poor Charlie’s Almanac - the Wit and Wisdom of Charlie Munger
There are many, many more good books that I could include but these were some of the more formational reads for me. If you have one that you’d recommend, pass it along!
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