All the way back in 2012, I was watching an interview with Elon Musk, and he was asked the question, how did you learn how to start a company?

He had started his first company when he was still in his 20s. And the follow up to that question was like, did you read like a lot of business books?

And his answer, Elon's answer, actually gave me the idea to do founders podcasts many, many years later.

Because Elon said, no, I didn't read business books. I read biographies

and autobiographies. I thought they were helpful. And then he went on to say that this was a way to develop

mentors in a historical context. So you develop mentors through these books. And he mentioned people like

Benjamin Franklin and Henry Ford and Nikola Tesla and every person that's ever designed a rocket.

Elon has read a biography on.

And that's something that Elon has in common with all of history's greatest entrepreneurs is the fact that they all read biographies.

And another thing that Elon has in common with history's greatest founders and it's obvious if you read books about them is anyone who is committed to being great at building their business

is obsessed with watching their costs. In fact, there's a line in Andrew Carnegie's biography that

says cost control for him became an obsession. Carnegie would go around repeating this mantra

time and time again. He said profits and prices were cyclical subject to any number of transient

forces on the marketplace.

Costs, however, could be strictly controlled and any savings achieved were permanent.

Elon was like this, too.

He put $100 million of his own money into SpaceX, and there's multiple examples in books

about SpaceX and then biographies about Elon, where employees of SpaceX would talk about

Elon's complete

control over company spent. Like Carnegie and countless of other history's greatest founders,

for Elon, cost control was an obsession. This is something I was talking about with my friend

Eric, who's the co-founder and CEO of Ramp. Ramp is now a partner of this podcast. I've gotten to

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