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Marcus Wallenberg Jr.

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2025-01-27
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2025-01-27
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  1. “To for control throughout their entire lives. MW is the one that winds up winning that battle. The second thing that is something that reoccurs over and over again in this story in his life is the fact that he was extremely interested in technology. Again, he did not view himself. He was not an administrator. He was an innovator. That was really important to him. He stressed in his talks and in his management of his companies on the importance of technology. He says, I imagine that economics quite simply means making use of technology. It is always possible to build up new industries on the basis of inventions. We can only express the hope that we shall see new epoch making inventions emanating from Sweden that will be the benefit of the world and then his next sentence is why that was important to him and then to his family. If that comes about, we may rest assured that the necessary capital for their exploitation would be made available.”

    2025-01-27 · Founders · #377 Expanding A Family Dynasty: Marcus Wallenberg Jr. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “Should not MW himself ultimately take the decision on his own future. So the book talks a lot about what they call the Wallenberg family sphere, which I absolutely love that description. And in the most simple terms, it is the bank, the holding company, which is called Investor AB, which was founded in 1916, is public and still existed today. In fact, it is the second largest company in Sweden behind Spotify. And then what I would call the family office, which is really a complex web of companies and holding companies that manage the family fortune. You can actually see some of the structure on the family's website. It's Wallenberg.com. But it's important for me to point out that this is a very oversimplified way to think about it because they have just this huge network of companies. And you'll see this as we continue to go through the book, just how complicated it can get. But I want to read.”

    2025-01-27 · Founders · #377 Expanding A Family Dynasty: Marcus Wallenberg Jr. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Than happy to see my boys getting married and continuing our esteemed family. Experience shows that it is important not to make the wrong choice and be misled by one's feelings. Further reflection is recommended. And then marriage is not the only place that he's going to push back on his father. Again, he was MW from time to young till time he's old. He was way more interested in industry than he is finance. So he's like, okay, I've studied in these banks. I don't want to study in the banks anymore. I want to go out and see companies building things. So his argument to his father was our own bank is heavily engaged in industry. It would therefore be better to spend a month and a half gaining experience in an ire foundry, an iron foundry, a company in a forestry sector, an electrical company. After that, I could complete my bank training and then go to the United States and visit more iron, steel, and electrical industries in the United States. MW felt it necessary to demonstrate a certain amount of independence towards his father. After all,”

    2025-01-27 · Founders · #377 Expanding A Family Dynasty: Marcus Wallenberg Jr. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “And so up until this point, MW has kind of followed the path that his dad wanted him to embark on. And then we see his dad finds out really early, and he probably knew this from when he was a kid, that he's going to exert his own will. And so he writes to his dad, hey, guess what? I met a woman. I love her, and I'm getting married. And so obviously, if you're trying to perpetuate a family dynasty who your kids marry is extremely important. So there's a series of letters that go back and forth about this impending marriage. And again, I'm going to cover you to the chase, like MW now and throughout his entire life is going to get what he wants. He is not going to be allow himself to be controlled by anybody. But it is fascinating where you see his father really trying to counsel his son and just how he thinks, like he's writing a letter to his son about how he actually thinks about marriage that, you know, when you're in your early 20s, you're not going to have this perspective. And so his father writes, is the most natural thing in the world that”

    2025-01-27 · Founders · #377 Expanding A Family Dynasty: Marcus Wallenberg Jr. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “So MW's father is sending him all over the world, training in all these other banks, see how they do it, right? He's doing it so he learns from the ground up, but he's also, this is something that is repeated over and over again, it's this maxim that I've said to you before, relationships run the world. His father talks about the fact that personal contacts were actually even more important and even more important reason for training abroad. And I think Marcus Wallenberg Sr. would agree with that over and over again. He's talking about you need to prioritize the personal contacts. I'm going to read this great advice that he gives to his son again appearing in one of these letters that go back and forth between father and son throughout the book. It is necessary to behave in a way befitting a well-mannered member of an established family. When MW was about to leave London, his father stressed how important it was to clear out in a decent way. You should pay visits or write to all those who have shown you some kindness. The most lasting relationships”

    2025-01-27 · Founders · #377 Expanding A Family Dynasty: Marcus Wallenberg Jr. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “She said, okay, I want you to learn the railroads, and you're going to learn it, even though I own the railroad. I could make you CO anytime I wanted or president anytime I want. No, you're not going to do that. You're going to walk the goddamn tracks. You are going to literally pull weeds and clean up. You're going to do every single job. You are going to learn from the ground up. So what MW's father does is, first of all, they have phenomenal network. Just wait till I read the bank set he's going to become a trainee at. But he literally starts in the mail room. He starts doing the lowest level possible. So says his father had already started to plan the next step and his sons carefully mapped out career. Periods of training with foreign banks. The work was monotonous with all the manual duties that formed part of everyday banking at the time, such as sorting, checking, counting, and writing everything by hand. It provided, but this is why he's doing this for a son. It provided a basic insight to the workings of the financial system.”

    2025-01-27 · Founders · #377 Expanding A Family Dynasty: Marcus Wallenberg Jr. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “Training now you've finished with the Stockholm School of Economics. This was very fascinating. He's like, okay, I'm going to map out. You can't just come into the bank. We're not just going to give you a position of authority or put you right in the top. The way the family trained the next generation, I absolutely loved, and I've seen this a few times too. They insisted that they have to learn from the ground up. When I went to read to you, if you listened to a few weeks ago when I covered the two biographies of Hetty Green, who was the single largest individual financier in the world at the time, the way that she wanted to train her son, the next generation, you know, because Heddy Green was fifth generation, her family was rich.”

    2025-01-27 · Founders · #377 Expanding A Family Dynasty: Marcus Wallenberg Jr. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Surprisingly, like one of the most controversial observations that I have just about reading all these books, many of the great founders, once that they know what they want to do, I would argue that they actually have very low levels of introspection to like almost no introspection. And the reason that is important is because low introspection equals more action. And you see the importance of action in moving forward with the way he ends that letter. These are very Swedish people are very typically very reserved. I was shocked at how many of the letters that MW is writing and he just used exclamation points way more than I expected. And he ends that letter to his father forward exclamation point. And one thing that MW did not have to think about was that the family was something that his father taught him and that his father's father taught him was that the family in the bank were one and the same thing. And that's definitely how MW thought about it. Now, once you're done with your military.”

    2025-01-27 · Founders · #377 Expanding A Family Dynasty: Marcus Wallenberg Jr. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “And so, one of my favorite parts about the book is the fact that there's all these letters in the book back and forth between MW and his father. And you see the advice that his father has, how MW kind of pushes back. But one thing that he doesn't push back, and I think this is actually good if you're born into a situation like he is, he writes to his father at the time MW is about 21 years old, and he knew that he was going to go into the family bank right now. He's going to expand a way past finance and go, he really thought of himself much more like an industrialist. He was much more interested in industry than he was finance. But he writes to his father something that's very interesting. And I think there's a side idea here that you and I can benefit from. He says, I do grant you, father, that you are right about my career being determined. There is but one possibility to make progress, to gain knowledge in other words, to go forward. So at the very end of the book, there's a line in the book that says MW was not given to introspection. This is one of”

    2025-01-27 · Founders · #377 Expanding A Family Dynasty: Marcus Wallenberg Jr. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “He once subscribed himself as a sportsman who had become a bank manager in his later days, an important explanation of his successes in various fields was his intense competitive drive. He loved to compete and believed in competition as a principle for development and progress in business and in life.”

    2025-01-27 · Founders · #377 Expanding A Family Dynasty: Marcus Wallenberg Jr. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “The way he approached business, he approached everything that he did. And so one of his great loves, really the one love he had in his life, was business outside of business though was tennis to the point where he becomes a Swedish doubles champion. He plays at Wimbledon for God's sake. But there's nothing that he does that I would say that he does on like a recreational level. He was not trying to be amateurs at all. In fact, he took the same intensity he applied to tennis he applied to his work and the same intensity he applied to his work he applied to his tennis. He's very intense. He's energetic. He's disciplined. He's physically fit and he's very consistent. So it talks about the fact that he would engage in intense physical training. So it's a tennis involved physical training which made him conscious of the importance of taking regular exercise. He never abandoned his habit of doing physical exercises every morning, which stood him up in good steed for the hectic pace he would keep throughout his life later in life.”

    2025-01-27 · Founders · #377 Expanding A Family Dynasty: Marcus Wallenberg Jr. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “But I want to give you an idea of the kind of family we're dealing with, where there was no ceiling on their ambition or what they thought they could do. So they actually, the school, after he does some brief military training, MW is going to go to the school. The school is the Stockholm School of Economics. And it's created by his family. And the way I was thinking about this is when I went back and I reread my highlights over and over again before I sat down and talked to you. And the second or third or fourth time I read this section, I was like, oh, you know what? What's really happening, the way I think about what's happening is the Wallenberg family is starting this business school, right? As a way to grow the entire pie and then take a percentage of that growing pie. So what I mean by that, growing the pie, they're interested in making more business people, so they make more businesses. If there's more businesses, then they're going to own equity in some of those businesses and then have the family bank's going to have a relationship with those businesses.”

    2025-01-27 · Founders · #377 Expanding A Family Dynasty: Marcus Wallenberg Jr. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “Have lots of kids because AO Wallenberg had 21 kids. So I want to jump right into MW's life. And you're going to see traits that he had when he was a kid that he continued his entire life. They call there's a funny line in the book where they said that MW was a self-confident five-year-old. He showed signs of being argumentative and strong-willed from a very early age. He had a great need for independence and control. Remember, he's a kid. He's like, this is whole life. And he was way more defiant than his siblings. They also said that he often got his own way thanks to his charm and powers of persuasion. So the family has essentially set up a track for all the kids very early on, which for the most part, MW agrees to. He's like, yeah, okay, my fate, my destiny is to work in the family business and to perpetuate this dynasty. But he's also going to have input and really push back on his father, even though he had a great relationship with his father.”

    2025-01-27 · Founders · #377 Expanding A Family Dynasty: Marcus Wallenberg Jr. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “And at some future date, recover as much of the bad debts as possible. So again, I wanted to bring that up right up because they did this before MW was born and you'll see MW does this and he actually carries on the tradition and really rescues, restructures, combines a bunch of companies that the family owned for an extremely long period of time before MW was born, before he played a role, in fact, in the family business, the family bank. There's multiple examples where they tell the Wallenberg family tells the employees that are working for them that this is a family business. It will be owned and controlled by the family. And again, they repeat that we must endeavor to build up as large reserves as possible in the bank. And in case you're listening to this and you want to perpetuate a family dynasty, I'm not going to talk about the patriarch of the family, the founder of the family dynasty. His name's Ao Wallenberg, but in case you're interested perpetuating family dynasty, you might”

    2025-01-27 · Founders · #377 Expanding A Family Dynasty: Marcus Wallenberg Jr. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “Interested in that. He was interested in technology, innovation, and drastically expanding the family fortune. Now, there is a couple ideas that he never deviated from. So there's a line at the very beginning of the book where his actual uncle says, long experience in this bank has taught us that we must almost exclusively put our trust in ourselves. So the Wallenbergs, and this is mentioned multiple times throughout the book, they always had more liquidity than other banks. And they did never wanted to put themselves or find themselves in a position where they had to rely on the kindness of outsiders. I don't think you survive and thrive, really, for 170 years without being relatively conservative and having this financial fortress. Remember this for later on because when MW is a young man, his job, one of the jobs in the bank and the family bank, is the fact that he was handling all the loans for Evar Kruger, which I cover.”

    2025-01-27 · Founders · #377 Expanding A Family Dynasty: Marcus Wallenberg Jr. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “You must find extraordinary people. The key observation is that in most things in life, the dynamic range between the average quality and the best quality is at most two to one. But in the field that I was interested in, I noticed the dynamic range between what the average person could accomplish and what the best person could accomplish was fifty or a hundred to one, given that you were well advised to go after the cream of the cream. You want to build a team that pursues the A plus players. That is exactly what Ramp did. Ramp has the most talented technical team in their industry, becoming an engineer ramp is nearly impossible. In the last 12 months, they hired only 0.23% of the people that applied. When you use ramp, it means you have the top tier technical talent and some of the best AI engineers working on your behalf 24-7 to automate and improve all of your businesses financial operations. And they do this.”

    2025-01-27 · Founders · #377 Expanding A Family Dynasty: Marcus Wallenberg Jr. · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source