#292 Daniel Ludwig (The Invisible Billionaire)

What I learned from rereading The Invisible Billionaire: Daniel Ludwig by Jerry Shields.  ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders at Founders Notes ---- Follow one of my favorite podcasts Invest Like The Best ! ---- [2:00] Obsessed with privacy, Ludwig pays a major public relations firm fat fees to keep his name out of the papers. [4:00]  An associate speaks of his unlimited ingenuity in dreaming up new ways of doing things. [5:00] Ludwig’s most notable characteristic, besides his imagination and pertinacity, is a lifelong penchant for keeping his mouth shut. [5:00] I'm in this business because I like it. I have no other hobbies. [6:00] Holding strongly to an opinion, purpose, or course of action, stubbornly or annoyingly persistent. [8:00] Risk Game: Self Portrait of an Entrepreneur by Francis Greenburger (Founders #243) [10:00] At his peak, he owned more than 200 companies in 50 countries. [23:00] War makes the demand for Ludwig's products and services skyrocket. [25:00] Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire by James Wallace and Jim Erickson. (Founders #290) [28:00] He did not mellow as he grew richer and older. [28:00] Some years later, the captain of a Ludwig ship made the extravagant mistake of mailing in a report of several pages held together by a paper clip. He received a sharp rebuke for his prodigality: "We do not pay to send ironmongery by air mail!" [29:00] Ludwig’s tightfistedness, however, persisted after the Depression, putting him in sharp contrast to such free spenders as Onassis and Niarchos. It also was largely responsible for many of his innovations in the shipbuilding industry. [29:00] Onassis: An Extravagant Life by Frank Brady. (Founders #211) [30:00] Ludwig’s ridding his ships of any feature that did not contribute to profits pleased his own obsessive sense of economy and kept him a step ahead of the competition. When someone asked why he didn't put a grand piano aboard his ships, as Stavros