#263 Land's Polaroid: A Company and the Man Who Invented It

0:00 Why do you want to work in a nutty place like this? I don't. Yes, you do. Otherwise you wouldn't be here. Oh.

0:07 Why is Polaroid a nutty place? To start with It's run by a man who has more brains than anyone has a right to. He doesn't believe anything until he's discovered it and proved it for himself. Because of that, he never looks at things the way you or I do.

0:24 He has no room for small talk. He has no preconceived notions. He starts from the beginning With everything. That's why we have a camera that takes pictures and develops them right away.

0:36 Isn't that what a camera is supposed to do? Uh I don't know. Of course it is. It's obvious. But Land was the first person to think about it that way.

0:45 I've been a photographer all my life. And I'm a smart guy, but I didn't think of it. It never occurred to me. Let alone How to do it.

0:54 That Is a whole nother story. That's an excerpt from the book that I'm talking about today, which is Lands Polaroid, a company and the man who invented it. Written by Peter Winsburg. Peter actually worked at Polaroid.

1:07 Directly with land. uh starting at thirty, he was actually describing that excerpt was describing the job interview, the unconventional job interview that he had. And he went up working a Polaroid for twenty four years. I originally read this book for the first time all the way back on founders number one thirty three. So I spent An insane amount of time.

1:26 reading this week. I read this book and I read uh the f almost five hundred page biography, re read the almost five hundred page biography of Edwin Land called Insisting on the Impossible. And then for the last two days I've also spent time re reading Uh it's this book called Instant The Story of Polaroid. It is a history of the entire company. And the reason I'm doing all this is I've told you before, one of my main goals is to convince as many entrepreneurs as I can. To study Edwin Land.

1:51 And there's many good reasons to do that, but the two that stick out to me the most First is that he Hey's Steve Jobs hero. He influenced the career of Steve Jobs more than anybody else. For Steve's entire life, from the time he was in his twenties when he's giving interviews and I have notes on.

2:08 to all the five or six different biographies that I've read about Steve from the time he was in his twenties until he was dying. He talked about the importance of ed that Edwin Lan had on his career. The Steve Jobs biography from Walter Isaacson, just to cover this real quick. And he says, Then I read something that one of my heroes, Edwin Land of Polaroid, said about the importance of people who could stand at the intersection of humanities and sciences. And I decided that is what I want to do.

2:37 Steve got to meet Land. So Steve was in his twenties, Land was in his seventies. He met him three times as he was building Apple, and he described the meetings as visiting a shrine. And so I think the obvious point is well if Steve Jobs spent time, his very valuable time studying Edwin Land, why wouldn't you or I? So that leads me to the second reason that I'm rereading this book and why I read now two and a half books on Edwin Land this week. I want to figure out like what is the easiest way to convince somebody to study Edwin Land by reading one of the biographies about him. And I think the best way to do that is if I could say, Hey, if you could only read one book about land, this is the one I would read. For the longest time I was telling everybody, hey, read insisting on the impossible. It is the most comprehensive biography of Edwin Land by far. It is not the easiest to read. It is almost five hundred pages. You have to be really into land to want to read that. So What I w after reading all these, I realized, hey, the book that holds my hand, this is the one. If you've never read a book about Edmund Lanny, you want to get started, this is the one I would recommend. It's half the size of insisting on the impossible.

3:37 And it gives us more insight into land as a person because Peter knew him personally. In fact, the book ends. after they both have left Polaroid and they're hanging out and talking In Lan's house. Okay, so I want to jump into the book. Also, if you haven't yet, after you're fishing listening to this episode, go back and listen to episode one thirty two, one thirty three, and one thirty four. They're all on different books. I've read of Edwin Land.

4:00 I've heard from so many people about those three episodes. They were some of my most popular episodes. All right, let me jump into this. At this point, this is from the introduction, Peter's giving us an overview Of the unique life and career of Edwin Land and why he is worthy of study. Polaroid as a company was for 45 years virtually synonymous with Edwin Land. He was its founder.

4:21 He invented its first products and many of its products and processes throughout the five decades of the company's history. His titles. During the period from nineteen thirty seven to to nineteen eighty two, included chairman of the board President.

4:37 Chief Executive Officer Chief operating officer and director of research. So when I re read that paragraph I thought of this fantastic quote That I found in a book about Steve Jobs describing how Apple and Steve Jobs were in like they're indistinguishable, and it said that Apple was Steve Jobs with 10,000 lives. Same situation with Polaroid and Land, Land was Polaroid and Polaroid was land. I always felt comfortable speaking my mind to him. Many of his employees did not. He was revered to an extraordinary extent by most of the people who worked for him.

5:08 And there's a few reasons for that. One, Lan was a legitimate genius. Two, he's also extremely famous in his day for his scientific achievements. And then if you're working in Polaroid, you realize, hey, this guy started one of the great technical monopolies of his day and ran it for fifty years. And then Peter gets into he accomplished all this and he was a college dropout twice. He dropped out of Harvard twice. Land did not earn a college degree. The list of institutions, however, from which he received honorary degrees includes Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Carnegie Institute of Technology, New York University, Williams College, Tufts College, Washington University, University of Massachusetts, and others. He has received more medals and scientific honors, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom. And the national medal of science than most living Americans. So I guess I need to point out this is an extremely old book. It's actually kinda cool because it was published first in nineteen eighty seven and the copy I have is actually signed

6:05 by the author. And he signed it on February fifteenth, nineteen eighty eight. So at this point Peter and Land are still alive. Land dies a few years later. Peter just passed away, unfortunately, in two thousand six. So back to this, he holds uh more medals and everything else than most living Americans. The full list of his honors runs to over three pages. He holds five hundred and thirty three patents, second only to Thomas Edison. And he was introdu inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in nineteen seventy seven.

6:36 And then he wraps up the introduction with an overview of his career and what this book is about. I joined Polaroid in nineteen fifty eight with little knowledge of the company, but with a sense that I was embarking on an adventure. I began an advertising and promotion in nineteen eighty I became executive vice president. And was given responsibility for technical and industrial photography. In 1982, Land cut ties with his company and retired to devote full. To his laboratory and foundation. Two months later, I left Polaroid as well.

7:07 The subject of this book is Polaroid and Land. The span is nineteen twenty six to nineteen eighty two. The period when the company and the man were inseparable. and virtually indistinguishable. And then Peter has a random sentence here that I think is actually really important. It's something that I double underlined. And he says, I did not see land as a legend, a tycoon, a genius, or a tyrant. Although he was certainly all of those and more.

7:33 From the first day I met him. He impressed me as a person who lived his life more intensely. then the rest of us live life more intensely than anyone else. I think that's a fantastic idea. His lifelong friend, advisor, and mentor, Julius Silver described Land as the most extraordinary person I have ever met. Now, why is that important? Why am I including in the podcast? his mentors opinion and f his mentor and friend's opinion of him, it's because who it's who Julius Silver knew.

8:05 Since Silver had known Albert Einstein and Bernard Barnouk, And many of and many other of the twentieth century's most interesting minds, egos, and personalities. His judgment is significant. And then I'm working off the same copy of the book. that I use the first time I read. And so I come across some my past highlights and notes.

8:27 In this a past highlight note is still really important. I wouldn't change anything about what I highlighted or what I wrote, and this is probably two years ago. Land's life seemed primarily a life of the mind. His great dramas were self-created and played on the stage. Polaroid which he constructed for himself. If those productions did not begin or end as the supporting cast would have them.

8:53 Small matter to the principal player. His interest in our reactions was minimal. Polite. Sometimes kind But limited by the great drain of energy necessary

9:05 So that is the Highlight I'd made. Several years ago. This is what I wrote. This is why reading biographies is so important. All of these people created their own world within the world. They were stars of their own movie.

9:20 And that line, his interest in our reactions was minimal. It's actually really important. What what popped to mind when I read that, reread that for the second time. is Claude Shannon covered him all the way back on founders number ninety five and Alfred Lee Loomis uh from the fantastic biography Tuxedo Park back on Founders number one forty three. Both of them insisted on independent thinking. They would share their ideas with you, but they wouldn't waste any time trying to convince you that their ideas were correct. Shannon. and Loomis, like Lynn, were stars of their own movie. Their life was gonna go in the direction as a result of their own independent thinking, and the opinions or the reactions of other people were of no concern to them.

9:55 So now I want to move to the end of the first chapter because there's this fantastic overview. That you and I've talked about over and over again that i there's like this ma this old maximum in human history that's usually darkest before the dawn. This is the state of Edwin Land's life. And Polaroid the company. right before the release of their greatest product. Up until this point, if I can use the words of D Hawk, the founder of Visa.

10:17 Land for twenty years has been a successful business failure. And I think it's important to spend some time here because this is something we've seen over and over again. Steve Jobs' career was like this, Sam Walton. Think about when he started Uh Walmart. In his forties. David Ogie starting his advertising career at thirty eight.

10:34 Enzo Ferrari struggling for almost two decades, James Dyson struggling for fourteen years. In Lan's case, it is twenty years of struggle before he gets the his biggest break. the break, the invention that makes his name known throughout history. And this is again the reason I think this is so important because it's you see you know you everybody knows these names. After the fact.

10:56 Ботсон і о декад, two decades, maybe twenty five years. Of they're not just sitting around with their feet up, they're constantly learning, they're trying to build businesses, they're having some success, a lot of failure, but they keep pushing. And says, listen to this. LAN was thirty seven. Now, how crazy is this? For all intents and purposes, like Polaroid has different names, like the LAN Wheelwright Laboratories. It's p essentially Polaroid. Right. He f picked the the field that he wanted to focus on when he was seventeen and worked on it till he was seventy. So чеса Лан вас Терти сев. He had known since he was seventeen that he would be a great figure of science and affairs. He had expected to be playing these roles long before now.

11:34 But he had ultimately been frustrated each time the moment presented itself. So right before, and I'm gonna go into more detail here. Right before he introduces the most important product he ever makes. He is in a fight for his life. There's a good chance that Polaroid is going to be bankrupt. For twenty years he had pursued the dream of a polarizing system to eliminate the glare of automobile headlights, only to be rebuffed time and time again by Detroit. He had tried to adapt the technology of polarization to product after product with only modest success. He had presented the movie industry with the greatest technical revolution since sound and color, only to be ignored and misunderstood by Hollywood. They're talking about three D.

12:17 Uh, he's the one Polaroid's the one that invented that as well. He was proud of the war record of his company, so World War Two. Yeah, we I've covered this on, you know, probably what, fifty different books. on the speccase so far? Yeah, essentially the entire American economy grind to a halt when from producing things for the consumer to immediately

12:37 producing things for the war, Polaroid was no different Uh so he had a huge increase in revenues because he invented a ton of things like so uh millions and millions of goggles that soldiers used. In fact, General Patton appeared, I think, on the cover of either Time Magazine or Life magazine wearing Polaroid uh goggles. Uh he invented uh things for the U two spy plane. wind up inventing uh some of the first like heat seeking missiles. They were called du the dove missiles, and now they're called like sidewinders. It was just absolutely remarkable what what he was able to do. So that's what they're describing there. He's proud of the war record, but brilliant as some of the wartime successes had been, they could not continue because this is the war is now over. So what is gonna happen? The war ends, your contract ends He's w I think they have like thirteen hundred employees, something like that. He winds up having to fire about a thousand people. He knows like this is a race.

13:20 There's a clock here. If we do not invent an entire new industry and a product that we can sell to consumers within two to three years. Polarite is gone. So said this could not continue uh now that the national emergency was over. So that is World War Two. He had staked the future of the company on an idea he called instant photography. The two years following the war had brought the company close to disaster. Sales had fallen from sixteen million down to less than two million dollars. I don't want to brush over this. Let's pause right there. His company, right, right before he introduces the product.

13:56 That changes the trajectory. This product is gonna put Edwin Land on the list of some of the uh on the on like the top hundred richest Americans. And it's coming at a time where his company's doing less than two million dollars in sales. Worst of all, he had been forced to fire people, good people. From about thirteen hundred employees at war's end, polar rate has shrunk to fewer than three hundred.

14:17 All the training, all those marvelous technical competences were being dissipated and scattered. And before I go on to just an absolutely fantastic paragraph that describes the situation, the note I jotted down to myself when I re read this a second time. The parallel to jobs is striking. Lan like Jobs had to turn around the company he founded before they ran out of money. The field of polarization, which Land had chosen of 17, upon which he had staked his scientific career, around which he had built and financed his company, to which he had devoted almost every hour of his energy for the past twenty years. That is an insane sentence.

14:54 Think about that. He had devoted almost every hour of his energy for the past twenty years. And this is just This is the most important sense. It's an entire section. At thirty seven.

15:05 He had achieved everything to which he aspired. Except success. That line should give you chills. We know what's coming. He had been searching for a field that he could dominate without dependents on any entity except the American public and

15:23 And now he believed he had found it. So that idea too, I need to to run this back because this is we've seen this over and over again, James Dyson's uh uh autobiography. on founders number two hundred is the one that jumps out to mind immediately. What he's talking about there, where Lan's like, Hey, I need a field that could dominate without dependents on an entity except the public. I wanna go direct to the consumer, right? He had spent Decade after decade, he had an invention. Back then

15:47 This is you know, early, let's see, nineteen thirties, nineteen forties. A ton of people were dying because it was very unsafe of of uh For driving a night. 'Cause they had yet to discover Detroit had yet to discover a way to deal with headlight glare. And so Edwin Lan had discovered a way he basically had stuff you could put on the windshield and the headlights and it would dim the lights of oncoming cars. And he says, Hey, if you adopt my uh invention.

16:09 you know, we'll save fifty lives a night. That was the estimate of how many people would would die because of headlight glare at night. But for his invention to succeed, he had to convince all the automakers at once'cause it only works if Each car has Like the windshield has the polarizer and the um the headlight. And he just failed over and over again. He's like, I don't wanna deal with that. I wanna go direct to consumer. I wanna be able to talk directly to my customer. I don't want anybody in between me and the customer and I want to explain why this invention and the product that I'm selling is is will make their life better.

16:39 And so that's what he's talking about. He's like, I need a field that I can dominate without dependents on any other entity except the American public. That's the same advice that James Dyson has in autobiography. He's like, listen, if you're the one that invented the product, you're the in the best k in the best position to sell it. the creator of a product is in the best position to sell it because they know the most about it. They put their most heart the the all their heart and soul into it. And do not like don't let anybody else get in between you and the actual customer. So let's go to when he actually introduces his product directly to the to the customers. He's doing the most important product demonstration. So you've probably seen Steve Jobs uh product de demonstrations, you know, the iPod, the Mac. iPhone.

17:17 Same thing, Edwin Land was a gifted showman. And he would just like jobs, he would rehearse, rehearse, rehearse these product demonstrations. Uh, they would stay up all hours of the day. They wanted to make sure that they got every single aspect of the product demonstration correct. So on the cover of this book. Is this picture?

17:35 uh in history. In fact when you Google image search, Edwin Land, a picture of him peeling back one of the first Polaro pictures, which is a picture of his face.

17:50 that'll pop up. He's like, listen, I invented this instant photograph uh camera. You don't know you no longer have to send your cam you don't have to either one, build a dark room, which very many uh very few people do, and two, you Uh, you don't have to now s take a picture and then send it off to Kodak and wait a week to get it back. You can see your picture immediately. And so he takes the picture, says give me fifty seconds. That's uh they're all waiting in suspense and I'll pick it up there. He peeled the two sheets apart and presented them all the the the media and presented them a picture. A gasp riddled around the room. Lan held in his hand a brilliant image of himself.

18:27 The face only slightly less than life size. The New York Times reporter Tipped over in his chair. In an instant, Lan was surrounded by a wall of photographers and reporters clamoring for him to repeat this. And explain how it was possible.

18:42 In an instant, Lan had reinvented photography, his company, and himself. Never was a birth so vividly recorded. The picture appeared in Life magazine one week later as a full page. So Life magazine at the time was the largest circulation uh magazine in America. Uh was one of the classic photographs of the decade and it was reprinted in every photographic retrospective of the forties and fifties that was published after. It appeared the next morning on the front page of the New York Times and of course hundreds of newspapers all across the country. And so they're gasping, they're tripping over themselves because again, this did the idea that you could take a picture, like this is the world we live in, right? You take a picture with your phone, you see it immediately, take a picture with any kind of digital camera, you see it immediately. That that did not exist before Edwin Lann. You took a picture and like Oh, I hope it's well, but I'll find out in about a week or two.

19:29 And so Land also does something smart here that I want to bring to your attention. And it's this idea where you can describe like think about the product that you're making Is just some kind of solution to a problem. uh that that your customer has, right? And the best way to describe the solution that your company created is just in human terms, one human to another. And what's happening is like they're all playing with the camera and there's a picture taken where

19:52 you immediately see that there was a mistake. So it says uh one of the images on the table in front of him showed only the top of his head and his fingertips. And he laughed and said, and now this is the most Important Part. of what he's doing here because he's gonna describe his solution in human terms and then compare it

20:11 To Kodaks, the like the the the status quo of his day. And he says, This is one of the most significant pictures we have taken this evening. It illustrates a very important point. If you're not satisfied with the picture, this new process allows you to retake. I'm gonna pause there. This new process allows you to retake. In other words, the process I invented and what my product, the one I'm selling to you, allows you to do. This new process allows you to retake the picture immediately and correct the fault. You know that you have a perfect picture on the spot. You never need to be disappointed.

20:47 Again. Okay, so now I'm gonna go back twenty years so we figure out who Edwin Land was at seventeen. This is his personality and the people and ideas that inspired him. And this part is one of my favorite parts of the entire book because it gives like mini like paragraph size biographies of all the different historical figures that Lan studied and then influenced his work. So Lan, like every other one of History's Greatest Entrepreneurs, they all wanted to know what was the great work that came that happened before I was alive. And how could I study that, derive insights from that, and build on top of that? Start where these people left off.

21:21 And so he says science and invention consumed Land's attention. At seventeen, he was deeply concerned with how he would spend his time and intellect and what field he would make his own. He carried a romantic vision of science developed by omnivorous reading and the certainty that he would achieve scientific success success. He was filled with impatience and frustration, and his mind was focused on the question of which scientific path He should follow. And so they just described Lan's habit of

21:47 Omnivorous reading, something he continues for his entire life. There's this gigantic library at his house, gigantic library and Polaroid. I'll get to that more on that a little bit, but these are some of the people that Land is reading about. Land admired Michael Faraday, who was one of the scientific heroes of nineteenth century. Faraday had apprenticed at an early age to a bookbinder. In his spare time he read all the scientific volumes that came through the bindery. Land is going to do the exact same thing. He's gonna drop out at Harvard. I think he's seventeen years old when he enrolls in Harvard, drops out his first year, and instead goes to the New York public library every day. at the time they open and he literally reads. Every book on light.

22:26 contained in the New York public library. And so in addition to Faraday, it goes over all these other people that he's studying at this time and it talks about what these people were doing. At this point in So we're right around nineteen twenty six. Land is you know, seventeen, eighteen years old.

22:41 And it says Thomas Edison was seventy nine and still creating. And what I love before I move on to the other ones. This note I left myself is books are the original links, the heroes of your heroes become your heroes. Jobs studied these people too. I don't think d I ever uh I have an example of Jobs talking about Faraday, but he talked about Edison. The next person Jobs talks about when he was inventing the Macintosh, about he put it in historical context of the uh of Alexander Graham Bell's invention. Of the telephone. I think Jobs was like 22. He was extremely young when he was doing that. Alexander Graham Bell had died in 1922.

23:17 Uh Edison, Ford, the Wrights, and George Eastman had little or no formal learning. So it's just talking about all the different people that he's studying. the fact that and this is why he felt so compelled. He's like, I don't have to like the the college is moving too slow. And I think he says something very similar to what Bill Gates said. He thought that his um Land on his classmates at Harvard. Were un serious. If you remember, I think it was Founders Number One Forty, the biography of Bill Gates that I read, which is fantastic'cause it's uh it just covers the first thirty five years of his life up until the Microsoft IPO. I gotta reread that book soon. It's it's really, really good.

23:51 But what was funny in the book was Bill Gates said he went to Harvard to learn from people smarter than him and left disappointed. So there is some element of that in Land as well. But what Land's realizing is like, well, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, the Wright brothers, George Eastman, these are people that I'm studying and looking up to. They didn't really have like they didn't they didn't need to go to college. They taught themselves. They learned through trial and error and through experience. So he's just realizing that he's sending Faraday, Edison, Alexander Graham Bell. In fact, what was fascinating is This this sentence here is pretty cool. Bell made the first long distance call in eighteen seventy-six to a building on Osborne Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Where Land was to have his personal laboratory and office.

24:31 Sixty six years later. Henry Ford, at this point in Lan's life, was 63 when Lan entered Harvard, 16 years younger than Edison, whom Ford had idolized. At this time Ford loomed as the greatest industrial figure in the world. He had built half of all the cars sold in America. Then he moves on to the founder of Kodak. I have an eight hundred page

24:54 Biography of him of George Eastman. I haven't got to it yet. It is in the queue. I will eventually get to it one day. George Eastman was 72 in 1926. Eastman's film was indispensable to Edison. For his motion picture work, it is amazing how many founders, and this is like clear throughout history. regardless of industry and anything else, how many founders kneach other? I think there's just something motivating.

25:18 To be around other smart and driven people. And if A lot of people like if you can get move yourself into a situation like this Some people can't yet, and I would say books serve this function before you can actually meet these person uh meet these people in person. But a lot of them know each other. In many cases, like these these industries are obviously popping up around some like certain geographical locations as well. And so then Lan starts talking about like what is all this studying doing to him. There was a great turmoil within him. He was searching for his field, the field that would make his name known to the world of science. He had read all the scientific literature that was available to him.

25:53 And then he talks about this is hilarious. This is one of the the probably the most important book uh that ever found. He says I was fortunate enough to f to acquire Robert W. Wood's book, Physical Optics, which I read nightly The way our forefathers read the Bible. And what he's taking away from this reading is so important. He's like, Hey I'm that too.

26:13 As I review the nature of the creative drive in the inventive scientists that have been around me as well as in myself, I find the first event is an urge. To make a significant intellectual contribution that can be tangibly embodied. In a product or process. And that's why he picked Polarized Light. He says Fair Day had moved the world forward a hundred years. Edison had compressed genius and energy enough for three lifetimes.

26:42 I picked field after field before I decided that the great opportunity was polarized light. It is incredible that he's making this decision at such a young age. And then check this out. This is why he wanted to do it too, because again, he's not copying the what. He's copying the how. He's not he's not saying, Hey, Ford, Bell, Edison, Faraday did this, let me just copy what they did. He's like, Let me copy how they do it and apply their principles. and principles that are unique to my own mind, to a di a completely different field of study, and he wanted one that w had a bunch of unsolved problems, one that he could make his own. This is in crazy sentence. The principles of light and how it transmitted had been studied and debated for more than three hundred years. This is where I get excited because

27:24 It is it never ceases to amaze me how all of these different ideas and thinking fit together. I just did Uh back on Founders Number Two Sixty One, right? I did that. These two volumes of maxims that the founder of Visa D Hawk wrote when he was in his sixties and seventies. And I get to that so I you know I just read that what a week or two ago, something like that. And then I'm That's fresh in my mind.

27:46 As I pick this book up and I reread it, so therefore, like I've changed, right, because of this information, the words on the page are the same. But my interpretation of them are different. So it's like the principles of light and how it transmitted had been studied and debated for more than three hundred years. The author just spent like five or six pages going over. land search of how to make an impact and the influences he had and all the ideas he had, and then summarizes like hey, I'm gonna pick this because it's an unsolved problem. There's a a a hint of like almost arrogance there. It's like well I can make a contribution in a field where people have been beating

28:18 The best thinkers of humanity have been beating their head against the wall for three hundred years. Why? Is that so important to me? Because what it what did Dee Hawk write in one of those volumes, autobiography of Restless Mine? He said the young Which is There's a young we're talking about the young version of Edwin Lan where we are, right? The young hurl themselves into vast problems that have troubled the world's best thinkers.

28:41 Believing that they can find a solution. It is well that they should. For from time to time One of them does That is a description

28:52 of Edwin Lance. That's remarkable. Okay, so I want to skip ahead. to when he drops out of Harvard. His parents aren't happy. Doesn't matter. He he spends uh He decides to open up like a little

29:03 Kinda like a little laboratory, kinda like dingy apartment slash laboratory. This is when I told you earlier that he just shows up at the New York Public Library's like I'm just gonna read every single thing on the subject and then begin my experiments. It says Lam began his reading with fierce energy. he planned to devour the entire literature available on the subject of polarization and to re read everything that he had already found at Norwich, his old school, and Harvard. Now this is one of the main lessons that I learned from Land. He concentrated Ferociously.

29:34 on his quest. He concentrated ferociously on his quest. He's got a ton. Of fantastic quotes. One of my favorite quotes is this important and I think it's really important today because we're there's this uh we live in the age of not only infinite leverage, we live in the age of infinite distraction. And the people that are gonna be able to focus and concentrate are g it's gonna be essentially like a superpower. That are just given to distraction after distraction. So Edwin Land said, and this is so important, I feel like tattooing it on my head, for God's sake. My whole life has been spent trying to teach people that intense concentration for hour after hour.

30:10 Can bring out in people. Resources they didn't know they had. Це поу ідея ес іс. Факт та бук. Uh I c I keep this quote from uh the book, uh one of the biographies at Open Land, uh it's called Instant Image, another super old book. That was founders number one thirty two. But there's a quote in that book that I screenshot it and I keep that folder in that folder on my phone where I just constantly r uh like go back to if I wanna like um like review and remember things.

30:38 And it's very simple, like how important it is like among all the components of land's intellectual arsenal. The chief one Seems to be simple concentration. And so what he's trying to do is he's trying to invent the world's first polarizer. This is the very first Like his very first patent, his very first invention, you could argue this is like the foundation of the entire Polaroid company for the next fifty years. He just constantly tries to apply this idea and this technology in different products. Now

31:04 He's now he's starting to hire other people. I need to bring something to your attention'cause it's just remarkable. One of the people he hires is Terry. known as Terry. Th he's gonna wind up being married to her for sixty one years. But at this point they don't have a lot of money, they don't really have any equipment.

31:19 So he is going to break into the laboratory at Columbia University. So it says before long Carrie was accompanying him on nocturnal visits to a laboratory building at Columbia University. They climbed up a fire escape and went through a window that was usually left unlocked. There, for a few hours each night, Land had clandestine access to well equipped laboratory. What jumped out to me rereading this for the second time is think about these are just the the founders that came off the top of my head. These are other founders who also broke into places to use equipment necessary for their work.

31:53 George Lucas. Bill Gates And John Carmack. They did the exact same thing. As

32:00 What Edwin Land is doing here, and I think. Bill Gates and John Carmack are the only ones that got caught. So from seventeen until twenty he's working on inventing this polarizer. I'm pretty sure he he gets it done. And then he makes the at this point, I know he definitely gets it done, but I couldn't remember if it occurs after he goes back to Harvard. Or before. I think it happened before. So he goes back to Harvard at twenty.

32:22 This is really important that this happens because he's gonna meet his first business partner This guy named Will Wright. And Wheelwright is actually going to be his instructor. So says Uh, Lan had the ability to charm anyone who interested in him. He and Wheelwright had much in common. Neither was an awe

32:37 Both had left on their own for an extended period to prove something to themselves and perhaps to their parents. They were brilliant, excited by science, unconventional and filled with energy. Land was the brightest student in the course called Electricity and Magnetism, the brightest by far Will Wright had said. So Will Wright is Land's instructor in that course.

32:58 And so it's through that course they wind up becoming friends, they wind up collaborating a lot, and then this is the beginning of what will eventually turn into Polaroid. Uh they had developed a habit of taking long walks, talking in the dark, trying ideas out on each other. You know Din, so every either people called Land either Doctor Land. Or Din. He w preferred if you if he knew you well to call him Din, that was a childhood nickname. No one called him Edwin. You know, Din, I think you should have a real laboratory.

33:23 Why don't you and I start one? I have some money and I can fund it. There was no response. So t that's another thing about Lance personality. You would talk to him. And people just he's he would think about what you're saying.

33:36 And so it's not like a back and forth conversation. It's like there might be five minutes of silence. And you're like, d is this guy ignoring me? No, he's thinking about what you're saying. So it says there was no response. Din, how about starting our own lab? We'll write repeated. And Land said.

33:49 An education without a degree. That's the way he thought about starting his own company, his own laboratory. Obviously they're not starting a laboratory just to do science. They want some physical like Edison, they want a physical manifestation of what they're inventing. Something that they can sell Like a product. Uh that that can actually make people's lives better. So the idea is like, oh, I think about this as an education without a degree, which is really a great way to think about it, right? And this also demonstrates that Edwin Lan had an inner scorecard.

34:18 Lan left Harvard for the second and last time. He was one seместе. of completing the requirements for graduation. So this entire time, Land has been publicizing like his scientific findings and the results of his experiments. And because they're so revolutionary, they wind up getting a lot of attention. So he becomes pretty famous even when he was in his twenties.

34:38 And this winds up being the main asset because they're still trying to figure out okay how can we turn the scientific into a product because of his like notoriety and his fame. there's a lot of people trying to like either recruit them to the research department of their cup l large company, uh, like doing an aqua hire for the land wheelwright laboratories, or maybe even saying, Hey, why don't you dedicate your uh your talents to academia. And so Land goes and meets with people and talks to people, but this exchange between him and his partner reveals

35:08 In my opinion. Land's obsessive personality. Lan's growing reputation as a bright and unconventional scientist was their chief stock and trade. Willwright was increasingly worried that Lan might be lured away. When Lan returned from one of the visits to this this place, Wilwright confronted his partner. One of their research people told me that you want to work there.

35:28 George. Lan replied. I told you what it's like. They start at eight o'clock and work until four thirty. Then everything shuts down and they all go home.

35:37 They don't work on Saturdays or Sundays. They keep telling me I should work for them. Well, do you want to? Of course not. How would I get anything done?

35:47 So the young company's main focus is this idea that land has to remove headlight glare from automobiles, right? But in the meantime They need to find a way to get cash into the company ASAP. And so this is where we see that land his entire life. He like even though he's considered like a recluse and an introvert. He's a gift showman and he's really gifted at the product demo. So it says the two entrepreneurs have been examining every possibility they could imagine, looking for a simple consumer product that would provide them with an income.

36:14 Sufficient enough to allow them to pursue the automotive headlight project. And so they realize that polarizers, if they you apply them to sunglasses, you have a product that is not only one inexpensive, but also better than anything else on the market. So they a w uh they arrange a meeting with the largest manufacturer of sunglasses in America at the time it was called the American Optical Optical Company. And so Lan decides to have this.

36:40 uh meeting this product demonstration at a hotel hi researches where the son would be at the time of the meeting gets a room that is in the right location and brings upstairs this fish bowl with goldfish in it. And so this is what Lan was thinking and then a description of this very successful product demonstration. Lan did not want to talk about manufacturing techniques and specifications and prices and quantities. He didn't want a negotiation, he wanted a victory.

37:06 He wanted surrender. He wanted applause. And the way he figured out how to achieve those goals is like as soon as the representatives from the American optical company come into the room, they need to understand within a few seconds the value that my product provides. So it says the three men walked into a room filled with blinding sunlight.

37:25 As they squinted, Lan said in a pleasant voice, I apologize for the glare. I imagine you can't even see the fish. Here. Look through this.

37:34 Land gave each a square of polarizer. As they face the window. The glare vanished. There was the bowl on the window sill. The goldfish.

37:44 We're swimmers serenely. This is what your new sunglasses will be made of, said Land. It's called Polaroid. So the company takes the name of their first product. These are gonna be called the Polaroid Day glasses. They were extremely popular. Polaroid winds up selling more than a million pairs in nineteen thirty nine.

38:01 And so with some initial traction they're like, Hey, we need to go raise some money. George Wheelwright, so that's Edwin Land's partner, his dad had actually gone to Harvard with JP Morgan. So there's a hilarious story in every book that I've read about Edwin Land, when Edwin Land meets JP Morgan. So they set up a meeting. It was just after Uh there was a uh famous uh bomb attack on Wall Street. uh in nineteen thirty six.

38:25 And so Wheelwright and Land are gonna show up at JP Morgan's Office. And it says uh we turned up Armed with all sorts of strange looking packages to show Mr Morgan. We walked in the door of his office and were greeted by four men with shotguns.

38:41 So they have this meeting with JP Morgan. It doesn't talk about it in this book, but in other another book I read from Land. They have JP saying, Hey, listen I'm too old to understand this stuff. Let me direct you at some of my colleagues. So he introduces them to people like Avril Harriman, people investing uh some of the Rockefeller's family's money. And so these investors help them organize into a company.

39:01 they give Edwin Land complete control of the company f uh for ten years and then they they decide to just rename the company the Polaroid Corporation. And this was happening in nineteen thirty seven. And the date nineteen thirty seven is important because it wasn't until nineteen forty seven. That land actually does the product demonstration for the very first instant camera.

39:21 And so I want to fast forward to right before World War Two because I think this is really important. You have people that are ex incredibly smart, incredibly dedicated. They have A number of patents, they have a bunch of inventions that the world has never seen before, and yet they still have not achieved business success. And the reason this is important to know is because it's very likely that they would have been out of business If it wasn't for this navy contract at the very beginning of World War Two, so it says nothing told land that he had yet built a business that could survive, let alone grow. They had solid polarizer technology. They could manufacture the sheet reliably and in quantity. They had gathered a suburbally talented group of scientists. They had learned a lot about a lot of businesses. The automobile business, the new V business, the optical goods businesses, the lighting business. These are all businesses they tried to sell into, okay?

40:09 Yet, though Land would not admit it. The only business they had mastered was the publicity business. So at the end of year party in 1940, he calls the entire Polaroid group together. It's about two hundred people at this time, and he says the world was engulfed in war, the United States was not in it yet, but it would be within it would be in the war within a year. The Navy had offered Polaroid a research and development contract. Polaroid would devote its Principal energies. And this is so important.

40:39 What he did not tell them Воз за де Уніда Стайць НАВІ. had saved the company. So he scales up from you know 200, 250 employees all the way to thirteen hundred. You know, they eight do eight times, ten times their revenue, but this he knows it's only gonna be this war's not gonna last forever. I have a short window here.

40:56 And on the other side of this war. I don't have any con product I can sell to consumers. I have to invent my way out of this problem. And so the like founding myth of the Polaroid camera comes when he's on a short vacation in Santa Fe, New Mexico with his family. He's going around for a walk uh says land and his three year old daughter Jennifer turned from a walk around the town carrying his camera. They had taken pictures and talks about you know take a picture of his his daughter of the scenery. And as they sat down, his little daughter asked, Why can't I see them now? Land had no answer to the question.

41:29 their time together was cut short as he rose abruptly. He asked her his daughter to look for her mother, and he set out walking again alone Uh his head full of chaotic notions tumbling one after another. His mind was now a world. Jennifer's innocent query was the epitome of a Landian question. So this is something that pops up over and over again in the books when you study Edwin Land. This is the definition of what they consider a landing question. It took nothing for granted, except that no common knowledge, and

41:58 tested the cliche and treated conventional wisdom as an oxymoron. Remember Peter's job interview at the very beginning of this podcast where it's like listen, he doesn't take he doesn't he thin to it for himself, takes n like doesn't believe in co uh conventional wisdom and won't believe it until he's actually done the experiment himself. So it's like He accepts no common knowledge, he tests the cliche, and he treats conventional wisdom as an oxymoron. His first thought was to wonder why he had not asked the question himself.

42:27 So it's in this night where he works out in his mind, and it just so happens his patent attorney is also in vacation. So he meets up with them, they go over everything that that land is thinking about. Over three hours to document the process. This is winds up becoming extremely important because there's an entire book. I read this book, I think it's for founders number one thirty four, it's called A Triumph of Genius. Lamb creates a technical monopoly protected by patents. That's why he has like a 60% profit margin. Kodak winds up violating the patent. So there's an entire book that I read. It's very fascinating because it focuses on this this huge patent. uh at the time the largest patent infringement case between Kodak and

43:01 Polaroid which Polaroid wins. they win the largest judgment at the time. It has since been exceeded, but it was almost a billion dollars. And they won because of Edwin Land's testimony, which is covered in that book. And something that also is helpful that Lan couldn't have known because this is, you know, thirty or forty years into the future where we're in the book, but he always Every single process. They were dedicated to documenting everything. They had signed and dated ta timestamps for all the experiments they're doing. They wanted to prove that what they were doing no one else was capable of doing and that they did it first. And that's why they deserve the patents.

43:33 And so in the field of instant photography, the the very first time they put pen to paper is this night in New Mexico. And so Land is on record saying, I can see it in my mind, now we just have to figure out how to do it. And this is what he talks about. I'm gonna just read one paragraph, but really I'm gonna read the note I left myself first because I think this is very fascinating. It says the very practical reason. why you should keep learning and keep collecting experiences. You will use the knowledge for an opportunity far into the future. One that you can not sett. And Lan describes that perfectly. Three years of work. lay ahead of him, but he knew, he was sure he knew that what had to be done. And that's a direct quote from Land.

44:11 What is hard to convey in anything short of a thick book is the years of rich experience that were compressed into those three years. So he's talking about the three years it took them for them to create the actual product so they can sell it. It was as if all w that we had done in learning to make polarizers, the knowledge of plastics. The preparation of microscopic crystals smaller than the lengt wavelength of light, the laminating of plastic sheets. He's just describing a series of experiments and the knowledge derived from those experiences that he was do doing doing for the previous two decades, okay? Had been a school and a preparation both for that first day in which I suddenly knew how to make a one step dry photographic process. So the invention of an instant photography camera is the way you think about that. And for the following three years in which we made The very vivid dream

45:00 Into a solid reality. Again, that is a very practical reason why you should keep learning, keep collecting experiences. You're gonna use that knowledge for an opportunity you can't even see yet. So then they go into the detail of how to build the camera. A lot of the stuff I wanna skip over, but The important part is that there's a main theme that just reappears over and over again in history of entrepreneurship, and that is the need for speed. They all move incredibly fast.

45:26 And one way to go fast is to have tight feedback loops. So his main assistant on this project is this uh woman named Doxie Muller. And this is the tight feedback loop. Each day Doxie Moller's telephone rang at six thirty a.m. sharp. Lan gave her his critique of the previous day's work and outlined her tasks for the current day. So Doxie's gonna get this call at six thirty before she leaves at night. She she summarizes every single experiment, everything they that the lab has done in this regard.

45:52 Lan will wind him reading these pages at like midnight, the guy doesn't sleep, or he like tapes takes naps throughout the day. Like you'll find him in um in his office sleeping in the chair for like two hours. And he'll just go for like sixty hours at a time. He's insane. So anyways he he's reading these reports at like let's say midnight the the the night before. Figures out what he wants to do the next day. calls her at six thirty and then that feedback loop. There is not a single day that they're going to waste. They can't. They're gonna go out of business if they don't figure this out. Before she went home, she wrote up her day's report for the SX seventy research filed.

46:21 Land expected it on his desk that evening with any sample pictures clipped to it. Lan lay in his reclining chair alone at midnight, studying each one like the fragment of a treasure map. And so the entire development process of this project. You can think of land just constantly finding different ways to push the pace. This is what I'm reading to is like spread out over multiple, multiple pages. Okay. So this is how he he he he talks about you need to work with a sense of urgency. And he's like, listen, it is taking a big chance. But there's a possibility that the Navy contracts will be canceled. In any case, now that the war is over, we have to develop another business as fast as we can.

46:55 It will be a race. A close race. If we win. We survive. A race to finish the camera before we run out of money.

47:04 So they're having a conversation, there's another executive named Bill And he says, You know, I'm gonna call this guy tomorrow morning and Lan says no. Call them tonight. And so this goes on for a while, even with Lan pushing the pace, even with Lan working seven days a week, he gets He understands d the note I left myself on this page is very fascinating. It's says burn the boats.

47:23 A lesson on human nature. So Lan would do what he's about to do here several times throughout his career, and his employees hated it, but it winds up working. Everything seemed to Lan to be moving with maddening slowness. He decided to light a fire that in fact he might not be able to eventually control. The winter meeting of the Optical Society of America had been announced for february twenty first, nineteen forty seven. Land told his employees at Polaroid that they would disclose the camera system in New York on that day. They were appalled by the audacity of even considering a date.

47:58 For a public demonstration. So in other words, the people that know how far along they have intimate knowledge how far along the product development and the project is going, and they're appalled that you're even considering that. Lan calm their apprehension by describing it as an occasion to present a scientific paper. His associates did not believe that he would limit the presentation to just a paper and he knew it. In truth, Land's plan extended well beyond the scientific paper. He is literally burning the boats. He knew how daunting were the hundreds of interlocking problems Polaroid faced. The survival imperative of the company was clear and present to them all. They had no alternative but to succeed with the camera. Everyone left at Polaroid knew that.

48:40 At the present rate of decline, the business, the company, and their jobs would not survive nineteen forty seven. Lan held on to this date. As a weapon available for use against his own people. Includes When their efforts slowed as he knew they would, that is why I wrote this is a lesson on human nature.

49:03 even committed men and women flagged. They needed an additional stimulus. Sometimes survival wasn't a sharp enough goad. Public exposure could be compelling, even terrifying. His people were all his people were all capable of more than they knew. Lan would prepare the paper, but there would be much more on the night of the twenty first. They would succeed. They would overcome nature.

49:26 They would Be ready. So they get the camera finished. They can barely make any of them. They're like, we need to start selling them immediately. Remember, they need money. They're going to go out of business. So they make fifty-six. Okay. And they have this fantastic uh

49:39 product demonstration. I've just I've explained it on a few other podcasts, but just in case you haven't listened to it listened to those yet. They're like, Hey, we're gonna start in one department store, it's Jordan Marsh's in Boston. and they're gonna do they just do a product demo. So the you know two guys from Polaroid show up. They have fifty I think they have fifty six cameras and then one Dis like demo model, if I'm not mistaken. Okay.

50:00 And they wind up like standing up on uh like the counter and saying, Hey, look what we're doing. And just like the same response that the reporters and everybody at the demonstration where they gasp like please do this again. Anytime you would demonstrate instant photography, in the in the case they start doing it in Jordan Marsh, they do this all over the country in all different uh uh in all different like retailers and all different events. The public's response was always the same. They're like, How did you do that? I want it immediately. So they're gonna wind up selling Let me just read this because this is Land's outrageous prediction for the first year sales.

50:33 And so Lan is talking to the people that are going to the department store the next day. This is the day after Thanksgiving. How many cameras are going to Jordan's tomorrow? asked Lan. Fifty six, but obviously we won't need that many. And so the people I'm saying hey, we're bringing fifty six. We're not gonna need that many, there's no way we're gonna sell that.

50:48 Land said. He didn't believe that. He's like, Well, the salesman may need them all. And then the response from his employees. Well, they'll need them all eventually. Hopefully we sell out by Christmas. They don't sell out by Christmas. They sell out in a few hours. People like clamor. There's like f shoving matches. They're like just I'll take the demo if I have uh if you have it. Like I'll just give me and like they were so

51:10 Blown away. By the ability to take a picture and immediately see it that they sold out. In an instant. That is not really the reason I'm talk telling you this, though. Because what's the it's the juxtaposition between

51:21 Lands thinking. And his employees, right? They're like, Oh, you know, Lance like they're probably gonna need them all, they may need them all. They're like, Oh, hopefully we sell it by Christmas. And then they're like, Well, how many they have this discussion. This is the night before the product demonstration. And Lan just comes out and says he's like I think we can actually sell fifty thousand cameras in the first year.

51:39 And it says the grandeur of that statement. Set them both off so At the same time, I'm reading this book, I'm reading Insist in the Only Impossible. I'm also reading Instant, the story of Polaroid. That is going to be the next podcast. In instant the story of Polaroid. there's data that's not in the book that I'm holding in my hand. They do tell the same story where it's like, oh he said fifty thousand and people are like this guy's freaking crazy. Lance like is he a g like there's a thin line between genius and crazy, right? We must be working for uh an insane person.

52:07 he actually underestimated. If I'm not mistaken, they sell nine hundred thousand cameras in five years. Think about how remarkable that is. You're on the precipice of bankruptcy if you don't get this done. Your company, the company you you've been working for twenty years is gone. You go from that low point, that valley.

52:27 To within five years. selling almost a milion a million cameras And because you've invented the industry that you're operating in. It's not like okay, if any you have if anybody else sees somebody selling a million of anything, they'll jump in and compete. You literally can't jump in because he's Patent. Everything.

52:45 And so not only are you selling a million, you're going from nothing, almost the precipice of bankruptcy, to selling a million units of your product, but you're selling them and the film at excessively high profit margins. So then we skip ahead to where Peter discovers Polaroid. Okay, this is uh several this almost a decade later.

53:04 They're hugely successful. Let's pick that up. He says he was told, so the Peter is told by friends, hey, you should look into working at Polaroid. Peter was really gifted at advertising promotion. He loved he says, look, I just like selling things. I like adding up the store the score. That's what he was interested in. And so his friends are like, They're in Boston. He's like you've got to go check out this Crazy company. It's like a one-on-one and it's run by this crazy genius. Polaroid was a huge company in my eyes, with annual sales of 65 million dollars in the photography business and the sunglass business. The two didn't the two industries didn't seem very closely related, except that they were both consumer products. The company was run by a genius named Land. So that is the reputation.

53:45 That Peter is being told by his friends. And so Peter is wandering around all the offices of Polaroid, he's getting ready for that job interview. That He wasn't even expecting it to be a job interview that I read at the very beginning. I just want to point out one thing because I think this is extremely important. So he walks around, he he stumbles into like this giant library. He's like, What the hell's going on here? And so the guest, the host that's about to introduce him to his interviewer says

54:08 Uh Peter says, I was looking at the library. And the guy says, It's the company library. Land has a thing about libraries. We've always had a company library as long as there's been a company. He has a collection of photographic books in his own office.

54:21 All cataloged to the central card file. There are two Full time librarians here. And I just want to pause here'cause this is a very important idea that pops up over and over again. If you even just Forget going through all the two hundred and seventy something books that you and I have covered on the podcast so far, right? Let's just talk about the people that in the last like two months.

54:40 This I entrepreneurs need a library. You probably have one. whether it's on your phone whether it's a collection of books, whatever it is, this the the constant building and accumulation of books over your entire lifetime should never stop until you die. It pops up over and over again. Dhawk Uh founder of Visa. talked about on the podcast I just with him, he had five thousand books. Uh Ben Franklin, the one I did on him and George Washington, he had four thousand books. Uh Bob Dylan talks about his that in a huge part of his Autobiography is him

55:10 First he didn't have money exploring his friend's library. J P Morgan, Jol, John D Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Rick Rubin, Bill Gates. Larry Ellison, Edwin Land, Steve Jobs, they all had an extensive library that they utilized. It is a tool for an entrepreneur. There's several examples in this book where Lan is thinking about a problem. He goes to the library and tries to like I remember reading about this and goes and finds it. In fact, before I started recording, I was rereading over past highlights. Uh this morning.

55:36 And I came across something I had forgotten, and it comes from the autobiography of or excuse me, the biog the biography of Fred Smith, the founder of FedEx. This was the book I covered all the way back on episode number one fifty one. Fred Smith created one of the most difficult if you listen to that podcast, you already know this, and if you read the book, you know it even more. He created one of the most difficult Federal Express was one of the most difficult Businesses to create In history.

56:00 And what was remarkable is as he's building it, he's building it in the nineteen seventies and nineteen eighties, Fred is reading Four hours a day. while he is building his company. Says Smith estimated that throughout the eighties he spent at least four hours a day reading. He found he relied quite heavily on his own vision backed by assimilating information from many different disciplines all at once. So this quote I'm about to reach you from Fred Smith It's describing why In the midst of building his company, one of the most difficult businesses to build

56:28 Ever. He's thinking it's a smart idea to read four hours a day. And he says the common trait of people who supposedly have vision is that they spend a lot of time reading and gathering information, and then they synthesize it until they come up with an idea. So again, if I read something, right, I spend my day, I sp I read every day. For this podcast. If I come across these the these ideas that pop up over and over and over again, and the people don't know each other, they work in different industries, they existed in different parts of the world, and at different points in human history, and yet they're doing the same things, I am obligated. to bring that to your attention.

57:01 Entrepreneurs should have their own library. Okay, moving on. What is even more remarkable. Is okay, you can have these excessive hours he had when you were seventeen. Excessive hours when he's thirty seven.

57:12 uh on the precipice of you know going out of b uh bankruptcy. He never relented. This is many years later. We're in nineteen sixty two. This is how how more on how Lan worked. Lan was sleeping in his lounge chair, his feet elevated. An old blanket pulled up under his chin. When I opened the door to his office, he had been working into a until a few hours earlier in the laboratory. He and a team of twelve had put in eighteen hours uninterrupted.

57:34 eighteen hours interrupted only for tea Cookies and lamb chops. Land believed in feeding the brain. A lab to technician might occasionally faint from exhaustion.

57:46 But never from hunger. Lan hated to stop working. He is a man obsessed. Once begun on a course of action, he wanted to experiment until the hypothesis was proved. He would not entertain the assumption that his hypothesis might be disprovable until and unless It was actually disproved. He worked like a predator. Stocking a solution with perpetual patience and perpetual energy.

58:11 His intuitive leaps had landed him on the neck of his prey. too often for him not to believe that he could do it. The next time and the time after that. Although his assistants this paragraph is gonna remind me of Jeff Bezos in the early days of Amazon, and I'll tell you why in one second, although his assistants were sometimes more than twenty years younger than him, he regularly worked them to exhaustion and continued with fresh replacements for hours longer. Many of them had graduated with no scientific background.

58:39 Lan proved many times over that a bright young liberal arts student could learn the routines of the laboratory and the structure of a scientific discipline as rapidly as applicants with technical experience. He liked the fact that his students had little to unlearn But he did not tolerate corner cutting or sloppiness. So this idea where he's working so hard. They're tiring out, they're f they're passing out. Then he just gets in new recruits.

59:05 There is a line in Jeff Be Jeff Bezos' uh biography that says if you're not good Jeff will chew you up and spit you out. And if you're good. He will jump on your back. and ride you into the ground.

59:18 So thirty years after the invention of the first instant photography camera. they create the S X seventy, which is considered the best, like the the fruition of Lan's dream as he saw it thirty years earlier. when he when his three year old daughter asked, Hey, why can't I see the picture right now? So it was this constant iterative improvement for thirty years. I just want to bring something to your attention because this happens over and over again. Like humans are really bad at predicting the future. And that includes like we sometimes think that the market is smaller than it actually is.

59:46 And so at this point in career in his career, Peter is made head of marketing. The previous head of marketing is like oh you know I'm gonna leave Polaroid. I think we've saturated the market He did like a this this market analysis. He's like, Okay we could only at the very most, based of the population and how many people have already bought cameras and how many people are just not interested in buying cameras. At most.

1:00:06 We're gonna sell. eight million more cameras in total. And Land didn't believe that and Peter didn't believe that at all. And he says when I took over the marketing reigns Uh we sold three point six million cameras that year. The next year we sold four point six million four point six million cameras. We sold remember this guy thought We're we're at the top of the market.

1:00:25 eight million total, that's all we could do. We sold between four and nine millian polar cameras a year every year. For the next ten years. without reaching market saturation. From this evolved two theories. First, Edwin Land was correct to ignore conventional wisdom. He was teaching the American public that the Polaroid camera was not a lifetime acquisition But an evolving idea.

1:00:47 An ongoing adventure. an exploration of technology. So you would buy one They Polarite had like this cult following. You'd buy one. Three years later you realize oh there's another Like they've they've made it a little better.

1:00:59 So you buy another one. Even without getting in many cases not even getting rid of the first one. And so in many cases some some of these people would have some of these fans of Polaroid would have five, six, eight different cameras. And so the idea, it's like it's not a lifetime acquisition. You don't buy one and you're done. It's an evolving idea and ongoing adventure and exploration of technology. Second, we knew with considerable certainty that amateur owned cameras had an average life of three years. Thus if we continue to change camera designs every three to four years, the pattern would continue. So now I want to tell you how Edwin Land was similar to Walt Disney. The SX seventy.

1:01:35 had at Land's insistence. Covered it was covered in leather. And nobody wanted to put leather on a camera.'Cause it's kind of a pain in the ass. It's difficult. But Land thought It w it plastic wasn't good enough. So it says this was so typical of land.

1:01:49 To insist that the camera be covered in leather. Not a leather look alike plastic. But real leather. Expensive, hard to handle. Difficult to bond to the surface of the camera body.

1:02:00 But it smelled good and it felt good. Land had an instinct for packaging. He listened to all the arguments about the cost of Being three dollars a camera more with leather. And then he overrode them.

1:02:12 And he was right. So when I re read that part. Since the first time I read this book. I read this fantastic book. It's a biography of Walt Disney, but it focuses on If you ask Walt Disney at the end of his life what he was most proud of, he didn't mention cartoons

1:02:25 Animation, nothing. He said he was most proud of the fact that He was able to keep control of his company'cause he lost control of his first company, right? And the second thing that he was most proud of was Disneyland.

1:02:37 He thought Disneyland was his greatest achievement. And Disney's Land, the book that I covered on uh episode number one fifty eight. It's all about all the process that went into building Walt's greatest life's greatest achievement, right? And there's just a paragraph. It's so funny how you never know.

1:02:52 Like you just r like what you read. You read four hundred pages and there just should be a sentence or a paragraph that just somehow launches onto your brain and never leaves. And this is an example of of that where There's a an insane amount of pressure.

1:03:07 That that Walt Disney's under. Uh he's got a deadline just like Land had a deadline, running out of money. Nothing's on time. But he's gonna open regardless. And there's this interaction between Walt Disney and one of his employees that I've never forgotten. I'm gonna read from the book Disney's Land.

1:03:23 Uh, it's a fantastic book. It's written by Richard Snow. highly recommend reading it. They were among the first of the park's attractions to be finished. So they are There's the stage coaches. That Him that Walt and one of his employees

1:03:36 Or working on. And this employee makes the mistake of trying to get Walt to compromise on quality, which Edwin Land would not. And obviously Walt Disney's not going to either. They were among the first of the parks' attractions to be finished, but the pressure of time was already weighing on everyone. One day John Hench stopped by to check the progress of the stagecoaches and had an idea which he brought to his boss. Why don't we just leave the leather straps off, Walt

1:03:58 The people are never going to appreciate All the close up detail. Disney refused and treated Hench to a tart little lecture. You're being a poor communicator. People are okay.

1:04:10 Don't you ever forget that. They will respond to it. And they will appreciate it. Hench didn't argue. And he said,

1:04:18 We put the best damn leather straps on that stagecoach. you've ever seen. That is a point that came up in conversation the other day that I was having with a friend of mine. Behind every single great Long lasting company.

1:04:30 The Disney's. The Apples, the Rolls Royces, the Ferraris. You had somebody like that, the founder. Was like that. Unrelenting refusing to compromise on quality.

1:04:44 even on parts where one it was impossible for the customer to see or unlikely. For the customer to see. And then I want to pull out Edwin Lance. Deep belief. In the individual capacity

1:04:57 of greatness. And I think what he says here really speaks to why Founders are so important. He extolled the importance of the individual's contribution. Ptolemy. Copernicus, Galileo.

1:05:08 Newton. Faraday. Maxwell. Einstein. Rather than science as a group effort.

1:05:14 This is a direct quote from Edwin Land. There is something warm and appealing and cozy. About this picture of the human race marching forward, locked arm in arm and mind to mind. There are insecure people in life to whom this vision of progress by phalanx brings comfort and strength. But I for one

1:05:32 Think this is nonsense. Socially And nonsense scientifically. I think human beings in in the mass are fun at square dances, exciting to be with in the theater audience, and thrilling to cheer with at the Cal California Stanford Or Harvard Yale games. А та сам там.

1:05:50 I think Веде ось санс Or within science. There is no such thing as group originality. our group creativity

1:05:59 Or group. Percipicity. So I had to look up that other word percipicity. We understand he's saying this and there's no such thing as uh group originality, group creativity, that makes sense. So percipicity is the quality of having a ready insight into things. Shrewdness.

1:06:14 So saying there's no such thing as group shrewdness or group insight either. I believe wholeheartedly in the individual capacity for greatness. Profundity. And originality are attributes of a single If not singular mind. So profundity, I had to look up that word as well. That means deep insight.

1:06:33 Great depth of knowledge or thought. And originality. Are attributes of a single mind. And then the book ends with this meeting between Peter And Edwin Land.

1:06:46 Uh Edwin Land's house and it's absolutely fantastic. Lane was asleep. He was talking to me, and he fell asleep at the end of his sentence. His eyes closed.

1:06:56 For a moment I thought. But then they stayed closed. I sat quietly and looked at him. He was no longer chairman of the board. Chief Executive Officer.

1:07:04 President. Chief operating officer. our director of research. He had resigned and retired. He had sold his stock.

1:07:12 His last tie with Polaroid was a contract which guaranteed That the office and study that he had occupied for forty years would be his for the rest of his life. I had left as well. He in August and I in October. I didn't have to ask him if he had regrets.

1:07:29 He didn't have to ask me. We had both been at Polaroid for too long. Land for all of his life. I for twenty four years. But of course, I told myself.

1:07:38 The point is that only change is unchanging. We both had a longer ride than most people get. Lan ran his company longer than any of America's great business leaders. Longer than Thomas Edison. Longer than Henry Ford.

1:07:52 Longer than George Eastman. Giving it up had been the hardest thing he had done in his life. It had been an emotional trauma that engulfed everyone near him. None of us escaped. We watched as Lan tore himself away from the most important thing in his life.

1:08:08 The lines in his face were deeper than they had been. His silences lasted longer. His eyes more often focused inward. He accomplished this surgery on himself as he did most things. In his own personal

1:08:22 Unexpected and passionate way. He had written something in one of the annual reports in the seventies that was hovering in the back of my mind. But I couldn't bring it forward. In nineteen forty, he had been named one of the national modern pioneers. It was a singular honor.

1:08:37 He was thirty one. He had worked without ceasing. without deviating for fourteen years since boyhood. To become what? A pioneer.

1:08:47 was as good his name as I could put to it. He wanted to create new things. The polarizer and the instant camera would remain the best known. But perhaps his most original invention had been his company. It was no less the product of a conscious process of experimentation and insight.

1:09:04 And repeated failure. and creation and ultimate success than had been the other inventions. In the slow of the depression. He was already shaping the idea. Of a new sort of corporation whose characteristics were so unusual.

1:09:19 As to be bizarre. And almost ludicrous. At the time when steel companies, automobile factories, and textile mills were slowing to a halt. Spilling workers into the streets. He was talking and thinking and writing

1:09:34 About a company founded on science. That would design new products not imagined by the public. Which would be attracted to the products because they filled an unperceived need. He wanted a company to create an environment for art. At a time when many were worried about meeting the next payroll.

1:09:53 He talked about a company where the work life would be so satisfying that workers would look forward to the day beginning And regret its end. While sweatshops were in their heyday. And unions fought to establish basic rights on the job. These were the ravings of a pioneer.

1:10:11 Land opened his eyes. He looked into me. I had the feeling of being examined. Interviewed. You were asleep, Din, I said.

1:10:20 I was a little concerned. Nonsense. I was resting my eyes for a moment. Why would you think I was asleep? Well, I spoke to you and you didn't answer.

1:10:30 I was thinking. He smiled. There's nothing more refreshing than thinking for a few minutes With your eyes closed. I suppose that's how you survived all those board meetings, I said.

1:10:41 I rose to take my leave. Didn't What was it you wrote in one of your shareholder letters about the future? About the past. In the future.

1:10:51 I can't bring it to mind. The smile disappeared. He brought it to mind instantly. The present. Is the past

1:10:59 Biting into the future. Why do you ask? And that is where I'll leave it. Speaking about

1:11:10 The importance of entrepreneurs building out a library. Every entrepreneur's library, I think, needs to have at least one. I have what, four or five books on land. And if you're only gonna have one book or a book to start with, I would start with this. If you buy the book using the link that's in the show notes, you'll be supporting the podcast at the same time. That is two hundred and sixty three books down. One thousand ago.

1:11:29 And I'll talk to you again soon.

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