Annotations (19)
“We were based in Washington, DC, and by being based in Washington, we were out of the gunfire of people in New York who would've said, 'You don't have investment banking background. You're not qualified.' Secondly, by being based in Washington, I could recruit people who wanted to stay in Washington or be connected to somebody in Washington. Third, I came up with an idea, was kind of my idea, that sort of worked, which is to say this.”— David Rubenstein
p. 9
Business & Entrepreneurship · Strategy & Decision Making · Operations & Execution
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Three advantages: geographic escape, multiple funds, shared infrastructure
“The most effective speeches like Teddy Roosevelt's are speeches which do not promise to do anything. They are not speeches which list legislation. They are not ones that have the word I. Let me take three famous speeches. The Kennedy Inaugural Address, the Martin Luther King I Have a Dream speech, and the Gettysburg Address. In those speeches they basically don't use the word I virtually at all. They all end with the use of the phrase, God, at the end.”— David Rubenstein
p. 22
Leadership & Management · Psychology & Behavior
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Five patterns: no promises, no I, theme-driven, brevity, inspirational
“Many of the great fortunes are made because people observe that government has developed a policy, had a policy or has a new policy that will encourage one industry versus another industry. Don't think of almost any company. They're probably going to take advantage of something the government has done to make it possible for them to do what they've done. Take Amazon as an example. Amazon's biggest profits really are not from selling books over the internet or anything over the internet.”— David Rubenstein
p. 10
Strategy & Decision Making · Business & Entrepreneurship · History & Geopolitics
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Government contracts create credibility and market validation
“I tried to focus on what I knew best. I didn't really have the investment skills as a background. I didn't go to business school. I was a lawyer. So, I brought in people actually knew what they were doing about investing. And so, I let them take care of that. And I decided to figure out what was my comparative advantage. And it was that I was willing to go on the road and raise money and ask people for money. I was willing to go recruit people. I was pretty good at convincing people to join us.”— David Rubenstein
p. 8
Strategy & Decision Making · Leadership & Management · Business & Entrepreneurship
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Focus on comparative advantage, defer on weaknesses
“I have four standards for my philanthropy. Number one, start something that wouldn't otherwise get started. Second, I try to finish something that otherwise wouldn't get finished. Third, I try to find something I'm going to have an intellectual interest in so that I'm willing to be involved not just by writing a check, but being involved on the board or other ways. It's my view that philanthropy is derived from an ancient Greek word that means loving humanity.”— David Rubenstein
p. 20
Leadership & Management · Strategy & Decision Making
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Four standards: start new, finish incomplete, intellectual interest, visible progress
“Oprah said to me, when I interviewed her, 'Look, I'm not a great interviewer. I'm a good listener. A really good listener.' And she's right. To be a good interviewer, you have to listen to what the person says and then play off of it. When the FBI comes by and does a background interview of me for somebody else, the FBI will typically have a checklist of 12 questions. You could say in response to question number three, 'The person's actually an ax murderer, and I know where they bury the bodies.”— David Rubenstein
p. 7
Leadership & Management · Psychology & Behavior
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Listening means playing off responses not following checklist
“I have a tortoise and hare theory, that if you're really a hare and you're great in high school, you might peter out and you might say, 'I don't need to work so hard.' I've often gone back and tried to find out these things, because surprisingly it's very rare to have somebody to be a great student leader, a great person in the middle part of their career, and then in the latter part of their career, they're still a great leader. In my high school, there were 1500 people in my class.”— David Rubenstein
p. 5
Psychology & Behavior · Leadership & Management
DUR_ENDURING
Early dominance often leads to complacency
“Jeff Bezos went to Baker & Taylor and asked if he could rent their bibliography of books in print, because he was going to sell books over the internet. Our guy said, 'No, we want cash.' And we ultimately agreed to $100,000 a year for five years. When I heard about all this, about two years into Amazon's existence, I flew out to meet Jeff and said, 'Look, I think we would take some startup capital now, because you're going to do well, and I think we now made a mistake. So, can we get our 20%?”— David Rubenstein
p. 9
Business & Entrepreneurship · Strategy & Decision Making
DUR_ENDURING
Preferring cash to equity in startup cost 20%
“I'm looking for people that are reasonably intelligent. Geniuses are tough to back because sometimes they get a little crazy. But reasonably intelligent, hardworking, have a vision of what they want to do. This is their life. They're putting up whatever they have in money in terms of alongside you. They are available to answer questions. They can explain what they're doing. If somebody can't explain what they're doing to me, I get nervous.”— David Rubenstein
p. 15
Business & Entrepreneurship · Strategy & Decision Making
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Six criteria: intelligence, work ethic, vision, skin in game, communication, focus
“Number one, have a vision of what you want to do. You can't just sit around in your office, say, 'I don't really want to do anything.' And all of a sudden, you're going to be a leader. Second, you got to persist. Because whatever you say you want to do, there'll be inevitable resistance to it. Because it was such a great idea, somebody would've done it already. Third, at some point in your career, as you're persisting, or maybe before you started this new idea, you have to fail.”— David Rubenstein
p. 6
Leadership & Management · Strategy & Decision Making
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Six elements: vision, persistence, failure, communication, sharing credit, rising
“What I do is I do as much research as I can. And then, I put it in my brain and I sit down and I type up what I would like to have as the questions. And then I send the question to the person. When I have the conversation, I don't use those notes. I memorize them because I wrote them. So, I know about 80, 90% of it. And then I start with the interviews, and then I listen to the people.”— David Rubenstein
p. 8
Leadership & Management · Psychology & Behavior
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Research, write, memorize, send, humor, never embarrass
“Right now, 14% of Americans cannot read past the fourth grade level. If you're functioning illiterate, which is what that definition means, if you can't read past the fourth grade level, you have no chance of succeeding in our country or in any country. We let 1.7 million people drop out of high school every year. 80% of the people in the juvenile delinquency system are functioning illiterate.”— David Rubenstein
p. 16
Culture & Society · Economics & Markets
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Literacy as bottleneck to social mobility
“Geniuses are very, very hard to manage for one thing. I've hired a few people that some people might say are geniuses, but they usually didn't work out. Geniuses are coddled for a bit by people telling them their whole life how brilliant they are. And when people tell you how brilliant you are, you believe so much in your ideas that you are maybe not going to listen to other people. You're going to be tone deaf about certain things.”— David Rubenstein
p. 15
Leadership & Management · Psychology & Behavior
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Genius coddling creates tone deafness
“The hardest thing in the world to do is raise children. Even harder than raising children is raising children if you're wealthy or famous, because we've all seen examples where that didn't result in such wonderful offspring. I tried to be a role model a bit by doing things that I think they would be proud of and try to not spoil them by giving them undue money but make sure they have a good education. As of this moment, I've never told my children, 'I'm giving you X dollars when I die.”— David Rubenstein
p. 17
Psychology & Behavior · Leadership & Management
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Five rules: role model, education not money, time priority, listen, earn not give
“When you're meeting with investors and you have investors, you have to be honest. If you make mistakes, explain it. Tell people upfront what went wrong and be honest about it. If you do a good job, don't brag about it so much and tell people how wonderful you are. People will read the material and they'll figure out you've done well, if you've actually done well. But also making people feel like they're part of a club.”— David Rubenstein
p. 13
Leadership & Management · Business & Entrepreneurship
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Three principles: honesty about mistakes, humility about success, belong not transaction
“When I was making a lot of money at Carlyle, my mother never called me and said Carlyle's making a lot of money, you're really rich and so forth and so on. When I started giving away a lot of money, she'd say, I'm really proud of what you're doing. When she passed away a few years ago, I went through all of her possessions, and the stuff that she saved, all the articles about me, were the ones where I gave away money not the things about how much money I'd made.”— David Rubenstein
p. 24
Psychology & Behavior
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Parents value giving over getting
“Everybody wants to feel that they're part of a healthy culture. Everybody wants to enjoy where they work. If you build a culture where people think that you care very much about them, you compensate them fairly, but you tell them that maybe you can make money elsewhere even more than you're making with me, but you feel like you're part of something, you enjoy going to work, you enjoy your colleagues, that can make a big difference.”— David Rubenstein
p. 12
Leadership & Management · Psychology & Behavior
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Culture and belonging beat pure compensation
“I try to maintain some humility. Trying to recognize that I wasn't gifted in many areas so I had to work harder than other people. Trying to learn from people that could be mentors or could educate me. Trying to make as many contacts as I could, because you never know who might call you up with some good idea someday or help you with a job. Many of the jobs I got, I got because I had some random contact I didn't think would lead to anything, but it ultimately did.”— David Rubenstein
p. 17
Leadership & Management · Psychology & Behavior
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Seven habits: humility, work, mentors, network, oral skills, writing, credit sharing
“Masters are people who, they didn't invent golf or they didn't invent basketball, but they perfected it in a way that almost nobody else did. And there's no one skill that anybody can say is the way to do it. But practice, practice, practice makes a big difference. To become a great master at something, you have to just give up other parts of your life and really practice it, and perfect that skill over and over and over again.”— David Rubenstein
p. 12
Psychology & Behavior · Leadership & Management
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Mastery requires sacrifice of other life areas
Frameworks (4)
Six Elements of Leadership Development
Rubenstein's Core Leadership Principles
A systematic approach to developing leadership capacity across six essential dimensions: establishing vision, building persistence, learning through failure, mastering communication, sharing credit, and rising to occasions. Each element builds on the previous, creating a comprehensive leadership development path.
Components
- Establish Clear Vision
- Build Persistence Capacity
- Learn Through Failure
- Master Communication
- Share Credit Generously
- Rise to Occasions
Prerequisites
- Willingness to be uncomfortable
- Openness to feedback
- Tolerance for ambiguity
Success Indicators
- Others voluntarily follow
- Team performs during adversity
- Credit flows to team members
Failure Modes
- Skipping steps (especially failure)
- Treating as checklist rather than development arc
- Not practicing communication
Rubenstein Interview Method
Six-Step Preparation and Execution System
A systematic approach to conducting high-quality interviews that builds trust, extracts insights, and creates value for audiences. The method emphasizes preparation, memorization, listening, and creating a safe environment for interviewees.
Components
- Deep Research
- Write and Structure Questions
- Share Questions in Advance
- Memorize Through Writing
- Listen and Adapt
- Use Humor to Relax
Prerequisites
- Curiosity about people
- Ability to write clearly
- Confidence to deviate from script
Success Indicators
- Interviewee says things they haven't said before
- Audience feedback is positive
- Interviewee feels good about the experience
Failure Modes
- Following script too rigidly
- Not doing enough research
- Making it about yourself
- Trying to embarrass interviewee
Investor Relations Triad
Three Principles for Building Long-Term Capital Relationships
A simple but comprehensive approach to managing investor relationships that builds on honesty about mistakes, humility about successes, and creating sense of belonging beyond transactional money management.
Components
- Honesty About Mistakes
- Humility About Success
- Build Belonging, Not Transactions
Prerequisites
- Genuine care for investor success
- Organizational commitment to transparency
- Systems for proactive communication
Success Indicators
- High re-up rates on new funds
- Referrals from existing investors
- Positive sentiment in downturn
Failure Modes
- Only being honest when caught
- False humility that seems calculated
- Community-building that feels forced
Six Criteria for Backing Entrepreneurs
Due Diligence Framework for Early-Stage Investing
A systematic evaluation framework for assessing entrepreneurs to back, balancing intelligence, work ethic, vision, alignment, communication ability, and focus. Notably excludes genius as a positive signal.
Components
- Reasonable Intelligence (Not Genius)
- Strong Work Ethic
- Clear Vision
- Skin in the Game
- Communication Ability
- Focused on Building
Prerequisites
- Deal flow to be selective
- Pattern recognition from prior investments
- Ability to walk away
Success Indicators
- Entrepreneurs meet all six criteria
- Red flags surface early
- Alignment is clear
Failure Modes
- Compromising on any criterion
- Being swayed by charisma
- Ignoring the genius warning
Mental Models (2)
Comparative Advantage
EconomicsFocus on what you do relatively better than others, even if you're not absolutely the best at anything. Delegate or partner on areas where others have relative advantage.
In Practice: Rubenstein describing his role division at Carlyle, focusing on fundraising and recruiting while letting partners handle investing
Demonstrated by Leg-jdr-001
Regret Minimization Framework
Decision MakingWhen facing decisions with uncertain outcomes, imagine looking back from the future and ask which choice you would regret not taking. Prioritize avoiding long-term regret over short-term discomfort.
In Practice: Rubenstein's retrospective on choosing cash over equity in Amazon, recognizing it was a decision he would regret
Demonstrated by Leg-jdr-001
Key Figures (2)
Jeff Bezos
3 mentionsFounder and CEO of Amazon
Oprah Winfrey
2 mentionsMedia Executive and Interviewer
Television host and interviewer known for connecting with audiences.
- Look, I'm not a great interviewer. I'm a good listener. A really good listener.
Key People (5)
Oprah Winfrey
(1954–)American media executive, television host, producer
Jeff Bezos
(1964–)Founder and former CEO of Amazon
John F. Kennedy
(1917–1963)35th President of the United States
Martin Luther King Jr.
(1929–1968)Civil rights leader
Abraham Lincoln
(1809–1865)16th President
Concepts (1)
Comparative Advantage
CL_ECONOMICSEconomic principle: entities should focus on activities where they have relative efficiency advantage
Synthesis
Synthesis
Migrated from Scholia