Badass business moments in history

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JulianTrueFlynn

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I've been on a bigger history binge and I like to match things up with what's going on now. There's also a lot I'm learning that I'm applying to my own work now. If you see any wrong facts on my part, I'm not a historian; but I would love if you helped me correct them.

Hoping people share more people in history, docs, whatever.

Rockefeller in his 20's fucks over the richest man in USA, Vanderbilt

While plenty of business minded people were hunting for oil all over America Rockefeller kept it G. On top of being a gangsta, Rockefeller was also obsessed with efficiency. The oil business at the time was horribly run and the amount of waste was sky high. With these issues, Rockefeller put all his money into starting an oil refinery (crude oil into kerosene).

All the way in New York we have Vanderbilt who is sitting high as the richest man in USA. He owns the majority of the railroads (back then railroads = everything).

Even though Rockefeller was making sales, he was on the brink of bankruptcy. Vanderbilt at the time heard of Rockefeller and wanted to use him to help fill all his trains in return for cheaper shipping rates.

Vanderbilt calls for Rockefeller to come to NYC to talk about shipping rates/filling cargo on trains. This could be compared to Bill Gates contacting you and saying he's got some business ideas for you. As you can imagine Rockefeller would take any deal to work with Vanderbilt.

This trip to NYC would end up being a changing moment in Rockefeller's life. Not because of the meeting but what happened before — a massive train crash killing most of the passengers. Rockefeller was only a couple minutes late for that train, if he boarded his life would have ended there.

Rockefeller being an incredibly religious man did not take this lightly, and instead saw it as a sign from God. Already taking business seriously, he buckles down even more and develops a more aggressive attitude.

He takes Vanderbilt's offer for shipping rates and brings it to Tom Scott, which of course is Vanderbilt's biggest rival in railroads. Using the deal he had with Vanderbilt he leverages it for better terms with Tom Scott. Cutting out Vanderbilt and thus starting the legend of Rockefeller in the business world.



Next history bit I will write up is Rockefeller vs. Railroads and how he fucked them up and went forward with his monopoly to over 200+ billion.
 


Interesting subject. I could go on and on about these. Here is one that's pretty interesting with Nathan Rothschild and the Battle of Waterloo:

His four brothers helped co-ordinate activities across the continent, and the family developed a network of agents, shippers and couriers to transport gold—and information—across Europe. This private intelligence service enabled Nathan to receive in London the news of Wellington's victory at the Battle of Waterloo a full day ahead of the government's official messengers.[2] He is famously quoted as saying "Buy when there’s blood in the streets", though the original quote is believed to have appended "even if the blood is your own".[3]

In 1818 he arranged a 5 million pound loan to the Prussian government and the issuing of bonds for government loans formed a mainstay of his bank’s business. He gained a position of such power in the City of London that by 1825–6 he was able to supply enough coin to the Bank of England to enable it to avert a liquidity crisis.

Nathan Mayer Rothschild - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The Wiki article doesn't fully go into it but he tricked everyone and started selling his shares and completely got everyone out of the market and then when the market was at a bottom he bought everything back up and went on to control a great portion of the City of London and the Bank of England. Same model still works today.
 
stockfire said:
look up jay gould and jim fisk, books about him are good reading.
Click to expand...

TLDR: they bribed the president's brother in law, who then somehow managed to get a crooked central banker appointed, who they bribed to tip them off to supply-side pressures. They borrowed a shit load of money to buy a shit-load of gold under different peoples names, which forced short-sellers into bankruptcy and drove the price up. they they mostly got away with.

We gonna call that badass moments in business or securities fraud?

They way Roackefeller really fucked over Vanderbilt is he formed a cartel with Scott. They made a gentleman's agreement to hike shipping rates for anyone that wasn't "in the club". In order to be part of "the club", you basically had to sell the controlling interest in your company in exchange for non-voting participating trust shares. Railroads were regional, so options were to transport oil by horse, or by a single railway line servicing the region. Options for producers were therefore to either be bought out or to go bankrupt and sell your assets to someone that would accept the trust arrangement. Everyone fell in line, and they created a monopoly disguised as a cartel.

Translate this into IM: Imagine if Google said you had to give up control of your website to receive traffic from them?

Carnegie has another interesting monopoly story. He would form cartels with other producers, and bully participants into sticking to agreed prices. They would fall in line because he was the biggest supplier in the industry. They would sign contracts that would make the agreement look legit, including damages clauses etc... Sherman rule just came through though, which made these contracts illegal (unenforceable). Carnegie would tear up these contracts when he wanted to break the price barrier, while threatening to sue participants that tried to do the same.

IM translation: a network agrees to broker an offer you don't have access to without a markup, but then adds a markup and threatens to car-bomb your mom if you make a WF post about it.

Lessons learned?
-> Capital structure matters.
-> Knowing the relevant laws to your industry matters.
-> Don't trust the dude that's fucking your sister.
 
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Smidge said:
They way Roackefeller really fucked over Vanderbilt is he formed a cartel with Scott. They made a gentleman's agreement to hike shipping rates for anyone that wasn't "in the club". In order to be part of "the club", you basically had to sell the controlling interest in your company in exchange for non-voting participating trust shares. Railroads were regional, so options were to transport oil by horse, or by a single railway line servicing the region. Options for producers were therefore to either be bought out or to go bankrupt and sell your assets to someone that would accept the trust arrangement. Everyone fell in line, and they created a monopoly disguised as a cartel.

Translate this into IM: Imagine if Google said you had to give up control of your website to receive traffic from them?

Carnegie has another interesting monopoly story. He would form cartels with other producers, and bully participants into sticking to agreed prices. They would fall in line because he was the biggest supplier in the industry. They would sign contracts that would make the agreement look legit, including damages clauses etc... Sherman rule just came through though, which made these contracts illegal (unenforceable). Carnegie would tear up these contracts when he wanted to break the price barrier, while threatening to sue participants that tried to do the same.

IM translation: a network agrees to broker an offer you don't have access to without a markup, but then adds a markup and threatens to car-bomb your mom if you make a WF post about it.

Lessons learned?
-> Capital structure matters.
-> Knowing the relevant laws to your industry matters.
-> Don't trust the dude that's fucking your sister.
Click to expand...

Awesome, repped.

I love Rockefeller stories.

I hate Carnegie stories. The only thing I like is when he's losing. I was actually going to write about him and Frick. My favorite is Rockefeller starting a steel company for no reason but to burn Carnegie, and Carnegie ends up having to buy it way above value.
 
Decided to do 1 more and not Rockefeller but Vanderbilt again. This was known as the Erie War (I guess, that's what Wikipedia is telling me) and it's again how Vanderbilt got fucked with and loses big time.

Summed up:
  • Vanderbilt is very dominant in the roadroad business. Owning 40%+ (at the time of this going on) of the railroads and dipping way more into everyones pockets.
  • Vanderbilt pioneers what's referred to as a hostile takeover. Which means he would get multiple agents to go to the stock exchange and purchase it up. With the insane amount of money he had he could be that aggressive.
  • Erie line was a big track in the railroad that Vanderbilt had to own. He tried attempting a hostile takeover.
  • Gould and Fisk (part of Erie) ended up getting a printing press and print more and more shares as Vanderbilt buys, completely oblivious. They ended printing over 100k diluting the stock.
  • Vanderbilt ends up buying 7 millions dollar worth of their watered down stock. 1 billion dollars in today's money. On top of that they were taking spots in the paper showboating about how they fooled Vanderbilt.

Erie War - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
History Channels 'The Men Who Built America' is pretty awesome, its basically all business from guys like Rockefeller and Vanderbilt.
 
BlokBlok said:
History Channels 'The Men Who Built America' is pretty awesome, its basically all business from guys like Rockefeller and Vanderbilt.
Click to expand...

That's where both stories are from now. I've mentioned it a couple times on this forum. One of my fav docs/mini series, it's great. I'm going to hopefully post some gangster ones from Ken Burns Prohibition/Boardwalk Empire and the prohibition era which I like reading about too.
 
Rockefeller was an OG

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LC9Dh4kR_g[/ame]
 
How Swami Vivekananda changed John Rockefeller

Most people know that Swami Vivekananda founded the Ramakrishna Mission which today has grown into a large spiritual-social mission quietly working in all parts of the world for the betterment of humanity and amelioration of suffering. Very few know of another extraordinary organization that was founded on the suggestion of Swami Vivekananda.

It was early 1894 and Swamiji was traveling around the United States giving lectures. He had become very popular after his famous speech at the Parliament of Religions. It was around the same time another American had amassed a lot of riches from the oil business. This was John D. Rockefeller and he was known for his ruthlessness and single-minded pursuit for making money. In fact, he was known to be obsessed with his wealth and making profits that it had begun to tell on his health. It was around then that he learnt of the wonderful and extraordinary Hindu monk staying in the house of one of his business colleagues in Chicago. Rockefeller was invited many times by this friend but he refused the invitation. One day, although he did not want to meet the Swamiji, he was pushed to do so by an impulse and went directly to the house of his friend, brushing aside the butler saying that he wanted to meet the Hindu monk. The butler ushered him into the living room and not waiting to be announced, Rockefeller entered Swamiji’s adjoining study room and was much surprised to see Swamiji behind the writing table, not even lifting his eyes to see who has entered.

After a while, in a quiet voice Swamiji, who had not seen Rockefeller even once, talked to him of his (Rockefeller’s) innermost secrets and anxieties. He talked of things which even his closest friends and relatives would not have known. It seemed miraculous, almost supernatural to Rockefeller. “How do you know all this? Who has talked of this to you?” he burst out. Swamiji looked at him with a quiet, calm smile on his lips as if a child standing before him had asked a foolish question. Swamiji said, “Forget the past. Become gay again. Build up your health. Do not dwell on your sorrows. Transmute your emotions into some form of creative external expression. Your spiritual health requires it. You are only a channel for God’s money that you have accumulated and it is your duty to do good to the world. God has given you all His wealth in order that you may get an opportunity to serve Him and His starving millions of children”.

On hearing this, Rockefeller was annoyed that anyone dared to talk to him in that manner. He left the room in irritation, not even saying goodbye. But after a week, again without being announced, he entered Swamiji’s study and finding him the same as before, threw on his desk a paper which told of his plans to donate an enormous sum of money towards financing a public institution. “Well, there you are Swami” Rockefeller said, “You must be satisfied now and you can thank me for it”. Swamiji did not even lift his eyes, did not move for a time. Then taking the paper he quietly read it and said, “It is for you to thank me”. That was all!

That was Rockefeller’s first large donation to public welfare and that was how the activities of The Rockefeller Foundation started.


Vivekananda with Tesla
4940858-3x2-300x200.jpg


Swami Vivekananda Speech at Chicago (don't think it's original audio as it is 1896 or so)
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxUzKoIt5aM[/ame]
 
Not exactly business, but war; people make similarities though.

This was shared on Reddit and I thought it was interesting. We're all familiar with faking metrics in order to look more popular to users and powerful to competitors. In WW2, Ralph Ingersoll and Billy Harris from US Army assembled what are called Ghost Armies.

These would be very cheaply made units with things like inflatable tanks, sound recordings of truck noises/gun fire, and people with fake equipment. The sole purpose was to not always scare people off, but also to move the opposing forces into the directions they wanted them, and to trick them when the battle was really happening.

Show of Force | 99% Invisible
 
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