Ted Turner
John Malone Overtakes Ted Turner as America’s Largest individual Land Owner
Both of these men are on my list of top tycoons to study. Both competed and collaborated for decades in the cable-TV industry where they did deals both big and small. Malone is typical of the men covered in The Tycoon Playbook. They all had the patience and discipline to start off small and build an empire one step at a time. Malone earned a Ph.D. in operations research from Johns Hopkins in the late 1960s and then joined General Instruments Corp., which was part of the cable-TV industry. After quickly becoming dissatisfied with the company’s management he took a major gamble by quitting and moving to Denver where he accepted a 50% pay cut for the privilege of working for a startup teetering on bankruptcy owned by a Bob Magness. The company was Tele-Communications Inc., which later was renamed TCI.
Call Me Ted by Ted Turner
Ted Turner’s new autobiography, Call Me Ted, hits the book stores next week. Ted Turner is one of the most colorful members of the billionaire class by far. Not only that, he is also one of the most brilliant when it comes to value creation. While most billionaires focus on one or two industries, Turner has been successful across a broad range of industries. Not only that, but he can combine two seemingly unconnected assets from totally unrelated industries to create value.
If you want to learn about billionaires, you can’t go wrong by starting with the inimitable Ted Turner.
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