Feldman's Faves: October 14, 2025

GOOD MORNING

I hope everyone had an enjoyable Thanksgiving. Nothing like autumn in Ontario – apple picking, leaves changing, sweater weather – its just great.

It’s especially great when Toronto gets to enjoy playoff baseball. They JAYS did a spectacular job last week beating the Yankees (The Yankees lose…..). Our start against Seattle and the Big Dumper was not ideal but I think we are the better team and am hopeful we will prevail. LET’S GO!!

We have an eventful week here at Goodmans – we are celebrating Eddie’s 107th birthday on Wednesday and a Diwali celebration on Thursday. I hope you can all be at both events – they will be lots of fun.

Finally, please join me in wishing Jeffreen a very happy birthday and all the very best as she enters her next chapter working in her family’s very interesting business.

This week I listened to two really interesting PODCASTS with a business theme (so no book this week).

ACQUIRED - Google: The AI Company – The third and final episode of this epic three part series on GOOGLE dropped last week. This episode focuses on GOOGLE’S AI journey, which has been far from smooth. Even more interesting, this episode does an excellent job in explaining the history of AI including DEEPMIND to OPEN AI to WAYMO and more. On one hand, GOOGLE is uniquely positioned to be able to fund its AI business as compared to its rivals. At the same time, there are others who may be leaving behind. It is way too early to conclude who will win this race but the leaders at GOOGLE are making AU dominance their top priority. Will they succeed or will they blow their brains out trying. Very hard to say. But I will certainly be following with interest. Here’s an excerpt from the PODCAST itself, “Google faces the greatest innovator's dilemma in history. They invented the Transformer — the breakthrough technology powering every modern AI system from ChatGPT to Claude (and, of course, Gemini). They employed nearly all the top AI talent: Ilya Sutskever, Geoff Hinton, Demis Hassabis, Dario Amodei — more or less everyone who leads modern AI worked at Google circa 2014. They built the best dedicated AI infrastructure (TPUs!) and deployed AI at massive scale years before anyone else. And yet... the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022 caught them completely flat-footed. How on earth did the greatest business in history wind up playing catch-up to a nonprofit-turned-startup? Today we tell the complete story of Google's 20+ year AI journey: from their first tiny language model in 2001 through the creation Google Brain, the birth of the transformer, the talent exodus to OpenAI (sparked by Elon Musk's fury over Google’s DeepMind acquisition), and their current all-hands-on-deck response with Gemini. And oh yeah — a little business called Waymo that went from crazy moonshot idea to doing more rides than Lyft in San Francisco, potentially building another Google-sized business within Google. This is the story of how the world's greatest business faces its greatest test: can they disrupt themselves without losing their $140B annual profit-generating machine in Search?” https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/acquired/id1050462261?i=1000730326283

FOUNDERS -The Obsession of Enzo Ferrari – There is nothing like Italian design. The recent passing of Giorgio Armani – a true genius was a huge loss. It got me thinking about other aspects of Italy – the food, the wine, the culture and of course, the cars. There is nobody the epitomizes the excellence of Italian design than Enzo Ferrari whose obsession with creating the perfect machine was his life’s work, which was a resounding success. This PODCAST goes into great detail about Ferrari and his life and his never ending pursuit of excellence. Truly inspiring. Here’s an excerpt from the PODCAST itself, “I've read hundreds of thousands of words about Enzo Ferrari. For this episode I distilled down his most important ideas into 1 hour. Ferrari was truly one of history's greatest obsessives. Selected highlights: 1. He who travels fast, carries little. 2. All masterpieces bespeaks the character of its creator 3. "When the driver steps on the gas I want him to shit his pants." 4. It is obvious that a Ferrari is the product of a sort of automotive watch-maker. 5. Ferrari has never taken a vacation in his life. 6. Racing is a profession for men who do not wish to die in bed. 7. If there was one essential quality about the man it was his ironbound tenacity, his fierce devotion to the single cause of winning automobile races with cars bearing his name. From 1930 onward, for nearly sixty years, hardly a day passed when this thought was not foremost in his mind. Win or lose, he unfailingly answered the bell. In that sense his devotion to his own self-described mission was without precedent. For that alone he towered over his peers. 8. “I was back where I had started. No money, no experience, limited education. All I had was a passion to get somewhere.” 9. Ferrari had two fundamental talents. He was an agitator of men and he was an absolute marketing genius. 10. "A Ferrari must be desired. It cannot and must not be perceived as something that is immediately available; otherwise, the dream is gone." 11. "I have never considered myself a designer or an inventor, but only one who gets things moving and keeps them running. My innate talent was for stirring up men." 12. Enzo Ferrari was the consummate manager of men— not docile, soft men, but proud, fiercely competitive, egocentric men. 13. He was a pathological competitor. A man with a diamond-hard will to win at all costs. 14. When asked how he wanted to be remembered, he replied: "As someone who dreamt of becoming Ferrari." 15. Ferrari was animated by an extraordinary passion that led him to build a product with no equal. 16. "I had the stubborn determination to capture the trust of those who work with me." 17. “I should not have married because a man dominated by a passion such as mine, can hardly divide himself in half and be a good husband. If I had listened to my wife, I would have been a clerk in a bus company.” 18. He understood that showmanship is salesmanship. 19. They were cars built by Italian artisans, every detail down to the steering wheel handcrafted using some of the same methods used to make Roman suits of armor and the royal carriages of the ancient kingdoms. 20. When asked about the root of his mania, his obsession with victory, Ferrari said, "Everything that I've done, I did because I couldn't do anything less. One day I want to build a car that's faster than all of them, and then I want to die.": https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/founders/id1141877104?i=1000719746555

Thank you for your ongoing engagement and participation.

And remember to stay safe, stay healthy and to docket daily.

Jon