I bought a business book for $500

I just read the book ‘In the Company of Giants’. It cost $500 but includes great lessons from the world’s largest companies.

Here’s what I pulled from it—and why it’s worth every penny.

1. Founders drive the soul of the company.
After Jobs was ousted from Apple, the new CEO prioritized profits and private jets. Apple lost its way—and the world left it for dead.
When Jobs returned, he brought the vision back with him.
Bottom line: culture follows the founder.

2. Talk to your customers—or die.
Intuit scaled quickly because everyone on the team—from engineers to the CFO—spoke with customers constantly.
Too many founders hide behind dashboards and ignore the people paying them.
Customer feedback is a growth cheat code.

3. Great people are unfair leverage.
Steve Jobs believed one great engineer could replace 100 average ones.
Today, AI can make one great engineer replace one thousand others.
The right person with the right tools is unstoppable.

4. There’s no “right” way to build.
Computer Associates acquired 60+ companies, laid off a bunch of staff members, and still hit $3B+ in revenue.
They were called heartless—but it worked.
Don’t get caught up in the playbook. Play to win.

There’s a reason the best founders study history:
You can shortcut decades of trial and error with one book, one story, or one insight.

To founder-driven companies,
Eric Siu

PS: We’ve been building and have a couple of offers available:
1 - We’re hiring AI-forward performance ad creative strategists, AI-forward SEOs and paid media people, AI short form creators, AI automation interns, and more.. If you’re interested, apply at our Careers page.
2 - We launched ClickFlow to help automate and scale SEO. We’re giving away 25,000 words for free - sign up for the waitlist at the link.
3 - Interested in creating 1:1 personalized LinkedIn ads in minutes instead of weeks? Sign up for the Karrot.ai waitlist.
4 - If you want to grow faster using the power of AI, my agency Single Grain is offering free marketing plans to Leveling Up newsletter subscribers, check it out here.
5 - For more in-depth marketing content, check out my Leveling Up YouTube channel
6 - To help this newsletter improve, fill out this survey