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Speaker 1: Pushkin too quick.

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Speaker 2: No, it's perfect push kit stuff. You got it.

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Speaker 3: Fish.

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Speaker 2: I want to talk to you about ice, as in

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Speaker 2: frozen water.

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Speaker 1: Yes, I know what ice is.

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Speaker 2: In the year eighteen hundred, in the city of Boston,

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Speaker 2: they have lots of ice and bust, I have lots

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Speaker 2: of ice in the winter, and they have figured out

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Speaker 2: by this point that you can cut ice out of

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Speaker 2: frozen lakes in the winter, store it and specially built

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Speaker 2: ice houses, and get it out in the summer to

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Speaker 2: enjoy a cold drink or ice cream. They actually had

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Speaker 2: ice cream, love it And so you could sit there

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Speaker 2: eating your ice cream on an August day and staring

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Speaker 2: out at Boston Harbor and you would see ships heading

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Speaker 2: out for the world, New Orleans, Havana, calcum Ah, and

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Speaker 2: you might think, oh, I bet those people in Havana

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Speaker 2: and New Orleans would kill for some ice right about

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Speaker 2: now because they're so hot. I bet they'd pay out

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Speaker 2: the nose for it. And then you'd think, oh, no,

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Speaker 2: that would never work because ice melts. Ice melts. You

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Speaker 2: can't get it there, or can you what. I'm Jacob Wildstein,

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Speaker 2: I'm Robert Smith, and this is business show about the

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Speaker 2: history of business today. On the show, there was, in

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Speaker 2: fact a man from Boston. Sounds like the beginning of

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Speaker 2: a Limerick, but it's not. Who set out to see

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Speaker 2: if he could build a business, an industry really, by

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Speaker 2: shipping ice halfway around the world. And the story of

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Speaker 2: that effort is about what I will argue is the

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Speaker 2: most underrated idea in economics. And this industry was started

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Speaker 2: by a guy who got thrown in jail, who annoyed

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Speaker 2: Henry David Threaux, easy man to annoy, roounced the row,

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Speaker 2: and who everybody thought was a joke.

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Speaker 1: I don't even know his name yet.

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Speaker 2: His name was Frederick Tudor. He was born in seventeen

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Speaker 2: eighty three to a pretty rich family. His dad had

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Speaker 2: been George Washington's judge advocate general in the Revolutionary War.

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Speaker 2: Everybody called him the Judge. It's like the way people

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Speaker 2: who are ambassadors always get called ambassador. Surest of their lives.

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Speaker 2: And they had a house in Boston and a country

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Speaker 2: house on a farm outside of town. And Frederick was

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Speaker 2: supposed to go off to Harvard like his dad, of course,

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Speaker 2: but he thought school was boring, so when he was

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Speaker 2: thirteen years old, he dropped out and hung out on

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Speaker 2: the farm, hunting and fishing and eating ice cream in

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Speaker 2: the summer, living the dream. Because the tutors had this

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Speaker 2: ice house on their farm, and when the pond on

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Speaker 2: the farm frozen the winter, workers would cut blocks of

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Speaker 2: ice out and put it in this house. And the

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Speaker 2: house was probably built a little bit underground for insulation,

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Speaker 2: and they would put like pete or hay or something

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Speaker 2: on the ice to keep it coold. They had like

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Speaker 2: drainage out of the ice houses so that water wouldn't

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Speaker 2: puddle up. And this is really thing one. Step number one.

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Speaker 2: He knows about ice and ice cream.

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Speaker 1: You forgot step number zero, which is, if you're going

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Speaker 1: to try a crazy business, have a rich.

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Speaker 2: Dat Yes, an excellent, excellent win to this day. If

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Speaker 2: you want to be an entrepreneur taking a flyer, yes,

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Speaker 2: have some money to fall back, have some money fair enough.

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Speaker 2: So whatever step we're on now, step two, step three,

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Speaker 2: however you're counting it. The next step came when he

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Speaker 2: was seventeen years old. In the spring of eighteen oh one,

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Speaker 2: one of his brothers, his older brother who was nineteen,

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Speaker 2: got sick and they decided to send him to Havana

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Speaker 2: to recuperate it. Didn't help him, in part because it

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Speaker 2: was so hot Inia, it was so unpleasantly hot. But

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Speaker 2: in fact Fredrick's brother died before they got back to Boston.

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Speaker 2: You know, it was tragic. Frederick was devastated, but he

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Speaker 2: has now experienced in a visceral way just how hot

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Speaker 2: it is in the tropics in summer. And the next thing,

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Speaker 2: kind of the last piece of essential context for him,

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Speaker 2: his dad gets him this what we call an internship,

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Speaker 2: working with some merchants in Boston, and Boston, of course

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Speaker 2: a big trading town at this time. You know, the

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Speaker 2: harbor is full of ships coming and going from all

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Speaker 2: over the world, but trucially Boston, in a kind of

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Speaker 2: local way, has has what we call a trade deficit.

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Speaker 2: At this time, stuff is coming in from all over

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Speaker 2: the world, you know, spices and tea and whatever, sugar,

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Speaker 2: but not so much stuff is going out, some stuff,

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Speaker 2: you know, manufactured goods. Some stuff is going out, but

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Speaker 2: a lot more is coming in. And so because of

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Speaker 2: this imbalance, a lot of the ships are heading out

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Speaker 2: largely empty. They had their holds are not full of stuff.

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Speaker 1: Which happens to this day. There are places who have

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Speaker 1: to send back empty ships to China because they import

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Speaker 1: more than they expiace.

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Speaker 2: Yes, yes, and and in fact they they had dredged

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Speaker 2: Boston Harbor to pull up rock to put in the

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Speaker 2: ships as ballasts so they wouldn't ride too high in

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Speaker 2: the water.

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Speaker 1: So he's sitting there eating ice cream, he's got his

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Speaker 1: ice farm. He's thinking about how hot it is, and

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Speaker 1: he sees empty ships.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, he sees them, you know, paying essentially to get

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Speaker 2: rocks to put in the ships. And so now it

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Speaker 2: comes together for him and conveniently for our story. We

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Speaker 2: know this because in the summer of eighteen oh five,

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Speaker 2: he's in his early twenties. He starts a diary and

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Speaker 2: he draws a picture of an ice house on the

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Speaker 2: cover of this diary, and he writes the words ice

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Speaker 2: house diary, and he makes the first entry in the diary.

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Speaker 1: Camera zooms in. Young man with a quill in his

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Speaker 1: diary and the other hand and dripping ice cream cone. Okay, Boston,

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Speaker 1: August first, eighteen oh five. Have this stay determined to

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Speaker 1: get together what property we have and embark in the

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Speaker 1: undertaking of carrying ice to the West Indies the ensuing winter.

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Speaker 1: I feel like he's already writing to future generations. He

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Speaker 1: imagines himself this ice magnet, and it's like, this is how

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Speaker 1: it started.

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Speaker 2: I like the idea that whatever he's doing throughout this story,

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Speaker 2: I'm gonna imagine him eating ice cream, he loves it.

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Speaker 2: I don't actually know if he loves ice cream.

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Speaker 1: Everyone loves ice cream.

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Speaker 2: I love ice cream. I'll mention here by the way,

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Speaker 2: that the quotes from the diary in the show come

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Speaker 2: from a book about Tutor called The Frozen Water Trade

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Speaker 2: by Gavin Weightman.

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Speaker 1: Great book.

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Speaker 2: And you know, when you think about this entry, like

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Speaker 2: it seems like Frederick deciding to get into the international

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Speaker 2: ice business. But it's bigger than that, because there is

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Speaker 2: no international ice business, right Like, he is making up

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Speaker 2: this idea for a thing that doesn't exist. But it

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Speaker 2: is clear when you look at it that people in

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Speaker 2: hot places had always really wanted to be cool.

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Speaker 1: You know.

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Speaker 2: It's not like, oh, now we have air conditioning and

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Speaker 2: we're like weak modern people. No, people always hated it

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Speaker 2: when it was super hot. They always tried to cool

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Speaker 2: off if they could.

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Speaker 1: I mean, it's a biological imperative because our body is

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Speaker 1: ninety eight point six degrees and does not like to

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Speaker 1: be hotter. Than that. It's caused distress as long as

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Speaker 1: there's been yeah, entire and there is evidence of this, right.

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Speaker 2: People in the Andes would bring snow and ice down

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Speaker 2: from the mountaintops to Lima on the coast, and the

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Speaker 2: ancient Romans would bring snow down from the mountains and

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Speaker 2: pack it into these straw lined pits, you know, to

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Speaker 2: store it.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, you've got the always the Emperor, you know, being

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Speaker 1: fanned by those giant palm fronds.

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Speaker 2: Yes, the giant palm front a classic sign that coolness

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Speaker 2: is luxury. And my favorite actually that I learned about

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Speaker 2: working on this show. I don't entirely understand it, but

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Speaker 2: they did it in India when it got down like

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Speaker 2: not to freezing, but like forty degrees or something. They

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Speaker 2: would dig a hole in the ground, line it with

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Speaker 2: straw and then take these like shallow, porous earthenware dishes

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Speaker 2: and in the evening they would pour I guess boiling

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Speaker 2: water into them and then somehow I don't know what,

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Speaker 2: evaporative cooling some thing something, in the morning there would

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Speaker 2: be like a little patina of ice on it, a

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Speaker 2: little you know, a rind of ice, and they would

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Speaker 2: collect a little bit of ice out of all these

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Speaker 2: dishes and mash it all together and like that is

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Speaker 2: ice the hard way.

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Speaker 1: They really wanted ice. Yeah, they dreamed of a land

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Speaker 1: where entire lakes became ice. So the point is they

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Speaker 1: really wanted ice.

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Speaker 2: And Frederick knows this, he has seen it, and he

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Speaker 2: decides he's going to be the one to solve this

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Speaker 2: timeless problem, sets out to raise the money to do it.

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Speaker 2: You know, I don't know exactly what his his elevator

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Speaker 2: pitch was, but I think it's basically, I'm gonna put

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Speaker 2: ice on ships and then the ships are going to

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Speaker 2: sail for like a month or a couple of months

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Speaker 2: something something dot dot dot profit and thanks for the checkdout,

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Speaker 2: Thanks for the check, dad, So the judge his dad

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Speaker 2: was out. And in fact a response he got was

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Speaker 2: described by Frederick's brother in law, who later wound up

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Speaker 2: working for him. So here read from that letter.

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Speaker 1: The idea was considered so utterly absurd by the sober

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Speaker 1: minded merchants as to be the vagary of a disordered brain,

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Speaker 1: and few men would have been willing to stand the

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Speaker 1: scoffs and sneers from those whose assistance it was necessary

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Speaker 1: to obtain. Merchants were not willing to charter their vessels

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Speaker 1: to carry ice, the office is declined to insure, and

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Speaker 1: sailors were afraid to trust themselves with such a cargo,

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Speaker 1: which is what because it's because it's gonna milk. The

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Speaker 1: one thing we know about ice is like, you're hiring

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Speaker 1: me to take this ice around the world to a

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Speaker 1: hot place. There won't be any left, and everyone's gonna

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Speaker 1: blame me, the sailor. And the whole point of a

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Speaker 1: ship is to.

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Speaker 2: Keep the water out, yes, right, and you know, don't

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Speaker 2: put the water in, you keep it out. Not only

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Speaker 2: are people not investing, he can't even get people to

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Speaker 2: take his money, right, He's saying like insurers wouldn't insure

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Speaker 2: it because they're like, no, you're just.

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Speaker 1: Gonna flood the ship.

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Speaker 2: We're not gonna ensure this. So one of the things

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Speaker 2: that becomes clear about Frederick, you know, who is this

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Speaker 2: guy who is the protagonist of this story. He is

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Speaker 2: observddly persistent. He seems truly not to care that everybody

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Speaker 2: thinks his idea is just a bad idea, and at

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Speaker 2: one point he actually writes on the cover of his

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Speaker 2: Diary of the Ice House diary, this sort of motto Rart.

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Speaker 1: Hugh gives back at the first repulse and without striking

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Speaker 1: the second blow. Despairs of success has never been, is not,

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Speaker 1: and never will be a hero in love, war or business.

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Speaker 2: He is basically giving himself a pep talk in this

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Speaker 2: kind of absurd elevated language.

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Speaker 1: Never give up is what he's says.

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Speaker 2: He's saying, never give up today. If he were, you know,

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Speaker 2: an entrepreneur instead of a diary, he would be like

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Speaker 2: a thinkfluencer with his own TikTok channel building in public.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely a ted talk heroin love, war in business.

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Speaker 2: So he is not despairing. He is he is a

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Speaker 2: man of action. And he sends his brother in law

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Speaker 2: and his brother not the one who died, different brother

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Speaker 2: to Martinique, to the French colony in the Caribbean, and

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Speaker 2: amazingly he tells them get the colonial governor there to

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Speaker 2: give us a monopoly on the ice trade. Here's a

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Speaker 2: business that everybody thinks it's terrible, but my idea is

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Speaker 2: so right that everybody's going to want in, and we

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Speaker 2: are going to want a monopoly.

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Speaker 1: I love it. I don't think they're other competitors but

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Speaker 1: not yet. Yeah. Yeah, so the colonial governors like, sure

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Speaker 1: have a monopoly.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I think they have to bribe him because why

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Speaker 2: would he give it for free? But yes, and I

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Speaker 2: will say, like, getting a monopoly from the government is

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Speaker 2: a thing at this point. We talked about it in

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Speaker 2: the Matchking show, so it's a thing businesses do. Now,

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Speaker 2: while his brother and brother in law are down there

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Speaker 2: whatever bribing the colonial governor for the monopoly, Frederick is

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Speaker 2: getting ready to send the merch the ice, and nobody

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Speaker 2: will let him pay for space on their ship because

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Speaker 2: the water thing. And so he mortgages a piece of

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Speaker 2: family land and buys a ship. It's a brig, I

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Speaker 2: believe is a two masted square rig ship. But surely

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Speaker 2: half of the people listening know exactly what a brig is.

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Speaker 2: To email us at business history at Pushkin FM. The

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Speaker 2: brig is called the Favorite. And on February tenth, eighteen

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Speaker 2: oh six, he sails on his shipful of ice for Martinique,

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Speaker 2: and it's news. It gets written up in the Boston Gazette.

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Speaker 1: I imagine the news reporter is like, oh, there's a

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Speaker 1: shipful of ice. I gotta see this. And this is

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Speaker 1: what they wrote. In the newspaper no joke. Seriously, if

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Speaker 1: they wrote no joke, a vessel with a cargo of

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Speaker 1: eighty tons of ice has cleared out from this port

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Speaker 1: for Martinique. We hope this will not prove to be

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Speaker 1: a slippery speculation.

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Speaker 2: Congratulations, Boston Gazette, you're so clever.

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Speaker 1: To this day, if a shipful of ice left the harbor,

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Speaker 1: they would be making the slippery joke for sure.

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Speaker 2: For sure there would be a melt joke in there.

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Speaker 2: There would be uh liquidity. Oh, I'm not even making

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Speaker 2: liquidity jokes. So the ship gets to Martinique about three

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Speaker 2: weeks later. We don't know how much of the ice

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Speaker 2: has melted, but a lot of it is still there,

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Speaker 2: which is amazing. Right, And just to answer like the

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Speaker 2: most obvious question, how does that work? Well, Hey, the

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Speaker 2: blocks are pretty big, like I don't know exactly how big,

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Speaker 2: but something like a foot by two feet by two feet.

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Speaker 1: So pretty big.

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Speaker 2: And they're all put together right, so they're all kind

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Speaker 2: of insulating each other. And then he works on insulation

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Speaker 2: all through his career, tries different things, you know, pete

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Speaker 2: and sawdust and whatever. So he's figured out enough at

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Speaker 2: this point that there is ice there?

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Speaker 1: Now?

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Speaker 2: You know, if you've lived in Martinique all your life,

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Speaker 2: you've literally never seen ice, which is amazing. Rights, it's

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Speaker 2: like a moon rock or something, but weirder because someone

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Speaker 2: rock just looks like a rock. And so Frederick gets

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Speaker 2: there and he's like, get your ice, you know, ice,

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Speaker 2: get your ice here.

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Speaker 1: It was like, what should I use this nobody refrigerator?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and it actually reminded me this part of one

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Speaker 2: hundred years of Solitude. You know that Gabrielle Garcia Marquez.

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Speaker 2: You know the famous first.

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Speaker 1: Line, absolutely incredible first line. Do you have a.

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Speaker 2: Memorized I do, but I also wrote it down. Okay,

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Speaker 2: many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel

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Speaker 2: Aureliano Windia was to remember that distant afternoon when his

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Speaker 2: father took him to discover ice. So, without the firing squad,

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Speaker 2: that's what's happening here, yeah, right, Like some people are

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Speaker 2: buying ice just to be amazed, just to be like,

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Speaker 2: hey son, hey daughter, hey look look at this. It's

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Speaker 2: touch it, it's solid, but it's so cold.

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Speaker 1: It's water what colder? So yeah, they don't really know

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Speaker 1: what to do with it.

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Speaker 2: It's kind of a novelty, Frederick does take like sixty

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Speaker 2: pounds of ice to a guy who runs some kind

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Speaker 2: of little amusement park or something and shows him how

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Speaker 2: to make ice cream. And as you mentioned before, everybody

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Speaker 2: loves ice. He picture Frederick again eating ice cream, shaking

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Speaker 2: hands with the guy. But there is this problem that

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Speaker 2: he's up against. And the problem is there's nowhere to

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Speaker 2: store the ice, so it's melting. It's just sitting there melting.

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Speaker 2: He's selling what he can, but it's melting. And a

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Speaker 2: few weeks later he sails back to Boston, does get

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Speaker 2: paid to carry sugar back from Martinique to Boston, and

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Speaker 2: in all he gross is about two thousand dollars from

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Speaker 2: the trip. But that's gross, that's just the money that

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Speaker 2: has come in.

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Speaker 3: You know.

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Speaker 1: It does strike me that this is one of the

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Speaker 1: first times we're talking about logistics with a cargo that

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Speaker 1: really has a clock ticking on it, right. I mean,

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Speaker 1: all of world trade was designed being like, well this

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Speaker 1: is going to take months, yeah, so let's put things

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Speaker 1: in that can last for months. Yeah. And so he's

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Speaker 1: facing what will become a bigger and bigger problem in modernity,

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Speaker 1: which is how do we get things to someone fast

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Speaker 1: enough that it stays good. Yeah, in a weird way.

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Speaker 1: He's inventing the cold chain.

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Speaker 2: Right today we talk about the cold chain of like

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Speaker 2: whatever milk or a vaccine or something has to stay

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Speaker 2: cold the whole time, the ice itself which is to

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Speaker 2: stay yeah, yeah, yeah. It is a profound logistical problem

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Speaker 2: that he is up against. So so, as I said,

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Speaker 2: he grows something like two thousand dollars, but that was

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Speaker 2: not nearly enough to cover his cost, even if you

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Speaker 2: don't count the cost of the ship. And so essentially

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Speaker 2: what happened is what his dad, the judge, and everybody

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Speaker 2: else that said would happen. The ice melted and he

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Speaker 2: lost a lot of money. And what is Frederick our

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Speaker 2: grindsid entrepreneur do blames his employees, blames his his brother

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Speaker 2: and his brother in law.

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Speaker 1: From his diary, they never entered into the undertaking with

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Speaker 1: the ardor which was necessary to ensure success in the

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Speaker 1: outset of the business. They were easily discouraged and did

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Speaker 1: not announce the thing with that confidence that defies ridicule

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Speaker 1: and opposition, insures friends and leads in every project more

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Speaker 1: than anything to success. They didn't believe, They didn't believe

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Speaker 1: in it, want it enough. They didn't want it enough.

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Speaker 2: Frederick Tudor's ice has melted, but his resolve has not.

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Speaker 2: In a minute, things are.

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Speaker 3: About to get work, story.

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Speaker 2: And we're back staying cool, Robert, I'm gonna give you

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Speaker 2: a montage now because we need a hero boom. We're

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Speaker 2: going to cover a lot of ground pretty quickly, and

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Speaker 2: the ground is basically mostly gonna be Frederick Tudor getting.

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Speaker 1: His ass kicked. Let's do it.

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Speaker 2: He sends his brother to England to get monopolies on

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Speaker 2: selling ice in the British colonies in the Caribbean, you know, Jamaica, Antigua, Barbadoes.

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Speaker 2: The idea that you would need a monopoly on something

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Speaker 2: as ridiculous as selling ice makes the British think the

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Speaker 2: brother is a spy, a spy with a terrible cover story.

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Speaker 2: It's like, come on, make up something better. Meanwhile, Tudor

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Speaker 2: himself goes to Cuba, a much bigger market than Martinique,

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Speaker 2: and builds an ice house, so now he can you know,

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Speaker 2: keep his inventory for longer, starts selling ice in Havana

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Speaker 2: and it sort of works, but he's still losing money,

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Speaker 2: still underwater. If I may the world is just not

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Speaker 2: cooperating with his entrepreneurial dreams. In eighteen oh seven, President

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Speaker 2: Thomas Jefferson signs the Embargo Acts, which I had forgotten about. Amazingly,

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Speaker 2: it bans the US from engaging in foreign trade in

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Speaker 2: order to punish Britain and France for messing with US

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Speaker 2: shipping during the Napoleonic Wars.

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Speaker 1: Who would ever hurt international trade in order to punish

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Speaker 1: their enemies or their friends, Yeah, for themselves.

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Speaker 2: Imagine in particular this punishes New England Boston, which you know,

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Speaker 2: relies much more heavily on trade than Thomas Jefferson's Virginia, right.

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Speaker 1: Which might have been kind of the point it might

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Speaker 1: have crossed his mind.

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Speaker 2: And in really particular it hurts Frederick Tudor, whose entire

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Speaker 2: business at this point is entirely dependent on foreign trade.

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Speaker 2: So Tutor is falling deeper and deeper into debt. And

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Speaker 2: in eighteen oh nine he is arrested because of his debts,

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Speaker 2: and as you know, at this time, you could get

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Speaker 2: thrown in jail for debts. He manages to scrape together

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Speaker 2: enough money to stay to jail, but then a few

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Speaker 2: years later he gets arrested again. For debt, and this

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Speaker 2: time he is thrown in jail. And I guess they

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Speaker 2: let him bring his diary to jail because he wrote

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Speaker 2: about it. Yeah, debtors' prisons actually did have often desks

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Speaker 2: and writing materials, so you could try and pay off

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Speaker 2: your debts from inside, like writing the family to ask

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Speaker 2: for money or whatever.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, you would write to try and sell your property,

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Speaker 1: try and cover your debts from the diary. On this

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Speaker 1: memorable day in my little annals, I am twenty eight years,

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Speaker 1: six months and five days.

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Speaker 2: Old, scratching it out of chuck marks.

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Speaker 1: It is a climax which I did hope to have escaped,

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Speaker 1: as my affairs are looking well at last after a

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Speaker 1: fearful struggle with adverse circumstances for seven years.

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Speaker 2: The phrase I want to note here, Yes my affairs

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Speaker 2: are looking well at last. Man is in jail for debts.

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Speaker 2: He's been at this for seven years and he thinks

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Speaker 2: it's just turning around for me. And again, I think

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Speaker 2: this is a very entrepreneurial trade, right, Like to keep

389
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Speaker 2: doing this, to keep failing for this long, you always

390
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Speaker 2: have to believe, Oh I got it now, Oh this time,

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Speaker 2: this time, I really got it. I meet at any

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Speaker 2: day in those seven years, he could have written in

393
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Speaker 2: his sary, this is the moment it's about. It turns

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Speaker 2: all upside from here. So he scrapes together enough money

395
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Speaker 2: to get out of jail, and he keeps going, keeps trying,

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Speaker 2: and then comes eighteen twelve.

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Speaker 1: You know what happens in eighteen twelve. There's a war

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Speaker 1: named after it.

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Speaker 2: International trade basically gets shut down again. He gets jailed

400
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Speaker 2: for debt again, gets out, keeps going, And I think

401
00:21:09,440 --> 00:21:15,080
Speaker 2: it's worth pausing here to talk about this, this trait, right,

402
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Speaker 2: this persistence, this grit, because it seems admirable. It is

403
00:21:20,160 --> 00:21:25,320
Speaker 2: admirable on some level, but it's not always admirable to

404
00:21:25,400 --> 00:21:26,840
Speaker 2: keep doing a thing that's not working.

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Speaker 1: You know, Like there are thousands.

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Speaker 2: Of entrepreneurs from history, millions maybe who are doing a

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Speaker 2: thing and everybody's like, that's a terrible idea.

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Speaker 1: And they were like, no, it's a great idea. I

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Speaker 1: believe in it, and I'm going to persist.

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Speaker 2: And most of them are terrible ideas, are terrible ideas.

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Speaker 2: That's why everybody's say it's a terrible idea. And so

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Speaker 2: you know, we don't tell those stories because well, it's

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Speaker 2: a boring story. It's a terrible idea, and it continues

414
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Speaker 2: to be a terrible idea at the end.

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Speaker 1: And we also understand ice now, but looking back, everyone

416
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Speaker 1: thinks he's a joke. Yeah, and he's proving it every

417
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Speaker 1: day by being thrown back into the air. And so

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Speaker 1: I just want to and this is like a.

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Speaker 2: Professional risk we have telling these kinds of stories, right,

420
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Speaker 2: Like it's a survivorship bias kind of thing where we'll

421
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Speaker 2: tell this worries where the terrible idea turned out to

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Speaker 2: be great. But it's not obvious to me that a

423
00:22:16,720 --> 00:22:18,800
Speaker 2: lesson to take from this is always believe in your dreams.

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Speaker 2: Sometimes your dreams are bad ideas.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, we're not doing a show about the guy who

426
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Speaker 1: decided he was going to put fresh air in boxes

427
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Speaker 1: from the mountains and take them to polluted city so

428
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Speaker 1: that people would enjoy fresh air.

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Speaker 2: I'm interested, Okay, I would have given my email. So

430
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Speaker 2: whatever the lesson is or is not, Frederick Tudor doesn't pivot,

431
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Speaker 2: and I should say, and this maybe is a little

432
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Speaker 2: bit more of a lesson. He is a meticulous businessman.

433
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Speaker 2: His account books are stored at the I think the

434
00:22:49,080 --> 00:22:51,920
Speaker 2: business school library at Harvard, and there was actually this

435
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Speaker 2: article in nineteen eighty four in the Accounting Historians Journal.

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00:22:56,880 --> 00:22:58,960
Speaker 1: What a great journal. Why did you not tell me

437
00:22:59,000 --> 00:22:59,600
Speaker 1: about this journal?

438
00:22:59,680 --> 00:23:02,679
Speaker 2: You've been keeping it Trunting Historians Journal. So in this

439
00:23:02,800 --> 00:23:06,320
Speaker 2: article they studied his books, his ledgers, and they said

440
00:23:06,320 --> 00:23:12,160
Speaker 2: he employed sophisticated accounting techniques to analyzing control transportation costs,

441
00:23:12,440 --> 00:23:14,919
Speaker 2: and the cost of product shrinkage.

442
00:23:14,680 --> 00:23:18,600
Speaker 1: Which is usually a euphemism for people stealing your product.

443
00:23:18,640 --> 00:23:20,879
Speaker 2: Yeah, shrinkage is like if it gets stolen, if it breaks,

444
00:23:20,920 --> 00:23:22,439
Speaker 2: if it rots, that's all shrinkage.

445
00:23:22,560 --> 00:23:23,760
Speaker 1: This is actual shrinkage.

446
00:23:23,800 --> 00:23:26,879
Speaker 2: Yeah, the ice is getting smaller, it's literal shrinkage. And

447
00:23:27,000 --> 00:23:29,280
Speaker 2: in fact, all through this time, when he's in debt

448
00:23:29,320 --> 00:23:31,160
Speaker 2: and he's in and out of jail and shut down

449
00:23:31,200 --> 00:23:35,280
Speaker 2: by wars, Frederick Tudor is trying to reduce shrinkage. He's

450
00:23:35,280 --> 00:23:38,199
Speaker 2: trying to figure out how to get the ice to

451
00:23:38,240 --> 00:23:40,920
Speaker 2: melt more slowly, and crucially, he's trying to figure out

452
00:23:40,960 --> 00:23:45,200
Speaker 2: how to quickly build an ice house in some tropical

453
00:23:45,280 --> 00:23:48,600
Speaker 2: foreign port so that he can store his merchandise without

454
00:23:48,600 --> 00:23:52,160
Speaker 2: too much shrinkage. He gets his chance to really test

455
00:23:52,160 --> 00:23:54,960
Speaker 2: all this out when the War of eighteen twelve ends

456
00:23:55,440 --> 00:23:58,160
Speaker 2: in eighteen fifteen. By the way, didn't know that, should

457
00:23:58,160 --> 00:24:00,440
Speaker 2: have called it the War of eighteen twelve eighteen fifteen.

458
00:24:00,119 --> 00:24:00,800
Speaker 1: Three Years War.

459
00:24:01,119 --> 00:24:04,320
Speaker 2: The three years war. War of eighteen twelve is actually

460
00:24:04,359 --> 00:24:06,360
Speaker 2: a good name, you know, when it was for one

461
00:24:06,400 --> 00:24:10,040
Speaker 2: thing sort of. So he's steal in debt eighteen fifteen.

462
00:24:10,119 --> 00:24:12,199
Speaker 2: Running from a loss step ahead of the sheriff. He

463
00:24:12,280 --> 00:24:17,040
Speaker 2: gets on a ship bound for Havana, sailing with one

464
00:24:17,119 --> 00:24:20,639
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty nine cedar posts and a crew of

465
00:24:20,680 --> 00:24:23,000
Speaker 2: carpenters who are going to help him build an ice

466
00:24:23,040 --> 00:24:25,640
Speaker 2: house in a Havana. The ice is coming on.

467
00:24:25,560 --> 00:24:26,480
Speaker 1: A later ship.

468
00:24:27,080 --> 00:24:29,879
Speaker 2: They get there, they build the ice house. It's like

469
00:24:30,160 --> 00:24:33,320
Speaker 2: a cube of twenty five feet on a side, and

470
00:24:33,359 --> 00:24:36,639
Speaker 2: then on the inside they build like a little inner shell. Right,

471
00:24:36,640 --> 00:24:38,600
Speaker 2: they're gonna make it sort of like a giant thermos

472
00:24:38,600 --> 00:24:41,840
Speaker 2: in a way, and they put like a sawdust and

473
00:24:42,160 --> 00:24:44,840
Speaker 2: pete for insulation between the inner and outer wall. And

474
00:24:44,880 --> 00:24:48,399
Speaker 2: then up on the top on the inside there's like

475
00:24:48,440 --> 00:24:51,200
Speaker 2: the floor where you can hang out and whatever do business.

476
00:24:51,200 --> 00:24:54,040
Speaker 2: And they put a trapdoor on the floor, so you

477
00:24:54,280 --> 00:24:57,200
Speaker 2: lower the ice down beneath the floor and raise it

478
00:24:57,280 --> 00:24:59,720
Speaker 2: up out of it. It's a nice image. And now

479
00:24:59,760 --> 00:25:02,479
Speaker 2: the ice gets there and he's like frantically caring for it,

480
00:25:02,640 --> 00:25:06,640
Speaker 2: measuring the runoff to you know, assess how fast it smelting,

481
00:25:06,720 --> 00:25:10,960
Speaker 2: adjusting the insulation, pitching the ice, you know, going to

482
00:25:10,960 --> 00:25:13,760
Speaker 2: all the bartenders and given it like first one's free

483
00:25:13,880 --> 00:25:15,359
Speaker 2: kind of thing, you know, free subscription.

484
00:25:15,600 --> 00:25:19,240
Speaker 1: Because even in Havana they wanted refrigerated drinks. Like you

485
00:25:19,440 --> 00:25:22,399
Speaker 1: bet you've been in Havana. I've been there. It's hot.

486
00:25:23,760 --> 00:25:25,840
Speaker 1: I picture they had a Cuba libre, which is all

487
00:25:25,880 --> 00:25:27,720
Speaker 1: sticky and warm and terrible.

488
00:25:28,000 --> 00:25:30,120
Speaker 2: They have a glass of warm rum and they're like, oh,

489
00:25:30,119 --> 00:25:33,320
Speaker 2: if only I had some ice, said somebody would invent

490
00:25:33,359 --> 00:25:37,080
Speaker 2: coca cola, this would be amazing. They had a line

491
00:25:37,280 --> 00:25:42,399
Speaker 2: probably so it it kind of works. It kind of

492
00:25:42,440 --> 00:25:44,840
Speaker 2: works at this point, it's like a proof of principal works.

493
00:25:44,840 --> 00:25:47,240
Speaker 2: He's able to store the ice for months. They do

494
00:25:47,760 --> 00:25:51,960
Speaker 2: like it in Havana. But he's at this point now

495
00:25:52,080 --> 00:25:56,120
Speaker 2: where he's it's it's you know, not entirely profitable. It's

496
00:25:56,119 --> 00:25:59,679
Speaker 2: sort of working. But he's got the he's got the model,

497
00:25:59,800 --> 00:26:03,160
Speaker 2: and so he's building ice houses now in other places

498
00:26:03,200 --> 00:26:06,720
Speaker 2: in Martinique's original spot in Saint Thomas, and also in

499
00:26:06,760 --> 00:26:10,600
Speaker 2: the American South in Savannah and Charleston. And at the

500
00:26:10,800 --> 00:26:14,920
Speaker 2: end of eighteen twenty he sends another brother, his younger brother,

501
00:26:15,280 --> 00:26:19,000
Speaker 2: to set up an ice business in New Orleans.

502
00:26:19,800 --> 00:26:25,160
Speaker 1: Or if anyone loves a great cold cocktail, it's New Orleans.

503
00:26:25,200 --> 00:26:28,760
Speaker 2: It's New Orleans. They're about to love a great cold cocktail.

504
00:26:28,800 --> 00:26:31,800
Speaker 2: So he figures if they can sell ten dollars a

505
00:26:31,880 --> 00:26:35,359
Speaker 2: day worth of ice in New Orleans, that'll that'll be

506
00:26:35,400 --> 00:26:39,080
Speaker 2: a good business. And at this point, even our guy,

507
00:26:39,320 --> 00:26:44,000
Speaker 2: even our you know, fight on persistent grin entrepreneur, is

508
00:26:44,080 --> 00:26:48,080
Speaker 2: getting nervous about this. One day, his entire diary entry

509
00:26:48,720 --> 00:26:52,359
Speaker 2: is in all caps and it's one word anxiety.

510
00:26:52,720 --> 00:26:56,520
Speaker 1: Oh next day, what is he right? Anxiety?

511
00:26:56,560 --> 00:27:01,080
Speaker 2: Anxiety, next day anxiety. It's the most relatable part of

512
00:27:01,119 --> 00:27:01,879
Speaker 2: the diary for me.

513
00:27:02,160 --> 00:27:05,600
Speaker 1: This is often Jacob's Google Docs when he writes the

514
00:27:05,640 --> 00:27:10,840
Speaker 1: shows anxiety, anxiety, and then I don't despair.

515
00:27:10,880 --> 00:27:12,800
Speaker 2: Though I don't despair, I keep making shows.

516
00:27:12,840 --> 00:27:13,360
Speaker 3: And then.

517
00:27:14,680 --> 00:27:19,280
Speaker 2: In July of eighteen twenty one, after a decade of failures,

518
00:27:20,160 --> 00:27:24,159
Speaker 2: the breakthrough finally comes. Frederick gets a letter from his

519
00:27:24,240 --> 00:27:27,600
Speaker 2: brother in New Orleans. And remember they'd hope for ten

520
00:27:27,680 --> 00:27:31,000
Speaker 2: dollars a day in sales. The brother says they are

521
00:27:31,040 --> 00:27:36,080
Speaker 2: now selling forty dollars every day in ice. New Orleans

522
00:27:36,160 --> 00:27:41,840
Speaker 2: is going bananas for as I just the parade is

523
00:27:41,880 --> 00:27:45,359
Speaker 2: going down. The jazz hasn't been invented yet, but they're playing.

524
00:27:45,160 --> 00:27:47,879
Speaker 1: A second line. They're all drinking hurricanes in one of

525
00:27:47,920 --> 00:27:50,119
Speaker 1: those weird long tall glasses.

526
00:27:50,359 --> 00:27:53,600
Speaker 2: That's cool. It's a pure anacardis and time is running

527
00:27:53,640 --> 00:27:54,800
Speaker 2: forward and backwards.

528
00:27:55,320 --> 00:27:58,399
Speaker 1: The bachelorette parties are so happy at this point.

529
00:27:58,640 --> 00:28:01,840
Speaker 2: Frederick Tutor is thirty seven years old. He's spent his

530
00:28:02,160 --> 00:28:06,399
Speaker 2: entire adult life trying to sell ice, and now finally

531
00:28:07,400 --> 00:28:08,720
Speaker 2: he's doing it. It's happening.

532
00:28:08,800 --> 00:28:11,240
Speaker 1: It's a real business. He pays off his debts.

533
00:28:11,400 --> 00:28:14,680
Speaker 2: He'd buys some land on this little island next to Boston.

534
00:28:15,720 --> 00:28:19,760
Speaker 2: And now interestingly, he has a new problem. It's a

535
00:28:19,760 --> 00:28:23,320
Speaker 2: good problem, much better than you know, getting thrown in

536
00:28:23,440 --> 00:28:26,840
Speaker 2: jail for debts, but it is still a problem. Demand

537
00:28:27,080 --> 00:28:31,000
Speaker 2: is outstripping supply. He doesn't have enough ice.

538
00:28:31,520 --> 00:28:33,880
Speaker 1: And this one and you're trying to be the ice king,

539
00:28:34,240 --> 00:28:36,399
Speaker 1: and you're like, I mean, he wasn't prepared for it

540
00:28:36,400 --> 00:28:37,639
Speaker 1: after all these years. It is.

541
00:28:37,720 --> 00:28:42,120
Speaker 2: So you know, I've interviewed lots of the startup founders basically,

542
00:28:42,160 --> 00:28:44,480
Speaker 2: and they talk about this moment. I remember the American

543
00:28:44,520 --> 00:28:48,240
Speaker 2: Giant guy in particular, you know, the sweatshirt American made sweatshirts.

544
00:28:48,280 --> 00:28:50,120
Speaker 2: He talked about having this moment where there was this

545
00:28:50,320 --> 00:28:53,720
Speaker 2: article that just made his business take off. And it's

546
00:28:53,800 --> 00:28:57,640
Speaker 2: not great, right, Like he hated it. It meant he

547
00:28:57,720 --> 00:29:00,400
Speaker 2: couldn't give people this thing that he wanted to give.

548
00:29:00,320 --> 00:29:03,080
Speaker 1: Them because he's not trying to sell ice as a

549
00:29:03,200 --> 00:29:07,479
Speaker 1: luxury product. Yeah, he wants to sell commodity ice around

550
00:29:07,520 --> 00:29:10,480
Speaker 1: the world, and he's a logistics man, and logistics is

551
00:29:10,560 --> 00:29:14,040
Speaker 1: really hard to pull off. Yeah, and so you can't

552
00:29:14,080 --> 00:29:17,600
Speaker 1: just turn one ice lever and double your supply. Yeah.

553
00:29:17,600 --> 00:29:19,000
Speaker 2: And I mean when you're saying he doesn't want it

554
00:29:19,000 --> 00:29:20,840
Speaker 2: to be a luxury product, you mean he can't just

555
00:29:20,960 --> 00:29:23,160
Speaker 2: jack up the price, right, because the kind of mechanical

556
00:29:23,200 --> 00:29:26,320
Speaker 2: econ one on one thing is like, oh, people are

557
00:29:26,400 --> 00:29:28,960
Speaker 2: buying more than you have, just jack up the price.

558
00:29:29,000 --> 00:29:32,200
Speaker 2: But you know, in general, people don't want to do

559
00:29:32,280 --> 00:29:36,600
Speaker 2: that because business is a many time game, right. You

560
00:29:36,680 --> 00:29:39,239
Speaker 2: want loyal customers. You want them to love you. You

561
00:29:39,240 --> 00:29:41,680
Speaker 2: don't want them to remember you as the guy who

562
00:29:41,760 --> 00:29:43,040
Speaker 2: tried to gouge.

563
00:29:42,720 --> 00:29:43,400
Speaker 1: Them when you could.

564
00:29:44,360 --> 00:29:47,440
Speaker 2: So often entrepreneurs don't want to just jack up the price.

565
00:29:47,680 --> 00:29:51,600
Speaker 2: What they want to do is increase supply by increasing efficiency.

566
00:29:52,040 --> 00:29:55,280
Speaker 2: And you know, getting the ice out of the frozen

567
00:29:55,320 --> 00:29:58,720
Speaker 2: lakes is actually quite inefficient at this point. It's all

568
00:29:59,040 --> 00:30:02,880
Speaker 2: guys out there with saws, basically sawing blocks out of

569
00:30:02,920 --> 00:30:04,640
Speaker 2: a frozen lake, and it's hard to get it up

570
00:30:04,680 --> 00:30:06,240
Speaker 2: out of the lake. It's hard to saw it. It's

571
00:30:06,280 --> 00:30:09,440
Speaker 2: all hard. The guy who was going to solve this problem,

572
00:30:09,520 --> 00:30:12,960
Speaker 2: it's actually a guy who works for Tutor, a guy

573
00:30:13,000 --> 00:30:18,240
Speaker 2: named Nathaniel Wyeth who had grown up on this little

574
00:30:18,480 --> 00:30:21,880
Speaker 2: lake outside of Boston called Fresh Pond. His family had

575
00:30:21,920 --> 00:30:25,040
Speaker 2: hotel there, they cut their own ice, and Wyeth becomes

576
00:30:25,080 --> 00:30:29,040
Speaker 2: a supplier to Tutor, and around eighteen twenty five he

577
00:30:29,200 --> 00:30:34,480
Speaker 2: has this idea where he builds this thing with metal

578
00:30:34,520 --> 00:30:37,360
Speaker 2: blades that you can attach to a horse, so like

579
00:30:37,360 --> 00:30:39,760
Speaker 2: think of a plow, right, it's like a plow but

580
00:30:39,880 --> 00:30:41,680
Speaker 2: for the ice, and you push.

581
00:30:41,480 --> 00:30:44,560
Speaker 1: The horse out on the ice. You I love it.

582
00:30:45,200 --> 00:30:49,480
Speaker 2: You actually you put spikes on the horse's shoes, and

583
00:30:49,560 --> 00:30:54,640
Speaker 2: so when the ice is thick enough important, the horse

584
00:30:54,800 --> 00:30:57,480
Speaker 2: pulls the plow across the ice and it cuts it.

585
00:30:57,560 --> 00:31:00,000
Speaker 2: And logical, he actually figures out, you have it go

586
00:31:00,120 --> 00:31:02,560
Speaker 2: at like ninety degree angles. You have it go one way,

587
00:31:02,840 --> 00:31:04,360
Speaker 2: and they have a go at a ninety degree angle.

588
00:31:04,360 --> 00:31:06,680
Speaker 2: And you did this all across the pond, and you're

589
00:31:06,800 --> 00:31:10,280
Speaker 2: essentially turning the pond into a giant ice cube tray.

590
00:31:10,480 --> 00:31:13,800
Speaker 2: If you're old enough to her ice cube trays. Okay,

591
00:31:13,920 --> 00:31:16,600
Speaker 2: welcome to business history. He has this other innovation that

592
00:31:16,640 --> 00:31:19,200
Speaker 2: I love, which is after you've cut it, it's still

593
00:31:19,200 --> 00:31:20,840
Speaker 2: hard to get the ice up out of the lake.

594
00:31:20,880 --> 00:31:22,480
Speaker 2: And he figures out some kind of a system with

595
00:31:22,600 --> 00:31:27,440
Speaker 2: like pulleys and horses pulling on ropes where the pulleys

596
00:31:27,440 --> 00:31:31,760
Speaker 2: are actually lifting these ice blocks out of the frozen

597
00:31:31,800 --> 00:31:33,520
Speaker 2: pond so that they can be put into the ice

598
00:31:33,560 --> 00:31:37,520
Speaker 2: house like industrial ice. It's industrial ice. That is exactly

599
00:31:37,560 --> 00:31:42,880
Speaker 2: what it is, frozen by nature. So now our hero

600
00:31:43,040 --> 00:31:46,120
Speaker 2: has what he needs, he has demand, he has supply.

601
00:31:46,680 --> 00:31:49,240
Speaker 2: Ice is going to the moon, who or at least

602
00:31:49,360 --> 00:31:54,040
Speaker 2: it's going to India long way away. After the break,

603
00:32:15,000 --> 00:32:20,000
Speaker 2: we're back It's eighteen thirty three and a Boston merchant

604
00:32:20,040 --> 00:32:23,560
Speaker 2: comes to Frederick Tudor with an idea. Boston has this

605
00:32:23,600 --> 00:32:27,480
Speaker 2: booming trade with India. All this stuff is coming from

606
00:32:27,480 --> 00:32:31,920
Speaker 2: India to Boston, but not that much stuff is going

607
00:32:31,960 --> 00:32:35,920
Speaker 2: from Boston to India. There is a trade deficit basically,

608
00:32:36,200 --> 00:32:38,160
Speaker 2: and so what that means, and I mentioned this earlier

609
00:32:38,160 --> 00:32:41,320
Speaker 2: in the show, is you know, you have ships coming

610
00:32:41,320 --> 00:32:44,880
Speaker 2: in from India with whatever cotton spices and then going

611
00:32:44,920 --> 00:32:49,360
Speaker 2: back largely empty. Ship owners remember putting rocks in as

612
00:32:49,480 --> 00:32:51,760
Speaker 2: ballast in those outgoing ships.

613
00:32:51,760 --> 00:32:52,920
Speaker 1: So this merchant is like.

614
00:32:53,720 --> 00:32:59,040
Speaker 2: Frederick Tudor, what if instead of rocks, we had frozen ice,

615
00:32:59,640 --> 00:33:03,680
Speaker 2: the only kind, the best kind of eyes? What if

616
00:33:03,680 --> 00:33:05,479
Speaker 2: we put ice in there and sent it to India?

617
00:33:05,520 --> 00:33:08,720
Speaker 2: And Frederick Tudor was like, where have you been all

618
00:33:08,720 --> 00:33:09,240
Speaker 2: my life?

619
00:33:09,360 --> 00:33:09,600
Speaker 1: Yes?

620
00:33:09,720 --> 00:33:13,160
Speaker 2: Yes, a thousand times yes. And so they make the deal.

621
00:33:14,120 --> 00:33:16,959
Speaker 2: Tudor is going to send one hundred and eighty tons

622
00:33:17,000 --> 00:33:20,719
Speaker 2: of ice on a single ship. This is farther than

623
00:33:20,720 --> 00:33:23,280
Speaker 2: he's ever sent a ship full of ice. It's going

624
00:33:23,360 --> 00:33:26,400
Speaker 2: to be very hot, it's going down across the equator

625
00:33:26,440 --> 00:33:29,520
Speaker 2: around the tip of Africa, and so you know, he

626
00:33:29,560 --> 00:33:32,040
Speaker 2: starts going down to the ship multiple times a day,

627
00:33:32,960 --> 00:33:36,000
Speaker 2: builds this what he calls a sheathing of boards, so

628
00:33:36,120 --> 00:33:37,960
Speaker 2: sort of again like kind of trying to turn the

629
00:33:37,960 --> 00:33:40,080
Speaker 2: hold of the ship into a thermos. Builds this sheathing

630
00:33:40,120 --> 00:33:44,960
Speaker 2: of boards around the ice, insulates it with hay and tan,

631
00:33:45,440 --> 00:33:49,360
Speaker 2: which apparently has ground up bark on all sides. He says,

632
00:33:49,400 --> 00:33:51,600
Speaker 2: the it's like starfoam, right, because it would be light

633
00:33:51,640 --> 00:33:53,840
Speaker 2: and it would have lots ofles of air in it.

634
00:33:53,880 --> 00:33:54,840
Speaker 1: I guess, so yeah.

635
00:33:54,880 --> 00:33:59,360
Speaker 2: He calls the insulation an unbroken stratum on top, ends, sides,

636
00:33:59,400 --> 00:34:03,040
Speaker 2: and bottom, and he hopes that something like two thirds

637
00:34:03,040 --> 00:34:04,479
Speaker 2: of the ice will make it. He knows a lot

638
00:34:04,480 --> 00:34:06,440
Speaker 2: it's going to melt. The ship sails out of Boston

639
00:34:06,440 --> 00:34:10,560
Speaker 2: Harbor on May twelfth, eighteen thirty three, bound for Calcutta.

640
00:34:10,880 --> 00:34:14,680
Speaker 2: Today we call Katta and Tudor at this point is

641
00:34:14,720 --> 00:34:17,320
Speaker 2: too old and frankly too rich to go by himself.

642
00:34:17,760 --> 00:34:21,279
Speaker 2: Send somebody in his place, and his ice sails off

643
00:34:21,280 --> 00:34:24,760
Speaker 2: out of Boston Harbor. Like to picture him standing there

644
00:34:25,160 --> 00:34:27,680
Speaker 2: eating an ice cream cone, watching it until it sails

645
00:34:27,680 --> 00:34:31,640
Speaker 2: over the horizon and you know, goes across the Atlantic

646
00:34:31,680 --> 00:34:34,920
Speaker 2: down around the tip of Africa up through the Indian Ocean,

647
00:34:35,560 --> 00:34:39,160
Speaker 2: sixteen thousand miles or so, four months at sea.

648
00:34:39,600 --> 00:34:40,680
Speaker 1: It's still it.

649
00:34:40,719 --> 00:34:42,879
Speaker 2: Still amazes me. Then in the eight hundreds you could

650
00:34:42,920 --> 00:34:43,759
Speaker 2: do it shouldn't work.

651
00:34:43,880 --> 00:34:44,600
Speaker 1: It shouldn't work.

652
00:34:44,760 --> 00:34:47,239
Speaker 2: It's ninety degrees when the ship gets to India and

653
00:34:47,280 --> 00:34:52,239
Speaker 2: the ice, of course is melting fast. And Calcutta is

654
00:34:52,320 --> 00:34:55,879
Speaker 2: like seventy miles up this river from the sea. And

655
00:34:55,960 --> 00:34:58,359
Speaker 2: as the ship with the ice is coming up river,

656
00:34:58,719 --> 00:35:02,759
Speaker 2: people in Calcutta start hearing this rumor basically that a

657
00:35:02,840 --> 00:35:06,399
Speaker 2: ship from Boston full of ice is coming up the river.

658
00:35:07,560 --> 00:35:11,040
Speaker 2: And there's an article about it in this newspaper called

659
00:35:11,040 --> 00:35:13,719
Speaker 2: the Calcutta which is the paper sort of of the

660
00:35:13,760 --> 00:35:16,000
Speaker 2: British colonialists in Calcutta.

661
00:35:16,480 --> 00:35:19,480
Speaker 1: The Yankees are so inventive and so fond of a

662
00:35:19,560 --> 00:35:21,680
Speaker 1: joke at the expense of the old country that we

663
00:35:21,719 --> 00:35:25,320
Speaker 1: had some misgivings about the reality of Brother Jonathan's frozen

664
00:35:25,400 --> 00:35:29,320
Speaker 1: manifest and suspected him to be coolly indicting a hoax

665
00:35:30,080 --> 00:35:31,240
Speaker 1: so easy to laugh.

666
00:35:31,080 --> 00:35:35,799
Speaker 2: At, slippery, slippery, they can't resist, they can't resist it.

667
00:35:37,080 --> 00:35:38,719
Speaker 1: I feel like I would have covered this back at

668
00:35:38,719 --> 00:35:41,800
Speaker 1: the time. It's ice on a boat it's so crazy.

669
00:35:41,840 --> 00:35:44,319
Speaker 2: It's a perfect story for you. They think it's a joke,

670
00:35:45,200 --> 00:35:47,479
Speaker 2: but they find out it's real. You know, it's still

671
00:35:47,480 --> 00:35:49,439
Speaker 2: coming up the river. They find out, yes, it's real.

672
00:35:50,200 --> 00:35:53,000
Speaker 2: And once they find out it's real, they're like, get

673
00:35:53,000 --> 00:35:55,840
Speaker 2: that ice here right now. The newspapers actually start a

674
00:35:55,880 --> 00:35:59,719
Speaker 2: campaign to send a steamship to tow this sailing ship

675
00:35:59,800 --> 00:36:02,880
Speaker 2: up the river so it gets they're faster to wave

676
00:36:03,000 --> 00:36:05,160
Speaker 2: the customs duties when it arrives so they can unload

677
00:36:05,200 --> 00:36:06,240
Speaker 2: it before it melts.

678
00:36:06,360 --> 00:36:08,799
Speaker 1: The clock is ticking, The clock is ticking, the ice.

679
00:36:08,600 --> 00:36:11,560
Speaker 2: Is melting minute by minute, And in fact it all happens.

680
00:36:11,600 --> 00:36:13,440
Speaker 2: They do toe the ship up, they do waive the

681
00:36:13,480 --> 00:36:17,239
Speaker 2: customs duties, and the ship arrives and there is ice left.

682
00:36:17,280 --> 00:36:19,040
Speaker 2: We don't know how much left, but there is ice.

683
00:36:19,120 --> 00:36:22,279
Speaker 1: A newspaper, Calcutta Courier writes the names of those who

684
00:36:22,320 --> 00:36:25,319
Speaker 1: planned and have successfully carried through the adventure at their

685
00:36:25,360 --> 00:36:29,040
Speaker 1: own cost deserve to be handed down to posterity, with

686
00:36:29,120 --> 00:36:32,520
Speaker 1: the names of other benefactors of mankind. The importer of

687
00:36:32,560 --> 00:36:35,960
Speaker 1: the potato into Europe, the disseminator of useful plants in

688
00:36:36,040 --> 00:36:39,040
Speaker 1: regions where they were unknown, and the authors of every

689
00:36:39,160 --> 00:36:42,640
Speaker 1: species of discovery. They're saying, this is one of the

690
00:36:42,680 --> 00:36:45,080
Speaker 1: great human achievements. Ice to India.

691
00:36:45,200 --> 00:36:48,920
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, in fact, that the colonial governor in Calcutta

692
00:36:49,000 --> 00:36:53,200
Speaker 2: gives Tudor's guys some kind of like specially engraved silver cup,

693
00:36:53,560 --> 00:36:56,800
Speaker 2: like like a trophy kind of for this incredible breakthrough.

694
00:36:56,840 --> 00:37:02,200
Speaker 2: And they become in Calcutta like dependent on ice. When

695
00:37:02,280 --> 00:37:05,600
Speaker 2: a shipment is late or doesn't arrive, it gets rationed.

696
00:37:06,160 --> 00:37:08,279
Speaker 2: People will get a note from their doctor, like if

697
00:37:08,280 --> 00:37:10,560
Speaker 2: they have a fever, which you know, people got a

698
00:37:10,600 --> 00:37:14,080
Speaker 2: lot they would use ice the fever. So it becomes

699
00:37:14,200 --> 00:37:18,960
Speaker 2: this necessary part of life there, and Tudor gets a

700
00:37:18,960 --> 00:37:21,920
Speaker 2: monopoly on the Calcutta ice trade. It's still got that

701
00:37:21,960 --> 00:37:24,719
Speaker 2: same move, and it works for him. Over the next

702
00:37:24,760 --> 00:37:28,560
Speaker 2: few decades, you know, he keeps selling ice to Calcutta

703
00:37:28,600 --> 00:37:32,040
Speaker 2: and he makes hundreds of thousands of dollars in profit,

704
00:37:32,920 --> 00:37:35,440
Speaker 2: which of course would be you know, millions in today's money.

705
00:37:35,880 --> 00:37:38,520
Speaker 2: And so Tudor has done it. He has turned this

706
00:37:38,600 --> 00:37:42,760
Speaker 2: thing that sounds like a joke into a great business

707
00:37:43,400 --> 00:37:45,440
Speaker 2: and seems to have a nice life. He gets married

708
00:37:45,440 --> 00:37:48,920
Speaker 2: at fifty, has kids and is like a happy rich guy.

709
00:37:48,920 --> 00:37:51,600
Speaker 2: In Boston as far as we can tell him. And

710
00:37:51,680 --> 00:37:56,120
Speaker 2: so there is still kind of this question, which is,

711
00:37:57,040 --> 00:38:00,000
Speaker 2: how does it make sense? How does this work that

712
00:38:00,040 --> 00:38:03,080
Speaker 2: you can send ice from Boston to India and it

713
00:38:03,120 --> 00:38:05,840
Speaker 2: takes four months and it's still a profitable business.

714
00:38:06,320 --> 00:38:08,080
Speaker 1: Yeah. In other words, what did he see that no

715
00:38:08,120 --> 00:38:08,680
Speaker 1: one else saw?

716
00:38:08,800 --> 00:38:08,960
Speaker 2: Yeah?

717
00:38:09,080 --> 00:38:09,759
Speaker 1: Yeah.

718
00:38:09,400 --> 00:38:12,080
Speaker 2: And you know, at the beginning of the show, I

719
00:38:12,120 --> 00:38:14,600
Speaker 2: said that the story of the ice trade is at

720
00:38:14,600 --> 00:38:18,480
Speaker 2: some level a story about the most underrated idea in economics.

721
00:38:19,160 --> 00:38:19,839
Speaker 1: So here it is.

722
00:38:20,320 --> 00:38:22,760
Speaker 2: The idea is opportunity cost.

723
00:38:23,200 --> 00:38:26,719
Speaker 1: Love opportunity cost, give us, give us the definition. If

724
00:38:26,719 --> 00:38:29,759
Speaker 1: you are doing something, it's opportunity cost is basically the

725
00:38:29,880 --> 00:38:33,719
Speaker 1: highest value option that you do not choose. It's the

726
00:38:33,880 --> 00:38:34,759
Speaker 1: second best thing.

727
00:38:34,880 --> 00:38:37,160
Speaker 2: Uh huh. You mentioned when I brought this up the

728
00:38:37,160 --> 00:38:38,840
Speaker 2: other day, you mentioned business school. You said that I

729
00:38:38,840 --> 00:38:40,719
Speaker 2: would tell you this on the first day of business school.

730
00:38:40,800 --> 00:38:42,600
Speaker 1: Yeah, because if you think about it, there is the

731
00:38:42,680 --> 00:38:45,239
Speaker 1: cost to go to business school, which is high intuition,

732
00:38:46,560 --> 00:38:50,400
Speaker 1: but really the opportunity cost is even more significant, which is,

733
00:38:50,440 --> 00:38:52,160
Speaker 1: if you are sitting in business school, you are not

734
00:38:52,280 --> 00:38:55,480
Speaker 1: working at Goldman Sachs or at JP Morgan Chase, where

735
00:38:55,520 --> 00:38:57,480
Speaker 1: you might be making two hundred three hundred thousand dollars

736
00:38:57,520 --> 00:39:01,280
Speaker 1: a year. That is your opportunity cost for the education

737
00:39:01,400 --> 00:39:02,040
Speaker 1: that you're getting.

738
00:39:02,120 --> 00:39:05,959
Speaker 2: And so think about opportunity cost in this story. There's

739
00:39:06,640 --> 00:39:11,239
Speaker 2: there's the most obvious one, those ships sailing out empty, right, Like,

740
00:39:11,760 --> 00:39:16,120
Speaker 2: the opportunity cost for that space is zero essentially.

741
00:39:16,200 --> 00:39:16,399
Speaker 1: Right.

742
00:39:16,520 --> 00:39:19,600
Speaker 2: A merchant is gonna, you know, sell space to the

743
00:39:19,640 --> 00:39:23,000
Speaker 2: highest bidder. Right, if nobody's bidding, you can get that

744
00:39:23,040 --> 00:39:26,839
Speaker 2: space real cheap. But it's not just the ship itself, right,

745
00:39:26,880 --> 00:39:29,799
Speaker 2: there's the ice, the ice that is just sitting there

746
00:39:29,960 --> 00:39:33,279
Speaker 2: on a pond in Massachusetts in January.

747
00:39:33,560 --> 00:39:35,879
Speaker 1: Yeah, there is no value to that ice other than

748
00:39:35,920 --> 00:39:38,000
Speaker 1: ice skating, which nobody's gonna pay for.

749
00:39:38,080 --> 00:39:40,840
Speaker 2: They were paying to skate on ponds in eighteen thirty.

750
00:39:41,440 --> 00:39:44,080
Speaker 2: There's a third kind of opportunity cost play here as well,

751
00:39:44,120 --> 00:39:47,240
Speaker 2: and this one is a little more subtle, which is labor.

752
00:39:47,880 --> 00:39:52,640
Speaker 2: The workers cutting the ice tutor mostly hired farm workers.

753
00:39:52,960 --> 00:39:56,520
Speaker 2: They're doing this work in January in February. What's the

754
00:39:56,560 --> 00:39:59,000
Speaker 2: opportunity cost of the time of a farm worker in January?

755
00:39:59,000 --> 00:40:01,480
Speaker 1: There's nothing for them to do while there's snow on

756
00:40:01,480 --> 00:40:03,080
Speaker 1: the ground and ice on the lake.

757
00:40:03,160 --> 00:40:05,520
Speaker 2: Huddling by the fire to keep warm until spring is

758
00:40:05,560 --> 00:40:07,759
Speaker 2: not a job. They're not giving up a lot of

759
00:40:07,800 --> 00:40:09,600
Speaker 2: money to go out and get paid to cut ice.

760
00:40:10,680 --> 00:40:14,920
Speaker 2: And you know, all these things together, I thought of

761
00:40:14,960 --> 00:40:17,719
Speaker 2: this business cliche that I generally don't care for, which

762
00:40:17,760 --> 00:40:20,800
Speaker 2: is adding value. Everybody's always talking about how they're adding value.

763
00:40:20,840 --> 00:40:26,320
Speaker 2: What's the value add? But Tudor really is like he

764
00:40:26,480 --> 00:40:31,880
Speaker 2: is taking underemployed people to harvest an unused resource, free resource, really,

765
00:40:31,920 --> 00:40:34,719
Speaker 2: and put it in an empty ship and send it

766
00:40:34,760 --> 00:40:37,319
Speaker 2: to somewhere where people really really want it.

767
00:40:37,320 --> 00:40:41,080
Speaker 1: It's the combination and the logistics that makes it valuable,

768
00:40:41,360 --> 00:40:42,600
Speaker 1: that makes it immensely.

769
00:40:42,239 --> 00:40:45,560
Speaker 2: Immensely valuable, which is why once he figured out how

770
00:40:45,560 --> 00:40:49,560
Speaker 2: to keep the ice from melting, he built an industry

771
00:40:49,600 --> 00:40:54,279
Speaker 2: and got rich. Now, despite his best efforts to get

772
00:40:54,320 --> 00:40:57,360
Speaker 2: monopolies in all those places, he didn't have a monopoly everywhere,

773
00:40:58,400 --> 00:41:00,960
Speaker 2: And lots of other people got into the ice business

774
00:41:00,960 --> 00:41:03,160
Speaker 2: because they were like, Oh, there's just ice sitting there.

775
00:41:03,120 --> 00:41:04,400
Speaker 1: Let's go cut that ice.

776
00:41:05,120 --> 00:41:09,040
Speaker 2: And eventually that pond where why with his innovator was cutting,

777
00:41:09,080 --> 00:41:11,640
Speaker 2: filled up with ice cutters, and so they moved on.

778
00:41:12,640 --> 00:41:14,719
Speaker 1: It's a nice rush. Yes, there was a nice rush.

779
00:41:14,840 --> 00:41:16,840
Speaker 1: So they moved on in eighteen.

780
00:41:16,520 --> 00:41:20,600
Speaker 2: Forty six uh to a pond a little farther from town,

781
00:41:20,840 --> 00:41:23,400
Speaker 2: a pond called Walden Pond.

782
00:41:23,520 --> 00:41:26,520
Speaker 1: One of the most famous ponds in American history, because

783
00:41:26,600 --> 00:41:29,719
Speaker 1: this is where Henry David's throw or use how to

784
00:41:29,800 --> 00:41:32,920
Speaker 1: you say it? I guess thoro. Somebody told me. Yeah,

785
00:41:32,960 --> 00:41:36,239
Speaker 1: he's like he's living by himself and contemplating nature and

786
00:41:36,360 --> 00:41:37,440
Speaker 1: the nature of humanity.

787
00:41:37,520 --> 00:41:39,560
Speaker 2: This is the year when he lived on Walden and

788
00:41:39,560 --> 00:41:42,959
Speaker 2: wrote the famous book Walden Pond, and in fact, amazingly

789
00:41:43,120 --> 00:41:47,160
Speaker 2: delightfully in the book in Walden there is this scene

790
00:41:47,520 --> 00:41:50,239
Speaker 2: where one day one hundred guys show up out of

791
00:41:50,239 --> 00:41:54,200
Speaker 2: nowhere and start cutting blocks out of the pond. And

792
00:41:54,239 --> 00:41:56,200
Speaker 2: they called blocks at the time cakes. By the way,

793
00:41:56,200 --> 00:41:57,280
Speaker 2: he's going to call him cakes.

794
00:41:57,080 --> 00:42:00,120
Speaker 1: Cakes of ice. Okay, this is from Henry David. And

795
00:42:00,239 --> 00:42:03,160
Speaker 1: these cakes of ice, being sledded to the shore, were

796
00:42:03,280 --> 00:42:06,560
Speaker 1: rapidly hauled off to an ice platform and raised by

797
00:42:06,560 --> 00:42:10,800
Speaker 1: grappling irons and block and tackle worked by horses. Onto

798
00:42:10,840 --> 00:42:14,600
Speaker 1: a stack is so many barrels of flour, and they're

799
00:42:14,640 --> 00:42:18,040
Speaker 1: placed evenly side by side and row upon row, as

800
00:42:18,080 --> 00:42:21,360
Speaker 1: if they formed the solid base of an obelisk designed

801
00:42:21,400 --> 00:42:24,520
Speaker 1: to pierce the clouds. They told me that in a

802
00:42:24,560 --> 00:42:27,399
Speaker 1: good day they could get out a thousand tons. They

803
00:42:27,440 --> 00:42:29,759
Speaker 1: stacked up the cakes thus in the open air, in

804
00:42:29,800 --> 00:42:32,239
Speaker 1: a pile thirty five feet high on one side, and

805
00:42:32,360 --> 00:42:35,440
Speaker 1: six or seven rod square, putting hay between the outside

806
00:42:35,520 --> 00:42:38,440
Speaker 1: layers to exclude the air. At first it looked like

807
00:42:38,480 --> 00:42:41,800
Speaker 1: a vast blue fort or Valhalla. But when they began

808
00:42:41,880 --> 00:42:44,880
Speaker 1: to tuck the coarse meadow hay into the crevices and

809
00:42:44,920 --> 00:42:48,080
Speaker 1: this became covered with rime and icicles, it looked like

810
00:42:48,120 --> 00:42:52,000
Speaker 1: a venerable moss grown and hoary ruin built of azure

811
00:42:52,080 --> 00:42:57,920
Speaker 1: tinted marble, the abode of winter. So that's a guy

812
00:42:57,920 --> 00:43:02,480
Speaker 1: who did go to Harvard just saying. I'm just saying

813
00:43:02,600 --> 00:43:04,880
Speaker 1: he did not drop out of Harvard to become an entrepreneur.

814
00:43:05,000 --> 00:43:06,759
Speaker 1: Did he drop out? He might have dropped out to

815
00:43:06,760 --> 00:43:09,120
Speaker 1: be I don't actually I think I think Henry David

816
00:43:09,160 --> 00:43:09,839
Speaker 1: graduator from.

817
00:43:09,760 --> 00:43:11,040
Speaker 3: Harvard, well done.

818
00:43:11,239 --> 00:43:13,600
Speaker 2: I don't know if too ever read the book. I

819
00:43:13,600 --> 00:43:15,319
Speaker 2: don't about the timing. I don't know if he encountered it.

820
00:43:15,320 --> 00:43:16,560
Speaker 2: I don't know what he would have thought of it.

821
00:43:17,480 --> 00:43:19,040
Speaker 2: But he seems to be doing fine. He's a rich

822
00:43:19,080 --> 00:43:21,280
Speaker 2: old man, mostly living with his family on that little

823
00:43:21,280 --> 00:43:23,799
Speaker 2: island off Boston. He does actually make some kind of

824
00:43:23,800 --> 00:43:26,520
Speaker 2: little amusement park there and sell ice cream again, still

825
00:43:26,560 --> 00:43:29,600
Speaker 2: eating ice cream to the end, and he dies in

826
00:43:29,719 --> 00:43:36,080
Speaker 2: eighteen sixty four, and by this time ice just naturally frozen.

827
00:43:36,120 --> 00:43:39,880
Speaker 2: Ice is this major American industry.

828
00:43:39,600 --> 00:43:43,800
Speaker 1: Because, like any technological innovation, it makes other innovations possible.

829
00:43:44,360 --> 00:43:47,400
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean, you know, I knew a little

830
00:43:47,400 --> 00:43:49,799
Speaker 2: bit the story of like Swift and Armor and the

831
00:43:49,880 --> 00:43:52,160
Speaker 2: sort of growth of the of the meat packing business

832
00:43:52,160 --> 00:43:54,839
Speaker 2: when they figured out that you could transport meat if

833
00:43:54,880 --> 00:43:58,600
Speaker 2: you put it on refrigerated railcars. But I assumed that

834
00:43:58,760 --> 00:44:03,360
Speaker 2: was you know whatever, artificial refrigeration. No, it was ice,

835
00:44:03,480 --> 00:44:04,200
Speaker 2: it was pondice.

836
00:44:04,239 --> 00:44:05,360
Speaker 1: It was the ice industry.

837
00:44:05,400 --> 00:44:09,240
Speaker 2: And in fact, along the railroad tracks the big meatpacking

838
00:44:09,239 --> 00:44:11,919
Speaker 2: companies would have these ice houses where they would store

839
00:44:11,920 --> 00:44:14,839
Speaker 2: them so they could replenish the ice in their refrigerated

840
00:44:14,880 --> 00:44:15,400
Speaker 2: ice cars.

841
00:44:15,840 --> 00:44:18,239
Speaker 1: Similarly, you have the beer.

842
00:44:18,000 --> 00:44:20,279
Speaker 2: Business taking off in the later part of the eighteen

843
00:44:20,360 --> 00:44:23,880
Speaker 2: hundreds with this wave of German immigration to the Midwest,

844
00:44:23,960 --> 00:44:28,160
Speaker 2: and so Milwaukee German immigrants are making I guess it's

845
00:44:28,320 --> 00:44:31,600
Speaker 2: a lagger, right, German style beer and German style beer

846
00:44:31,680 --> 00:44:35,560
Speaker 2: needs to be refrigerated. So again ice industry. You get

847
00:44:35,560 --> 00:44:39,239
Speaker 2: a residential ice industry in cities like New York and Philadelphia.

848
00:44:39,280 --> 00:44:41,799
Speaker 2: People get little ice boxes in their house and they

849
00:44:41,800 --> 00:44:45,840
Speaker 2: get daily ice deliveries, and in fact they come to

850
00:44:45,840 --> 00:44:48,040
Speaker 2: rely on it to keep food fresh. And so now

851
00:44:48,200 --> 00:44:50,600
Speaker 2: in the winter, everybody in New York and Philly is

852
00:44:50,600 --> 00:44:53,200
Speaker 2: paying attention to like how thick is the ice in Boston?

853
00:44:53,239 --> 00:44:55,160
Speaker 2: How thick is the ice in Maine? Are we gonna

854
00:44:55,200 --> 00:44:57,839
Speaker 2: have an ice famine come summer? They need it now.

855
00:44:58,400 --> 00:45:01,080
Speaker 1: The only place ice didn't go was the cafes of Paris,

856
00:45:01,480 --> 00:45:03,160
Speaker 1: where they still look down on you if you ask

857
00:45:03,239 --> 00:45:04,240
Speaker 1: for ice in your water.

858
00:45:05,480 --> 00:45:13,480
Speaker 2: What do you want to ice? People are developing artificial refrigeration,

859
00:45:14,160 --> 00:45:16,440
Speaker 2: you know, around this time they're working on it, they're

860
00:45:16,440 --> 00:45:17,399
Speaker 2: actually figuring it out.

861
00:45:17,640 --> 00:45:20,040
Speaker 1: But there is this interesting a.

862
00:45:20,000 --> 00:45:23,320
Speaker 2: Business idea really here. And I've encountered at interviewing people

863
00:45:23,320 --> 00:45:26,120
Speaker 2: who are doing like energy transition stuff, you know, coming

864
00:45:26,160 --> 00:45:28,720
Speaker 2: up with kind of clean energy alternatives to existing things.

865
00:45:28,760 --> 00:45:31,480
Speaker 2: And that is a lot of the time they've figured

866
00:45:31,480 --> 00:45:34,120
Speaker 2: out the new technology, they can do the thing, but

867
00:45:34,200 --> 00:45:37,000
Speaker 2: it's more expensive because the thing they're going up against

868
00:45:37,480 --> 00:45:41,360
Speaker 2: is this optimized, hyper efficient, giant industry, and that is

869
00:45:41,400 --> 00:45:44,480
Speaker 2: what natural ice is. By the end of the eighteen hundreds.

870
00:45:44,520 --> 00:45:47,120
Speaker 2: It's big, and it's efficient and it's cheap.

871
00:45:47,480 --> 00:45:48,080
Speaker 1: And so in.

872
00:45:48,120 --> 00:45:54,239
Speaker 2: Fact, you don't really see artificial refrigeration displace natural ice

873
00:45:54,360 --> 00:45:57,120
Speaker 2: until like into the nineteen hundreds, because you're like, I

874
00:45:57,120 --> 00:45:59,719
Speaker 2: invented this machine that makes things cold, and they're like, yeah,

875
00:45:59,760 --> 00:46:00,400
Speaker 2: that's called ice.

876
00:46:00,480 --> 00:46:01,120
Speaker 1: It's free.

877
00:46:01,239 --> 00:46:04,560
Speaker 2: It's literally free, and so yeah, it has it has

878
00:46:04,600 --> 00:46:06,960
Speaker 2: to be cheaper and better before it gets widely adopted.

879
00:46:07,600 --> 00:46:09,160
Speaker 2: To finish the show, I want to go back to

880
00:46:09,239 --> 00:46:12,640
Speaker 2: that idea of opportunity cost to to there is real

881
00:46:12,760 --> 00:46:17,160
Speaker 2: insight of stringing together these essentially unused things, you know,

882
00:46:17,239 --> 00:46:20,920
Speaker 2: ice on a pond in February and idle farm workers

883
00:46:20,920 --> 00:46:24,120
Speaker 2: and empty space and ships and building an industry around it,

884
00:46:24,600 --> 00:46:27,600
Speaker 2: and you know, I want to think about what is

885
00:46:27,640 --> 00:46:30,799
Speaker 2: that today if you go back what I guess, ten

886
00:46:30,880 --> 00:46:32,880
Speaker 2: fifteen years at this point, it was actually the original

887
00:46:32,920 --> 00:46:35,880
Speaker 2: inspiration for i know, for Lyft and for Airbnb.

888
00:46:36,040 --> 00:46:36,200
Speaker 1: Right.

889
00:46:36,239 --> 00:46:38,719
Speaker 2: Originally Lyft was like, well, you're going there anyways, You're

890
00:46:38,719 --> 00:46:41,400
Speaker 2: just an normal person, give somebody a ride. Airbnb was

891
00:46:41,800 --> 00:46:44,160
Speaker 2: you know it's your house, you got a spare bedroom.

892
00:46:44,120 --> 00:46:44,879
Speaker 1: Rent it out now?

893
00:46:44,880 --> 00:46:50,160
Speaker 2: And then Layton Capital. So here's a question, what is

894
00:46:50,160 --> 00:46:52,640
Speaker 2: that now? What is the thing that is just sitting

895
00:46:52,640 --> 00:46:56,080
Speaker 2: there waiting to be turned into a business. If you're listening,

896
00:46:56,680 --> 00:46:58,600
Speaker 2: go out and start the business, or if you don't

897
00:46:58,640 --> 00:47:02,360
Speaker 2: want to do that, tell us right to us write

898
00:47:02,440 --> 00:47:05,439
Speaker 2: business history Pushkin dot FM. If you want to listen

899
00:47:05,520 --> 00:47:07,759
Speaker 2: to the show ad free, you can do so by

900
00:47:07,800 --> 00:47:11,799
Speaker 2: subscribing to Pushkin Plus. You can go to Pushkin dot

901
00:47:11,840 --> 00:47:16,000
Speaker 2: sam slash plus to do that. Our showrunner and editor

902
00:47:16,239 --> 00:47:19,840
Speaker 2: is Ryan Dilly. Our video editor, yes we're on YouTube,

903
00:47:20,239 --> 00:47:24,080
Speaker 2: is Matt Nielsen. Our producer is Gabriel Hunter Chang. Our

904
00:47:24,160 --> 00:47:28,360
Speaker 2: engineer is Sarah Buguer. I'm Jacob Goldstein Head. I'm Robert Smith.

905
00:47:28,480 --> 00:47:29,240
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening.