What I learned from rereading One from Many: VISA and the Rise of Chaordic Organization by Dee Hock.

It is 1993, 9 years since I abruptly severed all connection with the business world for life on the land.

and walking away at the pinnacle of success was the hardest thing I have ever done.

The reason is still difficult to explain, but it's not complicated.

That inner voice that will not be denied, once we learn to listen to it, had whispered since the beginning.

Business, power, and money are not where your life is about.

Founding Visa and being its chief executive officer is something you needed to do, but it's only preparatory.

In time, the voice became incessant and demanding.

I felt a damned fool to even think about it.

A rational, conservative, 55-year-old businessman who had never smoked a joint or dropped a drug listening to inner voices?

Throw away a lifetime of work, success, money, power, prestige as though it had no value in the vague hope that life had more meaning?

This was not my lifelong friend and companion,

This was another voice entirely, and I knew it was right.

I abruptly left Visa and severed all connections with the business world, offering the only possible explanation.

I feel compelled to open my life to new possibilities.

I hadn't a clue what those possibilities might be, but I intended to be open to them.

The 9 years since I left Visa and opened my life to new possibilities have been good years, filled with things I deeply love.

Family, nature, books, isolation, privacies, the infinities of imagination.

It is a magnificent, mysterious odyssey to be experienced.

That is an excerpt from the book that I re-read and the 1 I'm going to talk to you about today, which is 1 for Many, Visa and the Rise of the Chaotic Organization, and it was written by Dee Hawke.

I originally read the book for the first time about 4 years ago it was episode 42 of Founders.

it hit me kind of hard because after I read the book for the first time I thought the way he thought was so interesting I went and found other books written by him and so he has 2 books of Maxim's called autobiography of a restless mind volume 1 and volume

and for the last several years volume 1 has been on my nightstand next to my bed I pick it up if not every week a few times a month I just pick it up turn to a random page and just read a few of his thoughts and to me that experience was like having a wise old man like a wise old grandfather figure pull you aside for a few minutes and just teach you little bits of knowledge that he's learned not only from his very unique life of founding and starting Visa but also reading thousands and thousands of books.

And so when I heard he died, I was like, okay, the only like the small way in which I can honor somebody who I've spent a lot of time learning from is I'm going to reread the 3 books that I have of Dee and I'm going to do podcasts.

So I was originally gonna put it all on 1 podcast, but the Autobiography of a Restless Mind, volume 1 and 2, each 1 is about 200 pages, has about

So that's 400 pages, maybe 2, 500 maxims, something like that.

So I'm gonna do this episode today just on 1 for many and then another episode I'll release very soon as soon as I make it on autobiography of a restless mind volume 1 and volume

and so before I jump into the book I want to give you this overview This is I'm pretty sure how I found out that he died.

I've said over and over again that you know most of the founders that I pay attention to are all like throughout history don't really try not to pay too much attention what's going on today.

I can tell if like the ideas are good or not.

But 1 of the most impressive to me founders in present day is Patrick Collison of Stripe and he was the 1 that tweeted out and this is what he said and I want to read this to you because I think it's a good overview of why D.

Hawk the creator of Visa died this week at

He was a very underrated innovator and someone who inspired me and my brother who's also Patrick's co-founder.

David Stearns is the author of the definitive book about Visa who now works at Stripe.

So David now works for Patrick and he shared this below and then Patrick linked to 3 paragraphs that David Stearns wrote about overview of why D.

Hawk is so important and having read all of these books multiple times.

this is a really fantastic overview of why he's so important and why I think people, formidable entrepreneurs like Patrick spent time studying and learning from him.

Hawk realized something in the late 1960s that few others really understood.

Computers and telecommunications would soon make it possible to build a global electronic value exchange system that would enable consumers to pay for goods and services anywhere you want to be.

But his true brilliance was realizing that such a system would require a fundamentally different sort of organization than the traditional franchise model that the Bank AmeriCard had been using.

I'll get into them later, but that's the precursor.

And it was called Bank AmeriCard because it was created originally by Bank of America.

required a truly global payment system required something akin to a financial United Nations a social structure in which multiple competing institutions could cooperate just enough to build something far bigger than any 1 of them could build alone.

Think about the term or the title of the book that we're going to go over.

1 from many just said a truly global payment system would require something akin to a financial United Nations social structure in which multiple competing institutions could cooperate just enough to build something far bigger than any 1 of them could build alone.

Why did he see what others failed to see?

And this is why When I read this paragraph that describes really not only what he did but the person behind him, considering that every single person that we study is a misfit, a rebel, some kind of outsider, you'll clearly see why I was like, oh, okay, this guy has a lot to teach me.

he has and not just read them once and read them casually but read them over and over again.

So it says, why did he see what others failed to see?

Or what made him successful where others had previously failed?

Part of the reason was that he was an outsider.

He didn't go to the right schools, nor did he have a prestigious internship at a large financial institution.

He thought from first principles and questioned everything, even down to the nature of money itself.

Remember that for later, because that appears over and over and over again.

You won't even believe how this guy thinks.

He thought from first principles and questioned everything even down to the nature of money himself.

He was disappointed in most social institutions, but he saw the potential for thriving chaotic systems like those he observed in nature.

He saw a better way of doing things, and he didn't listen to folks who said it couldn't be done.

So that 1 sentence real quick, D has in common with almost every single, we're up to what, 260, something like that, 260 biographies of history's greatest entrepreneurs.

of doing things and didn't listen to the folks who said it couldn't be done.

And most importantly, he hired and inspired a group of people who shared his vision and were truly excited about it.

The passion that he has for doing this is...

book that I'll share later on where I wrote a note to myself.

this section of the book and not be fired up.

From our current perspective, it's difficult to appreciate what Haak and Visa had accomplished.

Because we're living in the future that he foresaw many decades before today, right?

Today, I can hop on a plane to almost anywhere in the world and use my Visa card to purchase goods and services regardless of the language spoken by the merchant, the currency of the merchant's bank account, or the time zone difference between the merchant's shop and my issuing bank.

In the early 1960s, this was simply unthinkable.

Today's magic was yesterday's dream, and Hock was 1 of the biggest dreamers of them all.

So with that, I want to jump into the introduction of the book.

This is where D himself tells us, hey, this is what the book is about.

a little more than a set of unorthodox convictions about organization slowly growing in the mind of a young corporate rebel.

But this book is much more than the story of the barely believable events that brought Visa into being.

It is also the story of an introverted, small-town child passionate to read, dream, and wander the woods, the youngest of 6 born to parents with but an eighth grade education.

It is a story of crushing confinement and boredom in school and church along with sharp with the sharp rising awareness of the chasm between how Institutions profess to function and how they actually do so this book is almost 20 years old this idea where he has He's dedicated if

He starts with this idea There's 3 questions that he has been his life has

been obsessed with and he's writing the words on his website when he was 90 and so his whole career and kind of intellectual odyssey is the way he would put it is trying to answer these 3 questions number 1 why are institutions everywhere increasingly unable to manage their affairs number 2 why are individuals everywhere increasingly in conflict with and alienated from the institutions of which they are a part?

Number 3, why are society in the biosphere increasingly in disarray?

So those are the 3 questions he's gonna repeat over and over

And it is a story of a great bargain, trading ego for humility, envy for equanimity, greed for time, and ambition for liberty.

So what he's talking about there is the fact that he Founded and ran VISA as its CEO for 16 years and then that voice which I started the podcast with Just made him give it all up.

And so that's when he goes on his website.

outline very simple outline of his entire life And that time period it's from 1984 to 1992.

Ranch owner, recluse, student, and philosopher.

And so when I do that other podcast On the autobiography of a restless mind volume 1 and volume 2 He goes into detail what his daily schedule was like this is extremely fascinating so that's coming after this okay Uh, so

it says it's a story of events impossible to foresee that sent a man of

On a journey more improbable than Visa and infinitely more important.

Beyond all else, it is a story of the future, of something trying to happen, of a 400 year old age rattling in its deathbed as another struggles to be born.

It is not just my story, although I am in it.

It is not just your story, although you're in it It's a story of us all And so before I

go into his early life and a little bit about how he came to think the way he does 1 thing I had to feel like we have to define a term here because it's in the subtitle.

What he's talking about there is like there's a 400 old age rattling his deathbed.

He's talking about what he'll use, he describes it as command and control.

So think in like our modern world, how every single institution, whether it's the government, the school, how most companies are operated.

And his main point is that that is not going to work in the information age you need to divide devise new ways of organizing people to work together and so he uses the word chaotic and he says I borrow the first syllables from chaos and order and I combine them and chaotic emerges and so then he'll define it for us something appears over and over again

the books it's important to know this the behavior of any self organizing and self governing organism organization or system that harmoniously blends characteristics of chaos and order.

The second definition and where he got like his the inspiration for this and the

way he thinks about all things comes from nature.

Number 2 characteristic of the fundamental organizing principle of nature.

And so D's love of nature is fundamental in understanding why he thinks the way he does.

next to the Rocky Mountains in essentially something between shelter and a house.

So we'll get that we'll go into that right now.

I trot happily behind a tall godlike father a quarter mile through the trees to the neighbor's well.

The 5 gallon can is slowly filled by my father as he proudly explains that there'll be no stale piped water in our house.

So that's Dee's way of explaining, hey, there's no indoor plumbing in my house.

I weigh an extended bladder and cramping bowel against a 50-yard dash between three-foot snow banks to the icy outhouse.

That is his way of saying he doesn't have a toilet inside.

Nothing finer, so this idea, you're gonna hear me repeat that

a few times because his family, his dad and his mother, that's how they describe to their children that you actually don't need that much in life.

So nothing finer is always put in quotation marks.

It's to indicate to the reader that is coming from his father's mother so when he's explaining to his mom I gotta run out outside to the outhouse it's snowy outside she says nothing finer you don't need anything more than outhouse and according to my mother this teaches 1 to attend to business and not Donald.

Earlier this evening, my mother produced her special treat, which she called Rich Man Soup.

So now he talks about what where they feed him.

They don't have a lot of money that they have.

He just introduced the book saying now, you know, they lacked education.

We kind of had to live off the land and we spent a

Nothing finer describing her rich man soup these are the ingredients hot water bread salt pepper and butter It is years before realization dawns that there may have been no other food in the house.

A hint that we are not the most fortunate of people and a hundred homilies lurking in the parental mind leap out to assault my ears." So then he just lists off all these like Maxims that his parents would repeat over and over again to him and his other siblings.

Riches are not in the number of possessions but the fewness of wants.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

And this is the reason I'm reading this to you.

Very much against my will, the intuitive wisdom of centuries was being handed down.

That is exactly what his books of Maxim's do as well.

It was there in that tiny college in the small farming community at the edge of the Rocky Mountains that the 3 great loves of my life arose.

Literature, nature, and a lovely girl with beautiful brown eyes so he's gonna meet his wife in this area when they're 14 they wind up getting married at 20.

They would have everything to do with the unorthodox ideas that led to the creation of Visa, although I could not know so at that time.

When and how I learned to read is lost to memory.

My parents considered themselves lucky to have graduated 8th grade before pride and necessity drove them to earn their own living.

Where the books came from I have no idea.

Probably from people who knew that hawk boy is

He'll read anything and so there's a lot of this section that is double underlined for my own personal reasons because this seems very similar to how I was when I was a kid.

1 of the most powerful memories of those early years is the countless hours curled up on my side in my favorite place.

The floor in the corner next to the warm wood stove, face propped up on my left hand, my right hand turning the pages of a book.

I had gone to another place and I hear nothing.

Night after night my mother pulls me from the pages of a book, opens the oven door, removes a round 15-pound rock, wraps it in flannel, carries it to my bed, and slips it between the sheets.

And what she's describing is nothing finer.

It's an icy room and cold feet on a hot rock for a kid anxious to again disappear in the pages of his book.

And all that I'm reading to you just appears over

a few pages and he just does a great job because at the end of this you have an idea of exactly who

he is and these traits just burn in him forever.

It is easy to know where the second grand passion, love of nature, came from, the Rocky Mountains.

Vast hours and days in the midst of such magnificence, often wandering alone, are impossible to describe.

Nor can words convey the abiding love of nature and deep intuitive sense of connection to the earth.

So we're gonna see multiple times throughout his career where he is beaten up, bloodied, depressed,

As you can imagine, building something like visa in the 1960s and 70s could not have been easy and every time his walks in the woods and spending time in nature is his therapy and he has beautiful language to describe why that was important and what it gave him later on.

So says it gave him a deep intuitive sense of connection to

the earth love me as they will there's a growing feeling of

a strange 1 from my family a feeling of not belonging.

No 1 shares my passion for reading or wandering alone.

I live largely in a private world of nature, ideas, and imagination." And so that's a description of

He loved the fact that he could read whenever he wanted to, go spend time in nature.

have to start going to school and church.

And this is where he gets introduced to institutions for the first time and he does not like them.

Everyone began to shed their humanity at the door of institutions.

if adults suddenly turned into a mob to confront 1 child.

All right, kid, you've had the joy of life for 6 years.

So he starts getting into trouble for failing to conform when he's 6.

That happens throughout his entire career.

in many cases, fired because he refuses to conform.

And so he's spending time in nature when he's not in school or church and he can't reconcile

And so he's like if I have to choose 1 I'm going to choose the natural world as my blueprint.

There's no principal pecking away at the rest of the flock.

There's no super frog telling the others how to croak.

There's no teacher tree lining up the saplings and telling them how to grow.

I can't begin to think about it in a coherent way, let alone understand the resentment, confusion and doubt.

But the sense that something has gone awry is powerful.

And so he does the only thing that comes natural to him, and that's rebelling.

It was persistent, stubborn and at times stupid refusal to accept orthodox ideas, to be persuaded by authoritarian means, or to seek acceptance by conformity.

So that's the kind of mind, if you go back to that post I read, the 3 paragraph post I read from David Stearns, the author of the definitive book on visa, It's like, well, why is he, why was Dee able to succeed?

Like, what did he see and why was he able to succeed where others had failed?

of that was obviously that he was an outsider.

or 12 years of his life working at different banks and financial institutions is almost unbelievable.

And in fact, right before he starts Visa, he decides, okay, I give up.

I'm just gonna, he calls it retirement on the job, where he keeps the job.

He's like, let me just find, I need to pay bills to support my family.

I want a job that I could do in my sleep Pays me enough and then leaves me more time to read and to spend time in nature and then He that's what he thought his life was gonna be try to predict the path of his life And then the unexpected opportunity to do visa where essentially he has almost no free time at all, is actually what actually occurs.

So, the years passed alternating between the magnificent mysteries of nature, the imaginative joy of books, and the dull reality of institutions and work, work, work.

a lot of money, so this idea is like, I'm going to have to start working all of my spare hours from the age of

And so he lists all the things he was doing.

At age 10, I was hand harvesting fruit and vegetables at a penny for the pound.

At 12, I was thinning sugar beets at $20 the acre.

It's all manual labor, as you can imagine what a young uneducated person would be like what kind of jobs they would be able to get.

That was followed by the first salary job at a farm as farm labor for 20 cents on the hour.

At 14 I got a job dumping slop in a canning factory.

Summer and after school jobs came 1 after the other.

I was a hot chain dipper under 100 degree sun.

I was a spray truck operator in an orchid.

It was what proud men did without whining.

He was a really good at debate won a bunch of debate competitions and part of doing a winning debate competitions gave him a scholarship To like well, we would consider kind of like a community college and it's during his 2 years of college Where he really starts honing on this idea was like institutions.

Why is no 1 doing anything about this at college.

The dean put me in way of the classics and some understanding of both the powers and limitations of the human mind at the same time increasing conflict with the college and other organizations inflamed a growing preoccupation with the paradoxes inherent in institutions and the people who hold power in them.

So all he's describing is the problems he saw that he struggled with for the next 15 to 16 years laid the foundation for the ideas of visa.

That is why he's telling you and I this story.

The seeds of many of the perceptions that shaped my life, some now grown into convictions, were planted then in college.

And then once he graduates college, we have 76-year-old D.

Hawk describing the 20-year-old version of D.

Thus at 20, newly married, unemployed, eager to learn but averse to being taught emerged an absurdly naive idealistic young man an innocent lamb hunting the lion of life The hungry lion was swift to pounce and so right away at his first job This is where he learned so he calls them mechanistic industrial age organizations and

See all Founders transcripts on Applepodcasts

#260 One from Many: VISA and the Rise of Chaordic Organization