The World’s 4th Richest Person
The World’s 4th Richest Person
+ Drop Some Meetings
A 60 year-old Indian became the 4th richest person in the world without you knowing him.
This year, he passed Bill Gates & Warren Buffet, en route to $130B.
No, he is not Reliance-mogul Mukesh Ambani ($85B).
He is Gautam Adani:
Like so many other billionaires, Adani is a college dropout. But unlike Zuckerberg or Gates, it wasn’t because he started a successful business in college.
After working in the diamond markets of Mumbai in his 20s, Adani returned home to work for his brother’s plastics factory. If you had met Adani at age 25, you would have had no idea he was to end up one of the world’s richest men. But the young man had a keen eye for business opportunity - and big dreams.
The government had restricted supply to their plastics factory. So Adani began importing it. Selling PVC worked for the young commodities trader. In the late 80s, he used his brother’s connections to quickly grow.
When the Indian government finally liberalized in 1991, his firm took another giant leap forward. It began trading more commodities - more freely.
As the firm grew, so did Adani’s closeness to politicians. When the government put marshlands in Gujarat on sale to build a private port, it removed restrictions to have experience in ports. This allowed Adani to win the bid. And since then, his fortunes have risen rapidly.
Compared to government-run ports, Adani’s Mundra is a model of efficiency. With the severe lack of infrastructure in India, some ports operate at single digit utilization (7%). Not Mundra. Adani has built rail lines & roads straight to the port. It’s now the largest in India.
This success with Mundra port has helped Adani expand his port and infrastructure empire. As India grew rapidly in the 90s and 2000s, so did Adani. The Adani group now manages 1/4th of India’s port capacity - and pulls in 1/2 of its port revenue.
Adani’s career grew symbiotically with the rise of Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister. From 2001-2013, Modi was chief minister of the Indian state of Gujarat. He espoused the “Gujarat model,” which focused on big infrastructure projects. Who built them? Adani.
After Modi became prime minister in 2014, moving to the national & international stages, so did Adani. Adani grew business units across India, and even bought a mine in Australia. This year has been the icing on the cake - with the value of 5 of his 7 companies up >100%.
Where the techie billionaires deal in bits & bytes, Adani deals in coal & crude. He’s a modern-day Rockefeller or Carnegie. His businesses spend massively to build up India. And his holdings have become the place for global money managers to make a bet on India as a result.
Drop Some Meetings
Hey PM: You have too many meetings. Drop some.
Meetings are like gravity. You have to constantly be outrunning them.
Usually, formerly good meetings hit a point where either too many people attend, or not enough progress is made. They lose their “value per minute.”
And it’s not just about minutes. Having freedom from fully booked days is one of the best ways to work. It allows three key things:
The ability to do deep work
Time to jump on what’s important now
Mental energy to crush the day
1. Deep work:
Being able to work uninterrupted for stretches is incredibly important as a PM. It’s incredibly hard to analyze data, truly develop a PRD, or write a strategy in short spurts. These are activities that require mental ramp up and flow state.
2. What’s needed now:
As a PM, you’re usually working on six parallel tracks in which everything is needed now. Whether it’s unblocking legal, iterating on design with leadership, or building next quarter’s roadmap. Being able to jump on these day of is impossible when booked.
3. Your mental state:
Days full of zoom meetings are draining. The “grind it out” method doesn’t work for years on end - just spurts. Being able to take a walk, make a coffee, or write it your thoughts and prioritize keeps you fresh.
The pressure to “look busy” simply doesn’t pay off in the long-term. To be able to simultaneously handle critical conversations AND be accountable for outcomes requires freedom from a fully booked calendar. You have to have time to work & then bring your best self to meetings.
So, get out of meetings tomorrow that don’t:
prioritize
brainstorm
discuss data
do a standup
make a decision
improve a relationship
They always keep popping up, and you always have to keep fending them off. It’s just the nature of companies.
With your free time, do deep work and savor the breaks. Use huddles to meet on what’s important now. You can jump on a audio channel and discuss an issue quickly live.
Soon, you’ll be getting more important AND urgent work done.
Bonus: Product Sense, Demystified
3 takeaways from the latest Marty Cagan masterpiece, “Product Sense Demystified”
1. You don’t need industry experience:
“A disproportionate amount of innovation comes from people that don’t bring the baggage of the domain.”
2. It’s about immersion:
“You build strong product sense by:
spending serious quality time with customers
analyzing the competitive landscape
immersing yourself in the product data
consuming everything you can about the industry and the enabling technologies.”
3. It’s not a substitute for testing:
“Hopefully nobody thinks good product sense is a substitute for testing your product ideas.
Product sense can definitely accelerate product discovery, but it’s more like having a compass as you navigate the product risks.”