Page 104 - Ray Dalio - Principles

organizations. My objective was to identify who the future
shapers of Bridgewater would be—either by helping the
people who were replacing me in the CEO job become them or

by finding shapers on the outside and bringing them in.

On October 5, 2011, a few months after I began to think
about what makes a shaper, Steve Jobs died. I wrote about him
in our Daily Observations, one of the very few times I used the
space to address noninvestment-related content, because I
admired him as a man who could visualize and execute in
breathtakingly wonderful ways. Soon after, Walter Isaacson

published his biography of Jobs. I noticed a number of
similarities between us, especially when he quoted Jobs’s own
words. Soon after that, an article titled “Is Ray Dalio the Steve
Jobs of Investing?” came out in aiCIO, a prominent
investment-industry publication. It also pointed out a number
of similarities between us—that I, like Jobs, started my
businesses from scratch (his from a garage, mine from the

second bedroom of my apartment), that we both came up with
innovative products that reshaped how our industries did
things, and that we had unique management styles.
Bridgewater has often been called the Apple of the investment
world—but to be clear, I didn’t think that Bridgewater or I
held a candle to Apple and Jobs.

Isaacson’s book and the article pointed to other parallels in

our backgrounds, goals, and approaches to shaping—for
example, we were both rebellious, independent thinkers who
worked relentlessly for innovation and excellence; we were
both meditators who wanted to “put a dent in the universe”;
and we were both notoriously tough on people. Of course,

there were important differences too. I wished Jobs had shared
the principles he had used to achieve his goals.

I wasn’t just interested in Jobs and his principles; I wanted
to know about the qualities and principles of all shapers, so I
could better understand the likenesses and differences between
them and form an archetype of the typical shaper. I had
followed that approach for understanding everything; for

example, I had made an exhaustive study of recessions so that
I could form a timeless picture of an archetypal recession and
then understand the differences among them. I did that for all