Watch Ray Dalio's TED Talk on building an 'idea meritocracy'

The culture Ray Dalio created at Bridgewater Associates is often criticized

Despite large returns, former employees report meticulous logs of mistakes, intense public questioning of junior-level staffers, recordings of all meetings being made available to all employees, and highly confrontational meetings—many of which are attributed to the book of more than 100 principles Dalio gives each employee. (Some users may experience a paywall)

Listen to Ray Dalio break down his most valuable principles in life and work

Dalio's now-famous principles started out as a collection of rules the finance behemoth set for himself. Since then, the list has expanded, becoming required reading for all Bridgewater Associates employees. In 2017, Dalio published an expanded version of these rules called "Principles: Life & Work," which has sold more than 5 million copies worldwide.

Listen to why Ray Dalio seeks out disagreement

One of Ray Dalio's principles is to constantly be challenged by smart people. He says thoughtful disagreement is key to becoming smarter and making better, more thorough decisions.

Watch Ray Dalio break down his 'holy grail' investment strategy

As a hedge fund manager, Dalio's investment strategy relies on insulating investments from economic downturns. To do this, Dalio attempts to diversify investments as much as possible while considering the correlation between industries and markets.

Learn more about Ray Dalio's formula for progress

Across interviews and in his books, Dalio often emphasizes the importance of learning as much as possible to avoid making bad decisions. However, Dalio also often speaks about failure being a great teacher. One of his core principles is "Pain + Reflection \= Progress."

Ray Dalio officially left Bridgewater Associates in late 2025

In 2017, Ray Dalio began a multiyear transition out of his leadership role at his company. He officially left his role as cochief investment officer and ended his tenure as the board chair in 2022 at 72 years old. How much Dalio made in the selloff of his Bridgewater equity in November 2025 isn't publicly known, but Forbes estimated his net worth to be $15.4B as of early 2026.

Hear Ray Dalio's principles for navigating a changing world order

Dalio argues that there aren't new events in history, per se, and that people are taken by surprise by events because they just haven't happened in their lifetimes—not because they are actually novel.

Hear Ray Dalio talk about the growth of the Chinese economy

Dalio was an early advocate of US investment in China. While he has previously criticized the authoritarian regime, his criticism of the government has been labeled mild relative to his praise for economic growth and innovation—critics argue that he has minimized human rights violations in the country.

Watch Ray Dalio explain how the economy works

Dalio describes the economy as a machine that runs on three main cycles: productivity growth, the short-term debt cycle, and the long-term debt cycle. Dalio says layering these three cycles on top of each other essentially creates a template for understanding changes in the economy.

Ray Dalio and his wife signed Warren Buffett's Giving Pledge in 2011

That means Dalio and his wife, Barbara Dalio, committed to donating at least half of their net worth by the time they die. The couple also founded Dalio Philanthropies in 2003, with their main causes including advancing education and investing in ocean protection and research.

Ray Dalio credits much of his success to his transcendental meditation practice

Dalio took up transcendental meditation after learning that The Beatles practiced it on a trip to India in 1968. He says the practice allows him to clear his mind, be more creative, and unlock his subconscious.

Despite being a 'C' student in high school, Ray Dalio got his MBA from Harvard

Ray Dalio frequently says he was a poor student in high school and barely got into college. However, Dalio has said that he succeeded in college because he got to pick classes that interested him, like finance and economics. Dalio went on to earn his Master's in Business Administration from Harvard University in 1973.

One of Warren Buffett’s investing principles is investing in well-managed companies

The "Founders" podcast reviews biographies of the world’s top entrepreneurs, and this episode explores a 2012 book about Warren Buffett. The episode includes Buffett's advice on becoming a better business manager and investor.

In 2019, Dutch historian Rutger Bregman went viral for his on-stage criticism of the event

Speaking directly to an audience of billionaires and CEOs, Bregman broke from Davos norms by challenging elite comfort with inequality, arguing that fair taxation—not philanthropy—was the more honest solution, creating one of the Forum’s most widely shared moments.

Legendary venture capitalist Peter Thiel once wrote that 'competition is for losers'

With Peter Thiel's "Monopoly Theory," the Founders Fund partner argued that investing in companies that create new categories, rather than those that compete with other businesses in existing ones, is a best practice in venture capital.

Airbnb's Brian Chesky explains 'Founder Mode' and how he took back control

The short-term rental CEO learned hard lessons through the pandemic, specifically around a culture focused on management and not building products. In the fall of 2024, Chesky gave a well-received speech at a startup conference that prompted debate in the startup world. He summarizes the talk here.

Pay transparency 101

The star of this Harvard Business Review video interviews experts—from an organizational psychologist and business professor to a TikToker who asks people how much money they make—to get to the bottom of core issues about pay transparency. Why is talking about money becoming less taboo? How do pay transparency laws impact workers, employers, and office culture? Watch this video to find out.

How to make a billion dollars, with Brad Jacobs

Brad Jacobs is a serial entrepreneur who has launched eight billion-dollar enterprises during his storied financial career. With companies focused in energy, waste, and more, Jacobs has stuck to a roll-up playbook of consolidating small players into one conglomerate within an industry, a common tactic of similar private equity firms. This podcast from Founders summarizes Jacobs' book detailing his approach.

Burning Man’s countercultural messages have influenced Silicon Valley’s work culture

Burning Man is famous for attracting tech leaders like the CEOs of Tesla, Meta, and Google. Some experts believe the festival's ethos and principles of participation, communal effort and radical inclusion have given rise to Silicon Valley's communal work culture.

Dual-class stock structures separate equity and decision-making authority

In the past few decades, dual-class stock structures have become an increasingly popular way for companies to raise capital in public markets without allocating traditional shareholder voting rights. Meta, Estée Lauder, and The New York Times are companies that are famously dual-class.

The life of Anthropic's CEO, and how losing his father inspired his vision for AI

In 2006, Riccardo Amodei passed away from a rare illness, four years before a breakthrough treatment made it 95% curable. Seeking to accelerate scientific progress to prevent similar losses, Dario Amodei shifted his graduate studies at Princeton from theoretical physics to biology and has since pursued technological solutions to address complex biological problems.

NFL Draft decisions are shaped by brain science, data, and office culture

Carnegie Mellon researchers say Draft-room choices are influenced by the "jackpot effect"—where higher stakes can impair performance—as well as by groupthink, the limits of data, and whether scouts feel safe speaking up.

Before Dawkins, other biologists proposed the power of mutating ideas

Nobel Prize winner Jacques Monod proposed, “Ideas have retained some of the properties of organisms. Like them, they tend to perpetuate their structure and to breed; they too can fuse, recombine, segregate their content; indeed they too can evolve, and in this evolution selection must surely play an important role.”

Warren Buffett's former professor Benjamin Graham is known as the 'father of value investing,' a strategy in which investors seek to buy stocks trading below their intrinsic worth.

A quote from Mark Cuban

"Talent without effort is wasted talent. And while effort is the one thing you can control in your life, applying that effort intelligently is next on the list."

Joan Didion's 1975 commencement speech at UCR encouraged graduates to think outside of themselves

Filled with many widely circulated quotes, the talk addresses people's tendency to focus only on their personal ideologies and perceptions of the world. Didion advocates for being an active participant in the world, rather than existing only in our own bubbles.

How Amazon operates a 'flywheel' business model, a self-reinforcing cycle that drives continuous growth

Watch this video that uses Lego bricks to explain how venture capital works.

In 2025, four executives from large tech companies were given positions in the US Army Reserves—including Palantir Chief Technology Officer Shyam Sankar, which reinforced Palantir's ties with the US military and its role as a leading defense partner.

The name 'Silicon Valley' arose from the founding of Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in Fairchild Semiconductor in 1956-57, founded near Stanford University in Palo Alto

A Yale student wrote a profound essay about the consulting industry's influence on elite college students that was published in a book of her writing after she died in a post-graduation car accident.

Watch how algorithms can be designed to train themselves and self-improve without human input, to the point where the optimized code is too complex for programmers to understand.

Legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright designed the SC Johnson headquarters in Wisconsin, aiming to make a cathedral-like workplace

The idea for the Federal Reserve was conceived in secret in 1910—with bankers donning duck hunt gear for disguise while traveling to a remote country club on Georgia's Jekyll Island

SpongeBob exemplifies Aristotle's philosophy for living well because he understands that happiness doesn't come from external factors like money, recognition, or power.

Dozens of S&P 500 stocks, including Coca-Cola and Walmart—known as the dividend aristocrats—have increased dividends every year for 25 years

In 1939, baseball star Lou Gehrig delivered his inspirational 'Luckiest Man' speech after retiring due to the health condition that now bears his name.

An initial public offering or 'IPO' is the process of a private company becoming public by putting shares of the company on the stock market for purchase.

Mid-century modern graphic designers, known for their bright colors and bold lines in advertising, also found success with children's books.

Fast-casual restaurant Chili's is experiencing a resurgence, with its parent company recently reporting a nearly 32% increase in sales, thanks to passionate Gen Z fans on TikTok.

Read a deep dive on the 'all-purpose healing' peptide BPC-157.

After NASA's Voyager 1 captured Earth as a single pixel as it left the solar system in 1990, astronomer Carl Sagan used the image to reflect on humanity's fragility and the responsibility to protect 'the only world we've ever known.'

Double world record holder Hunter Ewen helped conquer his fear of balloons, called globophobia, by training to win Guinness World Record titles for balloon inflation.

The American Society of Civil Engineers' infrastructure report card gave the US a C in 2025, its highest grade since the project launched in 1998.

Memecoins are a type of cryptocurrency—a form of digital currency with a wide variety of uses—created around popular 'memes,' or viral internet jokes.

Salvador Dalí believed he was his own dead brother, who had died nine months before he was born

All rainbows are 'raincircles' caused by water droplets separating white sunlight into a spectrum of colors, but Earth's surface blocks the bottom half of the circle from our line of sight.

Explore a list of the 100 best novels of all time, compiled by some of the world's best living writers, including Salman Rushdie, Stephen King, and Jennifer Egan.

The 2026 Ebola outbreak in the DRC is spurring new Ebola vaccine development for the Bundibugyo species.

Gerrymandering works through two techniques: cracking opposing voters across districts to dilute their power, and packing them into a few to waste their votes in lopsided majorities.