J.R. Simplot had the craziest career pivot ever.  Born in 1909, he made billions with Idaho potatoes (1/2 of McDonald's fries) then helped build the now $1T Micron Technology in 1980 (a peak stake of 40%).  > Leaves home at 14 years old > His mom gives him $80 > Takes the money and buys interest-bearing paper ("scrip") at 50% of face value from local Idaho teachers who need cash > Borrows $600 from the bank using scrip as collateral  > Buys 600 pigs  > Finds a new way to make pig slop (boil potato scraps and horse meat) that make his pigs fatter than other farms and earns $7,000 in 1923 > Never graduates high school and goes full potato entrepreneur > Pioneers potato-farming technology including automatic sorters in 30s (makes his first million), dehydrators in 40s (adapts onion dehydrating tech for potatoes and feeds US army in WWII) and freezing in 60s (develops new method and provides Ray Croc with 1/2 of his frozen french fry needs for McDonald's in mid-1960s) Makes his first billion with McDonald’s and drives around Boise with a license plate that reads "SPUD" (incredible). Then pivots: > In 1980, he's approached to fund Micron Technology, which wants to build a DRAM memory chip fab in Boise > Simplot know nothing about computers but realizes that DRAM -- due to Japanese competition -- has become a commodity market that requires massive capital investments with razor-thin margins...just like potatoes  > Invests $1m for 40% of Micron and spends millions more building a fab > The only way to win = “become the lowest-cost producer of the highest-quality product” > Micron capitalizes on Idaho's cheap energy/land and innovates manufacturing techniques to efficiently produce chips at scale  > Japan tariffs Simplot's potatoes so he lobbies the Reagan Administration to tariff Japanese semiconductors (in 1986, they apply a 100% tariff on $300m of Japanese chips) > By mid-1990s, the three largest players in DRAM are Micron Technology, SK Hynix and Samsung (South Korean firms entered market after Japanese firms exited) > Simplot owns ~20% of Micron and becomes a semiconductor billionaire  > He's asked about PCs during the Windows 95 launch but turns out he's never owned a computer and says "Hell, boy, I came before the goddamn typewriter.” Today, Micron Technology is a $1 trillion firm and one of Boise's largest employers (Micron, SK Hynix and Samsung still own >90%of the memory market). Simplot passes away in 2008. Lived almost a century going from potato chips to semiconductor chips. Unreal.