Ray Dalio on What Makes a "Shaper" (A Must-Read for Entrepreneurs)

Nugget by Ray Dalio

May 02, 2025

👋 Hey friend

Lately I’ve been reading the book Principles, by Ray Dalio. And so far I’m blown away 🤯 It’s full of nuggets and interesting stories!

And I literally just finished reading a passage which I found so valuable (for entrepreneurs or anyone who wants to be extra-ordinary) that I felt I needed to share it with you!

So whats’ about?

As you might know, Ray Dalio (founder of Bridgewater Associates) has almost infinite financial resources and probably the most valuable network that anyone could aspire to ever have. And when he decided to step down as the CEO of Bridgewater, he wanted to maximize the odds that his successor would be at least as excellent as he was. So he asked some of the most accomplished individuals in the world (he calls them “shapers”) — such as Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Jack Dorsey, Reed Hastings, among others… — to take a long personality test.

And from the results of these tests he built the “archetype of the shaper” (that is, the statistically measurable evidence about the similarities of these individuals). So he could then pick his successor (to run Bridgewater) based on that. And lucky for us, he also shared this on his book — and now you can also read it below!

👤 Doers

💡Nugget

🟠 Ray Dalio:
I wasn’t just interested in [Steve] 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 economic and market movements and was inclined to do it for just about everything, because this approach helps me understand how things work. So it made sense I’d do that to understand shapers too.
I started by exploring the qualities of Jobs and other shapers with [Walter] Isaacson, at first in a private conversation in his office, and later at a public forum at Bridgewater. Since Isaacson had also written biographies of Albert Einstein and Ben Franklin—two other great shapers—I read them and probed him about them to try to glean what characteristics they had in common.
Then I spoke with proven shapers I knew—Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Reed Hastings, Muhammad Yunus, Geoffrey Canada, Jack Dorsey (of Twitter), David Kelley (of IDEO), and more. They had all visualized remarkable concepts and built organizations to actualize them, and done that repeatedly and over long periods of time. I asked them to take an hour’s worth of personality assessments to discover their values, abilities, and approaches. While not perfect, these assessments have been invaluable. (In fact, I have been adapting and refining them to help us in our recruiting and management.) The answers these shapers provided to the standardized questions gave me objective and statistically measurable evidence about their similarities and differences.
It turns out they have a lot in common.
They are all independent thinkers who do not let anything or anyone stand in the way of achieving their audacious goals.
They have very strong mental maps of how things should be done, and at the same time a willingness to test those mental maps in the world of reality and change the ways they do things to make them work better.
They are extremely resilient, because their need to achieve what they envision is stronger than the pain they experience as they struggle to achieve it.
Perhaps most interesting, they have a wider range of vision than most people, either because they have that vision themselves or because they know how to get it from others who can see what they can’t.
All are able to see both big pictures and granular details (and levels in between) and synthesize the perspectives they gain at those different levels, whereas most people see just one or the other.
They are simultaneously creative, systematic, and practical.
They are assertive and open-minded at the same time.
Above all, they are passionate about what they are doing, intolerant of people who work for them who aren’t excellent at what they do, and want to have a big, beneficial impact on the world.

📝 Personal Notes

Here are some quotes that came to mind after I read (and re-read) Ray Dalio's archetype of the shaper...


👉 On being an independent thinker...

"We also agreed on the principles for raising them. We planned to give them all the education they wanted, teach them to think for themselves rather than simply accept received wisdom from experts and authority, and encourage them to choose their own calling in life."

- Ed Thorp, from the book A Man for All Markets


👉 On being extremely resilient...

"I'm convinced that about half of what separates successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance."

- Steve Jobs


👉 On paying great attention to small details...

"He paid great attention to the smallest detail and the result of his personal consideration to every little thing resulted in the whole assembly being of a very high standard of perfection. It is rather to Sir Henry’s thoroughness and attention to even the smallest detail than to any revolutionary invention that his products have the superlative qualities that we all know so well."

- Peter Pugh on Henry Royce (co-founder of Rolls-Royce), from the book Rolls-Royce: The Magic of a Name


"This sounds like a paradox, but a great painting has to be better than it has to be. For example, when Leonardo painted the portrait of Ginevra de’ Benci in the National Gallery, he put a juniper bush behind her head. In it he carefully painted each individual leaf. Many painters might have thought, this is just something to put in the background to frame her head. No one will look that closely at it. Not Leonardo. How hard he worked on part of a painting didn’t depend at all on how closely he expected anyone to look at it. He was like Michael Jordan. Relentless. 

Relentlessness wins because, in the aggregate, unseen details become visible. When people walk by the portrait of Ginevra de’ Benci, their attention is often immediately arrested by it, even before they look at the label and notice that it says Leonardo da Vinci. All those unseen details combine to produce something that’s just stunning, like a thousand barely audible voices all singing in tune."

- Paul Graham, from his book Hackers and Painters


👉 On being passionate about what you do...

"I'm always 'working'. But it looks like work to them, but it feels like play to me. And that's how I know no one can compete with me on it... Because I'm just playing 16 hours a day. And if they want to compete with me — and they're going to work — they're going to lose... Because they're not going to do it 16 hours a day 7 days a week."

- Naval Ravikant, from an episode of the Podcast The Joe Rogan Experience


"A deep interest in a topic makes people work harder than any amount of discipline can."

- Paul Graham, from his essay How to Work Hard

One of the things that Ray talks about on his book Principles, it’s how he found necessary to come up with a “decision-making library” — to boost his own judgment and the judgment of all the team at Bridgewater.

That’s the way I see my database DoersNotebook.

DoersNotebook is a decision-making library and consulting tool that I’ve been building and using for the past 4 years. It contains over 2,600 timeless insights from the world’s greatest shapers!

And since it’s all 🔎 searchable, I only have to type a keyword, and I instantly get a filtered list of insights related to that keyword! For instance, if I’m unsure about how to get more sales in my business, I can simply type the word “sales” and immediately get 105 search results! In this case from Peter Thiel, Naval Ravikant, Paul Graham, among many other remarkable individuals!

It’s like having a 🧠 second brain from which I can pull wisdom on demand.

Naval Ravikant also said:

“In an age of infinite leverage [code and media], judgment is the most important skill.”

And DoersNotebook has been invaluable on giving me that judgment edge for creating better content and products, and making better decisions overall on my business and life.

So, if you wanna watch how I personally use this database and how you can get immediate access to it, just click on the 🍿 YouTube video below!