Dalio’s Quest to Outlive Himself

No book has resonated with Ray Dalio quite like Joseph Campbell’s The Hero With a Thousand Faces. The work, which Dalio’s second-oldest son, a filmmaker, gave him a few years ago, explores the archetypal hero’s journey—think of the myths of Prometheus and Odysseus—and his eventual return. “[T]he hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man,” Campbell wrote. Those words spoke to Dalio, the founder of the world’s largest hedge fund, who knew exactly what he wanted to pass along: his Principles.

The Principles are about 200 rules that Dalio, 68, has refined over the past four decades and began committing to paper during the mid-2000s. They outline a process for living and managing a business, often with banal catchphrases—“Don’t try to please everyone,” “Clearly assign responsibilities,” “Don’t bet too much on anything,” etc.—and include footnotes, flowcharts, and even a few doodles. The Principles, as Dalio has said before, are “being lived out” at Bridgewater Associates, where about 1,500 employees on the company’s pine-forested campus in Westport, Conn., must check their egos and speak their minds while managing $162 billion.