David Senra
@FoundersPodcast • 199,660 subscribers
Learn from history's greatest entrepreneurs. Every week I read a biography of an entrepreneur and find ideas you can use in your work.
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New episode: "How Elon Works" This episode covers the insanely valuable company-building principles of Elon Musk A few notes from the episode: 1. The mission comes first. 2. Retreat is not an option. 3. A maniacal sense of urgency is our operating principle. 4. Product design should be driven by engineers. 5. You should not separate engineering from product design. 6. Having separate design and production departments is bullshit. Keep everything together and feedback immediate. 7. The leader should be on the front lines. You should be a battlefield general. 8. "If they see the general out on the battlefield, the troops are going to be motivated. Wherever Napoleon was, that's where his armies would do best." 9. Apply The Algorithm constantly. (1) Question every requirement. (2) Delete any part of the process you can. (3) Simplify and optimize. (4) Accelerate cycle time. (5) Automate. 10. Repetition is persuasive. "I became a broken record on the algorithm. I think it's helpful to say it to an annoying degree." 11. You should go ultra-hardcore on deletion and simplification. 12. Camaraderie is dangerous. It makes it hard for people to challenge each other’s work. (Refer to point #1) 13. Never ask your troops to do something you wouldn’t do. 14. Hire for attitude. Skills can be taught. Attitude changes require a brain transplant. 15. Good attitude = A desire to work maniacally hard. 16. The only rules are the ones dictated by the laws of physics. Everything else is a recommendation. 17. Keep your entire company committed to a common goal. 18. If things aren’t going well, throw away the existing design, start from first principles, question every requirement based on fundamental physics. 19. Find the limit. You want to delete as much as possible and you can’t do that unless you find the limit. 20. If you aren’t adding back at least 10% of the things you deleted, then you didn’t delete enough. 21. Maintain control. Avoid joint ventures. Eliminate middlemen. 22. Have a relentless dedication to questioning every requirement. 23. No work about work, just work. 24. Go to the problem. Get on the plane. Fly to the source. Go to the exact location in the factory. Go to the problem and stay there until it's resolved. 25. The best part is no part. 26. Be wired for war. 27. Do not fear losing. It hurts the first 50 times but then you’ll be able to play with less emotion. You will take more risks. 28. Stay heads down focused on doing useful things for civilization. 29. When something is important and has to be done quickly, have meetings every 24 hours to run the algorithm and check on the previous days progress. You'll be shocked at how fast this speeds things up. 30. Life needs to be interesting and edgy. 31. Delete, delete, delete, delete. There are 100 more ideas in the episode. I hope you listen to it. 30 years of Elon’s career + 60 hours of reading and research and me just absolutely ripping through idea after idea at 2x speed for 90 minutes. It will be hard to find a better use of time.
David Senra3,742,566 views • 9 months ago
Arnold Schwarzenegger on his love life: "A conflict grew up in our relationship. She was a well-balanced woman who wanted an ordinary life, and I was not a well-balanced man and hated the very idea of ordinary life. She thought I would settle down, that I would reach the top in my field and level off. But that's a concept that has no place in my thinking. For me, life is continuously being hungry. The meaning of life is not simply to exist, to survive, but to move ahead, to go up, to achieve, to conquer. I wanted to grow. I wanted to continue on. The life she wanted would not permit that." — From episode 309 “Arnold Schwarzenegger Before He Was Successful”
David Senra1,106,597 views • 6 months ago
SpaceX is one of the most dominant companies on the planet and their performance gap just keeps getting bigger. In 2025, SpaceX launched more mass to orbit than every other provider on Earth combined. MUCH MORE: every payload from China, Russia, Europe, and all American launchers wasn’t even a fifth of what SpaceX put into orbit. They’re the only company producing rockets at an industrial scale. The practices that made SpaceX dominant aren’t unique to rockets. They’re a blueprint for building anything hard. This episode — and the essay it is based on — explores How SpaceX Works:
David Senra390,870 views • 2 months ago
![This episode is about a once-in-a-generation mind working on what may be the most important problem in history. It's based on the new book The Infinity Machine: Demis Hassabis, DeepMind, and the Quest for Superintelligence by Sebastian Mallaby. (0:00) This is the most crazy, ferocious corporate battle that we've ever seen. (2:21) Intelligence is fundamental; it is the root of all else. (3:27) When Demis founded DeepMind almost every investor turned him away. (4:50) Demis is a missionary entrepreneur and out-of-the-box scientist who, through brilliance and extraordinary drive, emerges as the right person for a particular moment. (6:20) I sit at my desk at 2 a.m., and I feel like reality is staring at me, screaming at me, literally screaming at me, trying to tell me something if I could just listen hard enough. That's how I feel every day, so you can see why I'm trying to build AI. I've felt that since I was very young that there's a deep, deep mystery about what's going on here. (7:10) Demis, who blazed the trail followed by rivals, is decent and public-spirited and wants the best for humanity. He has ego; he is fearsomely competitive, but his goal is scientific enlightenment, not money or power. (9:49) Demis has an extraordinary level of determination, unlike pretty much anybody. Astonishing, incredible determination. That's his most defining characteristic: just unbelievable determination. He works, sleeps, eats, breathes the mission 24 hours a day to a degree that I haven't seen with other people. (10:48) There is no 50% mode in Demis. There is not even a 99% mode in Demis. There is only 100%. (14:39) The slightly warped way I took that was: how do you know you've done your best? The only way I could know is basically if I push myself to the point just before death, because that is literally when you have done your best. (19:07) When he signed up for a game he liked to feel that he could win. (20:44) He saw no reason not to start a company and so he did. (22:40) Demis on what losing feels like to him: It's like my soul is on fire. (25:34) Demis was an extreme case of an authentic entrepreneur, not a mercenary who starts with a desire to get rich from a startup then casts around for a plausible idea, but rather a missionary who feels compelled to work on a particular challenge then starts a company as a way of tackling it. (25:57) The good thing about missionaries is that they never quit. Even if they have to work around the clock and pay themselves nothing. They will keep obsessing about the problem. (26:08) Peter Thiel on Demis: “I always say that people aren't really entrepreneurs in the abstract, but there's maybe one great company that somebody has in them. It was Demis's destiny to build this one.” (26:30) "If you invent a breakthrough in artificial intelligence so machines can learn, that would be worth 10 Microsofts." — Bill Gates (32:09) We only wanted hardcore believers. We would go to conferences and tell people we are starting an AGI company. 80% of the people would roll their eyes at us, literally roll their eyes at us and turn around and walk away. We figured that this was a very efficient way to discover who we should be talking to. (32:50) Blessed are those who believed before there was any evidence. (34:17) The way Demis saw things, true general intelligence would make almost anything possible, surpassing the internet, the printing press, or even the industrial revolution in importance. (35:22) Elon had declared that humans needed to colonize Mars in case disaster struck Earth. Demis had countered that killer AI robots might be one such disaster, but that the AI could obviously follow humans to Mars if it wanted to. (36:25) Peter Thiel felt instinctively suspicious of a fellow chess player. A man who had spent his formative years mentally crushing opponents should be treated with caution, Thiel reckoned. (37:07) I'm talking about the biggest invention ever, and investors keep coming back to "Where's the widget?" and I'm like, "I'm going to revolutionize all widgets, so I can pick you a random widget if you want me to, but you obviously haven't got the point if you're asking me this." (37:42) He [Larry Page] was basically telling me, maybe you could build a company like Google, but it would take the best part of your career. If my real mission was to build AGI, then why don't I use all the resources that he's accumulated? I thought that was a pretty good argument. (38:50) Elon tries to buy DeepMind (42:33) Sam Altman emails Elon: "I've been thinking a lot about whether it's possible to stop humanity from developing AI. I think the answer is almost definitely not. If it's going to happen anyway, it seems like it would be good for someone other than Google to do it first." (43:18) If you have powerful people who are able to understand the impact of the technology, they're not just gonna sit on the sidelines. (44:08) Humans had not understood how little they had understood. (44:31) As Peter Thiel said of Demis, "Geniuses are seldom brilliant in a general way. They tend to be brilliantly suited to a particular mission." (46:50) Demis was far more original and far more of a contrarian than most of the self-identified contrarians of Silicon Valley. (48:11) When Demis solves something big, he doesn't pause to spend much time savoring the achievement. (48:49) You definitely can't crack a hard problem if the person leading the team thinks it's not possible. (54:05) This is my whole life's work. I have to do what's necessary. The mission is in me; it's infused in me. You can't separate it from me. (54:28) Demis's core theme is that money and power were not ends in themselves. They were a means to scientific knowledge.](https://image.24vids.com/tw-2039458365559251121/amplify_video_thumb/2039443603676909568/img/72ctyYwmX5Rh0e7g.jpg)
This episode is about a once-in-a-generation mind working on what may be the most important problem in history. It's based on the new book The Infinity Machine: Demis Hassabis, DeepMind, and the Quest for Superintelligence by Sebastian Mallaby. (0:00) This is the most crazy, ferocious corporate battle that we've ever seen. (2:21) Intelligence is fundamental; it is the root of all else. (3:27) When Demis founded DeepMind almost every investor turned him away. (4:50) Demis is a missionary entrepreneur and out-of-the-box scientist who, through brilliance and extraordinary drive, emerges as the right person for a particular moment. (6:20) I sit at my desk at 2 a.m., and I feel like reality is staring at me, screaming at me, literally screaming at me, trying to tell me something if I could just listen hard enough. That's how I feel every day, so you can see why I'm trying to build AI. I've felt that since I was very young that there's a deep, deep mystery about what's going on here. (7:10) Demis, who blazed the trail followed by rivals, is decent and public-spirited and wants the best for humanity. He has ego; he is fearsomely competitive, but his goal is scientific enlightenment, not money or power. (9:49) Demis has an extraordinary level of determination, unlike pretty much anybody. Astonishing, incredible determination. That's his most defining characteristic: just unbelievable determination. He works, sleeps, eats, breathes the mission 24 hours a day to a degree that I haven't seen with other people. (10:48) There is no 50% mode in Demis. There is not even a 99% mode in Demis. There is only 100%. (14:39) The slightly warped way I took that was: how do you know you've done your best? The only way I could know is basically if I push myself to the point just before death, because that is literally when you have done your best. (19:07) When he signed up for a game he liked to feel that he could win. (20:44) He saw no reason not to start a company and so he did. (22:40) Demis on what losing feels like to him: It's like my soul is on fire. (25:34) Demis was an extreme case of an authentic entrepreneur, not a mercenary who starts with a desire to get rich from a startup then casts around for a plausible idea, but rather a missionary who feels compelled to work on a particular challenge then starts a company as a way of tackling it. (25:57) The good thing about missionaries is that they never quit. Even if they have to work around the clock and pay themselves nothing. They will keep obsessing about the problem. (26:08) Peter Thiel on Demis: “I always say that people aren't really entrepreneurs in the abstract, but there's maybe one great company that somebody has in them. It was Demis's destiny to build this one.” (26:30) "If you invent a breakthrough in artificial intelligence so machines can learn, that would be worth 10 Microsofts." — Bill Gates (32:09) We only wanted hardcore believers. We would go to conferences and tell people we are starting an AGI company. 80% of the people would roll their eyes at us, literally roll their eyes at us and turn around and walk away. We figured that this was a very efficient way to discover who we should be talking to. (32:50) Blessed are those who believed before there was any evidence. (34:17) The way Demis saw things, true general intelligence would make almost anything possible, surpassing the internet, the printing press, or even the industrial revolution in importance. (35:22) Elon had declared that humans needed to colonize Mars in case disaster struck Earth. Demis had countered that killer AI robots might be one such disaster, but that the AI could obviously follow humans to Mars if it wanted to. (36:25) Peter Thiel felt instinctively suspicious of a fellow chess player. A man who had spent his formative years mentally crushing opponents should be treated with caution, Thiel reckoned. (37:07) I'm talking about the biggest invention ever, and investors keep coming back to "Where's the widget?" and I'm like, "I'm going to revolutionize all widgets, so I can pick you a random widget if you want me to, but you obviously haven't got the point if you're asking me this." (37:42) He [Larry Page] was basically telling me, maybe you could build a company like Google, but it would take the best part of your career. If my real mission was to build AGI, then why don't I use all the resources that he's accumulated? I thought that was a pretty good argument. (38:50) Elon tries to buy DeepMind (42:33) Sam Altman emails Elon: "I've been thinking a lot about whether it's possible to stop humanity from developing AI. I think the answer is almost definitely not. If it's going to happen anyway, it seems like it would be good for someone other than Google to do it first." (43:18) If you have powerful people who are able to understand the impact of the technology, they're not just gonna sit on the sidelines. (44:08) Humans had not understood how little they had understood. (44:31) As Peter Thiel said of Demis, "Geniuses are seldom brilliant in a general way. They tend to be brilliantly suited to a particular mission." (46:50) Demis was far more original and far more of a contrarian than most of the self-identified contrarians of Silicon Valley. (48:11) When Demis solves something big, he doesn't pause to spend much time savoring the achievement. (48:49) You definitely can't crack a hard problem if the person leading the team thinks it's not possible. (54:05) This is my whole life's work. I have to do what's necessary. The mission is in me; it's infused in me. You can't separate it from me. (54:28) Demis's core theme is that money and power were not ends in themselves. They were a means to scientific knowledge.
David Senra254,040 views • 2 months ago
Arnold Schwarzenegger on his love life: "A conflict grew up in our relationship. She was a well-balanced woman who wanted an ordinary life, and I was not a well-balanced man and hated the very idea of ordinary life. She thought I would settle down, that I would reach the top in my field and level off. But that's a concept that has no place in my thinking. For me, life is continuously being hungry. The meaning of life is not simply to exist, to survive, but to move ahead, to go up, to achieve, to conquer. I wanted to grow. I wanted to continue on. The life she wanted would not permit that." — from the new episode on Arnold. Available right now!
David Senra182,291 views • 1 month ago
A few surprising things I learned from reading about the founder of Red Bull: 1. He started the company when he was 41 years old. 2. He was making $500 to $800 million a year and his 49% stake was worth $20 to $30 billion. 3. The company was started with just $500,000 from him and $500,000 from his partner. Outside of a small loan from a local bank all other expansion was funded by profits. 4. The company reached profitability in its 3rd year and has been profitable every year since. (33 years and counting) 5. He took no dividends for the first 13 years and reinvested all profits into growth instead. 6. He viewed Red Bull as a “marketing conglomerate” and tried to outsource everything else. 7. He was intensely private. When an author tried to interview his elderly mother for an unauthorized biography Mateschitz threatened to have the author's knee caps broken. He said it would only cost $500 to hire a Russian to do the job. 8. There are no biographies written in English about Mateschitz. 9. He believed a handshake agreement among gentlemen was sufficient and regularly did business with trusted partners with no written contract. 10. He bought a popular magazine just so he wouldn’t appear in it. 11. He didn’t like spending time socializing. He said: “I don't believe in 50 friends. I believe in a smaller number. Nor do I care about society events. It's the most senseless use of time. When I do go out, from time to time, it's just to convince myself again that I'm not missing a lot." 12. He was universally described by former employees as a gentleman, charismatic, and fiercely loyal. 13. He owned a private island in Fiji and said he was attracted to having his own independent state. His state would have the shortest set of laws in the world: “The rules are simple: Nobody tells you what you have to do — only what you don’t have to do.” 14. He still prioritized fitness deep into his 70s and liked driving fast, piloting his planes, and competing in off-road motorcycle races. 15. When he was asked if he was going to retire he said: “I’m having more fun than ever.” 16. He refused to sell Red Bull or take it public and worked on it until he died. --- I'm reposting one of my favorite founder stories. If you listened to this first time, I recommend listening again. If you missed this before, you're about to hear one of the wildest founder stories of all time.
David Senra665,441 views • 6 months ago
I read Shoe Dog for the third or fourth time. This episode will make you want to run through walls. My favorite quotes from the new episode: 1. Somebody may beat me, but they’re going to have to bleed to do it. 2. It was us against the world, and we felt damn sorry for the world. 3. The cowards never started and the weak died along the way. That leaves us. 4. The roadside was littered with cautious, conservative, prudent entrepreneurs. I wanted to keep my foot pressed hard on the gas pedal. 5. I just didn't want to lose. Losing was death. 6. I was no longer making Nikes; Nikes were making me. 7. The problems never stop. 8. Beating the competition is relatively easy. Beating yourself is a never-ending commitment. 9. Our ads didn’t focus on the product, but on the spirit behind the product. 10. Obsessives were the only ones for the job. The only ones for me. 11. It seems wrong to call it “business.” It seems wrong to throw all those hectic days and sleepless nights, all those magnificent triumphs and desperate struggles, under that bland, generic banner: business. What we were doing felt like so much more. 12. We wanted, as all great businesses do, to create, to contribute, and we dared to say so aloud. 13. You are remembered for the rules you break. 14. You measure yourself by the people who measure themselves by you. 15. Don't settle for a job or a profession or even a career. Seek a calling. If you’re following your calling, the fatigue will be easier to bear, the disappointments will be fuel, the highs will be like nothing you’ve ever felt. 16. The better you get, the bigger the bull’s-eye. It’s not one man’s opinion; it’s a law of nature. 17. Entrepreneurs have always been outgunned, outnumbered. 18. Front runners always work the hardest, and risk the most. 19. No future, no past. All is now. 20. He always went against the grain. Always. 21. Belief is irresistible. 22. I could not bear the thought of losing. 23. The world is without beauty when you lose. 24. We didn't believe in letting tradition slow you down. 25. Someone somewhere once said that business is war without bullets, and I tended to agree. 26. I was fascinated by leadership under extreme conditions. 27. Don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results. 28. I've never been a multitasker. I wanted to focus constantly on the one task that really mattered. 29. I flat-out didn’t want to work for someone else. I wanted to build something that was my own, something I could point to and say: I made that. 30. Sometimes knowing when to give up, when to try something else, is genius. Giving up doesn’t mean stopping. Don’t ever stop. 31. When you make something, when you add some new thing or service to the lives of strangers, making them happier, or healthier, or safer, or better, and when you do it all crisply and efficiently, smartly, the way everything should be done but so seldom is—you’re participating more fully in the whole grand human drama. 32. I honestly wish I could do it all over again.
David Senra91,553 views • 26 days ago
This was awesome. I got the opportunity to describe to Rick Rubin how I make Founders podcast: “Steph Curry was asked: What do you think of when you're taking a shot? And he said: Absolutely nothing. I’ve had people ask me how I choose what to highlight. What are you thinking of when you're doing this? And my response is: Nothing. I just read and if something jumps out to me I don't think at all, I just underline it. And then I'll go back through and reread all my highlights. And if that part is still interesting, it was interesting the first time, now it's interesting the second time, it's probably interesting to other people. There's 10 million mes out there. I'm not unique. And there's no way that if I read this line twice and found it interesting that if I read it on a podcast that somebody else is not going to think it's interesting too. If I overthink it or if I think of “oh this person might hear it” or “oh this many people will hear it” that gets in the way. I'm thinking of nothing.”
David Senra32,810 views • 12 days ago
The new episode on Bill Gates starts with this incredible clip from Larry Ellison on Bill Gates: “Bill Gates is one of the most remarkable businesspeople I’ve ever met. Some people say Bill is the most brilliant guy they’ve ever met. There are a lot of really brilliant scientists in our business. Forgive me there are a lot of people in the world smarter than Bill Gates. There are very few people in the world that have his focus and endurance. Someone once said Bill wants people to think he is Thomas Edision when he is really Rockefeller. If he was Edison he would be less dangerous. He is utterly relentless. He is indefatigable. He is absolutely focused and he wants it all. Barry Diller said he is young and he’s mean and he’s not tired. That’s a high compliment coming from Barry Diller. Bill is tough and he wants it all and I have incredible respect for that man.”
David Senra388,581 views • 8 months ago
New episode: "How Jensen Works" This episode covers the insanely valuable company-building principles of Jensen Huang and nothing else. List of ideas: 1. Professor Jensen 2. The Whiteboard 3. Complacency Kills 4. Flat Organization 5. Public Criticism 6. Tortured into Greatness 7. Speed of Light 8. Extreme in All Things 9. Top 5 Emails 10. Direct Communication 1. LUA 12. The Mission is the Boss and Pilot-in-Command 13. Strategy is Action 14. Ship the Whole Cow 15. Go to School on Everybody 16. Create the Market 17. Choke You With Gold 18. Highest Priority First 19. Swarm Your Greatest Opportunity I spent over 40 hours reading (and rereading) The Nvidia Way by Tae Kim. I then spent several days editing down 30 pages of notes from the book. I deleted everything that wasn't How Jensen Works. 19 ideas. 55 minutes:
David Senra269,293 views • 7 months ago
New episode on The Creative Genius of Rick Rubin This episode contains a nonstop stream of ideas directly from Rick about how to make great work over a long period of time: (01:00) Just one habit, at the top of any field, can be enough to give an edge over the competition. Wooden considered every aspect of the game where an issue might arise, and trained his players for each one. Repeatedly. Until they became habits. The goal was immaculate performance. Wooden often said the only person you’re ever competing against is yourself. The rest is out of your control. This way of thinking applies to the creative life just as well. For both the artist and the athlete, the details matter, whether the players recognize their importance or not. Good habits create good art. The way we do anything is the way we do everything. Treat each choice you make, each action you take, each word you speak with skillful care. The goal is to live your life in the service of art. (08:41) Faith allows you to trust the direction without needing to understand it. (10:16) If you make the choice of reading classic literature every day for a year, rather than reading the news, by the end of that time period you’ll have a more honed sensitivity for recognizing greatness from the books than from the media. This applies to every choice we make. Not just with art, but with the friends we choose, the conversations we have, even the thoughts we reflect on. All of these aspects affect our ability to distinguish good from very good, very good from great. They help us determine what’s worthy of our time and attention. Because there’s an endless amount of data available to us and we have a limited bandwidth to conserve, we might consider carefully curating the quality of what we allow in. The objective is not to learn to mimic greatness, but to calibrate our internal meter for greatness. So we can better make the thousands of choices that might ultimately lead to our own great work. (14:25) We’re affected by our surroundings, and finding the best environment to create a clear channel is personal and to be tested. (27:57) Rules direct us to average behaviors. If we’re aiming to create works that are exceptional, most rules don’t apply. Average is nothing to aspire to. The goal is not to fit in. Communicate your singular perspective. (28:30) It’s a healthy practice to approach our work with as few accepted rules, starting points, and limitations as possible. Often the standards in our chosen medium are so ubiquitous, we take them for granted. They are invisible and unquestioned. (29:00) The world isn’t waiting for more of the same. The most innovative ideas come from those who master the rules to such a degree that they can see past them or from those who never learned them at all. (38:50) Fear of criticism. Attachment to a commercial result. Competing with past work. Time and resource constraints. The aspiration of wanting to change the world. And any story beyond “I want to make the best thing I can make, whatever it is” are all undermining forces in the quest for greatness. (42:32) To hone your craft is to honor creation. By practicing to improve, you are fulfilling your ultimate purpose on this planet. A lot more ideas in this episode including: The importance of developing a practice of paying attention, why impatience is an argument with reality, why you need to create space in your schedule to tap into ideas in from your subconscious, why you'll find what you're searching for by looking deeper, the reason it is important to carefully curate the quality of what we allow in: people, ideas, content, why rereading the same books again and again can help you find new ideas, how to find the environment that allows you to produce your best work —and how other artists have done so, several examples of the people that are the best in the world at what they do being full of self-doubt —and yet they do it anyways, why adversity is unavoidable, if you want to make great work for a long time you can’t self-sabotage, why the goal is to keep playing (Rubin has been playing for 40+ years), how you can overcome insecurities by naming them, how you can doubt your way to excellence, why distraction is not procrastination and why distraction can be a strategy in service of the work, why if you're aiming to create works that are exceptional most rules don’t apply, the importance of communicating your singular perspective, and why if there is one rule on creativity that’s unbreakable it’s that the need for patience is ever-present.
David Senra176,173 views • 4 months ago
“Rockefeller would focus in on the highest priority. When he gets into the oil refining business it has no barriers to entry. It costs $1000 to start a refinery and only requires a few people to run it. And one thing he notices is that transportation is the largest expense. It costs more to ship a barrel of oil, than to refine it. So if transportation is your highest priority that means the location of your refinery is key. The site that he chose was genius. He selected a location that was next to both the railroad and on the banks of a river. Why? Shipping by water was 50% cheaper than shipping by rail. If something is your top priority you should spend the majority of your time thinking about how to develop an edge there.” —From episode 405 “How Rockefeller Worked”
David Senra179,056 views • 6 months ago
Rockefeller was a ruthless competitor. Several Cleveland refiners claimed that Rockefeller had directly threatened them. One refiner told Rockefeller he wasn’t afraid of him to which Rockefeller replied: “You may not be afraid to have your hand cut off, but your body will suffer.” And this is the way Rockefeller did this: You start at the top. Focus on your fiercest competitor. Rockefeller made a list of the top refiners. He started at the top and worked his way down the list. By the time he was half-way down the list the rest had no choice but to sell out. Some tried to hold on and figured they could survive by expanding. But when they went to the banks to borrow money to expand they found all the bankers were already in Rockefeller’s pocket. Rockefeller was a combination of ruthless efficiency and hyper competence. — From the new episode “How Rockefeller Worked”
David Senra169,661 views • 6 months ago
When he’s 41 he quits his job and starts his first company. He puts all of his money in it. To not go into debt there were no dividend payments for the first 13 years. All the profits flowed back into expansion. “We are advancing constantly.” As the brand got more and more popular he got assaulted with all of these offers. We can make: Red Bull gummy bears Red Bull underwear Red Bull perfume He said no to every single one. He puts all of his energy behind one arrow. He had a “burn the boats” mentality. He was aiming for fun and durability over everything else. He said: “If things had gone wrong, I’d be sleeping under a bridge today.”
David Senra139,994 views • 6 months ago
Make Something Wonderful is 250 pages of Steve Jobs in his own words, speaking directly to you. The book contains some of Steve's ideas that I've never found anywhere else. Notes from the book: 1. He didn't care about being right. He cared about being excellent. 2. His mind was never a captive of reality. 3. He said working with great people gives you access to wisdom that you can't buy for love or money. 4. He believed technology should be streamlined and practical, simple and sophisticated, and that it should be a tool for enhancing creativity as much as productivity. 5. He believed you should ambush your customers. Meet them where they are. 6. His ideas were not arguments, but intuitions. He had a true inner freedom and an epic sense of possibility. 7. He gave an extraordinary amount of thought to how best to use our fleeting time. 8. By the time he was thirty he was the public face of a Fortune 500 company. 9. At Apple’s first board meeting he put his bare feet on a conference room table. 10. He said you should think of your life as a rainbow arching across the horizon of this world. You appear, have a chance to blaze in the sky, then you disappear. 11. He possessed unbelievable rigor that he imposed first, and most strenuously, on himself. 12. He saw clearly (1) what was not there, (2) what could be there, (3) what had to be there. 13. He said early Apple employees were more like poets and painters than cold technologists. That the passion they put into their products were completely indistinguishable from other creative fields. He said their work was a form of love. 14. He had a verbal mastery that was obvious at a young age. He used simple, descriptive language, told stories, and repeated lines and ideas that were important. 15. He thought it was inevitable that computers would be the dominant medium of human communication. He said this in 1983. 16. He had a talent for spotting markets full of second-rate products. 17. He said you could tell how important a product was based on the amount of time people spent interacting with it. As a result he thought it was inevitable that more design talent would shift from the automobile (1 or 2 hours a day) to computers (6+ hours a day). He said this in the 80s. 18. He said that books kept him out of jail and that it’s a shame there are so many mediocre teachers. 19. Like many great entrepreneurs before him, Steve knew what he wanted to do, but didn't know how to do it yet. He said he wanted to make an insanely great computer that was the size of a book. What he described sounded a lot like an iPad. He said this in the 80s. 20. He believed that you should use your unique set of talents to make things that make the lives of other people better. Most people just take. He said "the ability to put something back into the pool of human experience is extremely neat." 21. He would tell his team “You work for Apple first and your boss second.” He felt strongly about that. 22. He was constantly placing the products he was making in a historical perspective, like comparing the Macintosh to the invention of the telephone. 23. He believed you needed to give yourself more time to make mistakes. He said his taste got more refined as he made mistakes. He said that making mistakes over a long period of time made his aesthetics better. 24. He said the key ingredient to making something great was time. 25. He said he wanted to spend his life building things. He could have retired to a beach in his 20s and thought that was disgusting. 26. He was interested in learning how to hone a company down to its essence. 27. You read this book and a thought jumps out at you: How many people are willing to go through a decade of failure without quitting? Steve had the capacity to take pain. 28. He believed it was better to focus on what you're actually passionate about, instead of what you think will make you the most money. He made the most money that way. 29. He listened to older, wiser entrepreneurs and let them shape and mold his thinking. 30. He wasn't afraid to fail, but had to coach himself to adopt that trait. He didn't want to fail, but he wasn't afraid of it. 31. He said don't let your differentiation evaporate. 32. He said if you let your differentiation evaporate the only solution is innovation. 33. He believed great ideas don't map onto corporate hierarchy. 34. He was incapable of thinking that his work and his life were different, separate things. 35. He said the most important things in life are not the goal-oriented, materialistic things. He said you should tap into the world’s magical, mystical, and artistic sides. 36. He paid attention to subtle insights. He was guided by intuition. 37. He didn't believe in the concept or a career, or think it was wise to follow well-worn paths laid out by others. 38. He said most people make the mistake of not thinking about death. He said: "For me it’s the opposite: to know my arc will fall, makes me want to blaze while I am in the sky." 39. He thought Walt Disney had a great idea: Edit before you make it. 40. He said no amount of technology can turn a bad story into a good story. 41. He believed storytellers were the most powerful people in the world. 42. He believed if you didn't have great people you were doomed. 43. He found great people by looking at great results and finding out who was responsible for them. 44. This is how he interviewed people: "In an interview I will purposely upset someone: I’ll criticize their prior work. I’ll do my homework, find out what they worked on and say, “God, that really turned out to be a bomb. That really turned out to be a bozo product. Why did you work on that?” The worst thing that someone can do in an interview is to agree with me and knuckle under. What I look for is for someone to come right back and say, “You’re dead wrong and here’s why.” 45. He believed the job of the leader was to make sure the work is as good as it should be, and to get people to stretch beyond their best. 46. He believed the job of the leader was to cajole, and beg, and plead, and threaten at times—to do whatever is necessary to get people to see things in a bigger and more profound way and to have them do better work than they thought they could do. 47. He believed the priorities of the leader were (1) recruit, (2) set an overall direction, and (3) inspire and cajole and persuade. 48. He believed a creative company should have a risk-taking, creative environment on the product side and a fiscally conservative environment on the business side. 49. He believed you have to choose what you put your love into really carefully. 50. He had a remarkably consistent set of values that he held dear: Life is short; don’t waste it. Tell the truth. Technology should enhance human creativity. Process matters. Beauty matters. Details matter. The world we know is a human creation—and we can push it forward. 51. He thought when deciding what to work on that you should ask yourself: "What do I give a shit about?" And then go do that. 52. He would never sell Apple. Not for all the money in the world. 53. He believed you should master the basics, simplify the product line, and focus on the gems. 54. He believed marketing was about values. That the world is noisy and you should focus on telling customers what you believe in and what you stand for. 55. He believed one way to invest in yourself is by exploring uncharted paths that are different from your past experiences. You know it's an uncharted path when you have no idea where it will lead. 56. He believed that people that think they’re following a safe path pay the highest price of all. They won't realize it for a decade or two — and by then it's too late. 57. He didn't believe in resting on laurels or sleeping on wins. Make something great. Then do it again. 58. He imagined what reality lacked and set out to remedy it. 59. He believed in straight forward, clear communication. If the work isn't good enough you have to tell them straight: "This isn't good enough. I know you can do better. You need to do better. Now go do better." 60. He remained driven by a mission to "put something back into the pool of human experience." 61. He believed in the basics: great product, great marketing, great distribution. 62. He believed you must keep up with innovations in distribution. 63. He believed brands take decades to build. 64. He would capture the evolution of his own thinking by emailing himself. 65. He viewed Apple has the world's premier bridge builder between normal people and the exploding world of high technology. 66. He wanted to demystify technology. 67. He believed excellence was a habit and we are what we repeatedly do. 68. He believed you should be curious about what came before you and you should spend time to learn about it. 69. He believed you simply could not mix messages when selling something new. A customer can barely handle one great new idea, let alone several. 70. He said it's a circus world and you'll never know what's around the next corner. 71. He believed in management by values. Which means (1) find people that want the same things you want and (2) figure out the best way to get those things along the way. 72. He believed in the mantra: Finding the right people is half the battle. 73. He said you can't plan to meet the people who will change your life. 74. He believed everything is temporary — there is no such thing as safety. 75. He believed that your life is a story and that you should remember that your life is a story and that you should always act like your life is a story. 76. He believed in rejecting dogma, which he defined as living with the results of other people's thinking. He said that dogma can be so loud that it can drown out your own inner voice and you should avoid this. 77. He believed a great place to start was by improving a product you hate. If you can make something you love, you can convince other people to love it too. 78. He said all glory is fleeting and you should just get back to making something wonderful. I'm really proud of the episode I made about this book. You'll learn a lot from Steve by listening to it. You can watch/listen to it in full here, or in your favorite podcast app.
David Senra205,292 views • 9 months ago
The book "Excellent Advice for Living" is so good I read it in one sitting. The book is a collection of maxims Kevin Kelly wrote to his adult children. Each maxim contains a bit of wisdom he wish he'd known earlier. 79 maxims that resonated the most (I added #57 selfishly) 1. Choose to believe that the entire universe is conspiring behind your back to make you a success. 2. Mastering the view through the eyes of others will unlock many doors. 3. If you can avoid seeking the approval of others your power is limitless. 4. The reward for good work is more work. 5. Don’t be the best. Be the only. 6. The urgent is a tyrant. The important should be your king. 7. Find smart people who will disagree with you. 8. The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing. 9. The most counterintuitive truth of the universe is that the more you give to others the more you'll get. 10. Life gets better as you replace transactions with relationships. 11. Courtesy costs nothing. 12. Life lessons will be presented to you in the order they are needed. 13. Cultivate an allergy to average. 14. If you repeated what you did today 365 more times would you be where you want to be next year? 15. If you're alive that means you still have lessons to learn. 16. Master something. Through mastery of one thing you'll command a viewpoint to steadily find where your bliss is. 17. Trust is earned in drops and lost in buckets. 18. First, always ask for what you want. Works in relationships, business, life. 19. If nobody else does what you do you won't need a resume. 20. How to apologize: quickly, specifically, sincerely. 21. The best way to advise people is to find out what they really want to do and then advise them to do it. 22. It is certain that 99% of the stuff you are anxious about won't happen. 23. What is important is not what happened to you but what you did about what happened to you. 24. Your golden ticket is being able to see things from other people's point of view. 25. Pay attention to who you are around when you feel best. Be with them more often. 26. To get your message across follow this formula: simplify, simplify, simplify, then exaggerate. 27. You will thrive more when you promote what you love rather than bash what you hate. 28. To be interesting just tell your own story with uncommon honesty. 29. When you truly think for yourself your conclusions will not be predictable. 30. Don’t measure your life with someone else’s ruler. 31. For maximum results focus on your biggest opportunities, not your biggest problems. 32. Pay attention to what you pay attention to. 33. Do more of what looks like work to others but is play for you. 34. Don't bother fighting the old just build the new. 35. Don't compare your inside to someone else's outside. 36. When you're stuck explain your problem to others. 37. Most stories are improved significantly if you delete the first page. Start with the action. 38. A long game will compound small gains that will be able to overcome even big mistakes. 39. Constantly search for overlapping areas of agreement and dwell there. 40. It is your destiny to work on things that only you can do. 41. Make stuff that is good for people to have. 42. You'll get 10 times better results by elevating good behavior rather than punishing bad behavior. 43. Life is not a straight line for anyone. 44. Aim for tasks that you never want to stop doing. 45. Regularly scheduled sabbaths, sabbaticals, vacations, breaks, aimless walks, and time off are essential for top performance of any kind. 46. Don't mistake a clear view of the future for a short distance. 47. Efficiency is highly overrated 48. Greatness is incompatible with optimizing in the short term. 49. The greatest teacher is called "doing." 50. Figure out what time of day you are most productive and protect that time period. 51. You are much better off delivering unwelcome news to someone yourself directly. 52. Don't ever work for someone you don't want to become. 53. Take one simple thing — almost anything — but take it extremely seriously as if it is the only thing in the world 54. Be frugal in all things except in your passions. 55. About 99% of the time the right time is right now. 56. Finite games are played to win or lose. Infinite games are played to keep the game going. Seek out infinite games because they yield unlimited rewards. 57. To be remarkable, read books. 58. Be a good ancestor. Do something a future generation will thank you for. 59. Bad things can happen fast but almost all good things happen slowly. 60. To transcend the influence of your heroes copy them shamelessly like a student until you get them out of your system. That is the way of all masters. 61. Don't worry how or where you begin. As long as you keep moving, your success will arrive far from where you start. 62. It is much easier to change how you think by changing your behavior, than it is to change your behavior by changing how you think. Act out the change you seek. 63. If you meet a jerk, ignore them. If you meet jerks everywhere every day, look deeper into yourself 64. Writing down one thing you are grateful each day is the cheapest possible therapy ever. 65. Ignore what others may be thinking of you because they aren't thinking of you. 66. Passion, persistence, belief, and ingenuity are required to invent new things. Qualities the poor and young often have in abundance. Stay hungry. 67. Calm is contagious. 68. When crises strike don't waste them. No problems, no progress. 69. Your purpose is to discover your purpose. This is not a paradox. This is the way. 70. Your passions should fit you exactly but your purpose in life should exceed you. 71. Fear makes people do stupid things. 72. When someone is nasty, hateful, or mean toward you treat their behavior like an affliction or illness they have. That makes it easier to have empathy toward them which can soften the conflict. 73. You don't need more time because you already have all the time you will ever get; you need more focus. 74. Compliment people behind their back. It'll come back to you. 75. Expand your mind by thinking with your feet on a walk or with your hand in a notebook. Think outside your brain. 76. Gratitude will unlock all other virtues. 77. You choose to be lucky by believing that any setbacks are just temporary. 78. It is useful to organize your thoughts with someone you trust and admire. 79. Over the long term the future is decided by optimists. To be an optimist you don't have to ignore the multitude of problems we create; you just imagine how much our ability to solve problems improves.
David Senra88,965 views • 3 months ago
“Working at SpaceX is like being dropped into a zone of shocking competence. Everybody is ultra competent and the reason everybody is ultra competent is because if they're not Elon Musk sniffs it out and fires them. Elon knows because he's talking to the people actually doing the work. At this point having done this for 25 years he can sniff this out really quickly. The best engineers in the world want to work for him because he's the one CEO who’s able to work with them as a peer on whatever the technology is. What would be better as an engineer than being able to design a rocket engine with Elon Musk as your engineering partner?”
David Senra62,388 views • 2 months ago
New episode: "The Stubborn Genius of James Dyson" A few notes from the episode: 1. Copying is for losers. 2. They only come to you because you're eccentric. They can get conformity anywhere. 3. Be different and retain total control. 4. Great work is just the vision of a single person, pursued with dogged determination that is nothing less than obsession. 5. The best founders are obsessive, impractical, product-driven enthusiasts. 6. Hire blank slates: Young people who haven’t been ruined by the bad habits of subpar organizations. 7. Be fired by an inner strength and self-belief that is almost impossible to imagine in this feckless age. 8. Vision is just long-term stubbornness. 9. The root principle is to do things your way. It doesn’t matter how other people do it. 10. As long as it works, and it's exciting, people will follow you. 11. Demand difference from what exists. 12. Extreme success comes from doing something no one else is doing. 13. Learning from history is a form of leverage. Have an interest, verging on obsession, with the past. (Dyson literally wrote an encyclopedia on history's greatest inventions) 14. Do not sell a half-finished product. 15. People do not want all-purpose; they want high-tech specificity. 16. Don’t lose the direct connection to your customer. 17. There is no such thing as a quantum leap. There is only dogged persistence — and in the end you make it look like a quantum leap. 18. You simply cannot mix messages when selling something new. Customers can barely handle one great new idea, let alone two, or even several. 19. You want a single message expressed clearly. 20. Appeal to a specific need. Don’t make your product too wide. Narrow it down. 21. You have to think about the incentives of the people you’re selling to. You can’t sell a bagless vacuum cleaner to people that make $500 million selling vacuum bags. 22. No one is ever eager to fix a cash machine that isn’t broken. 23. The more you’re able to control, the better your product— and then your company— will become. 24. Don’t copy the opposition. Don’t worry about market research. Follow your own star. This is what success entrepreneurs do. 25. The opposite of following your own star is following the herd. That is a path to dull conformity. 26. For innovative, intrinsically excellent products, the markets are often larger than you can predict. 27. The entrenched professional is always going to resist far longer than the private consumer. 28. No one ever got an idea starting at a drawing board. 29. Founder led sales is the most powerful tool. 30. The inventive mind knows that there is always further questions to be asked and new discoveries to be made. 31. A clever person doesn’t spend 14 years building 5,127 prototypes of the world’s first cyclonic vacuum cleaner. A determined person does. 32. If you have an idea for a new product, you engineer, prototype, manufacture, market, and sell it yourself. Retain total control. 33. If it’s not beautiful you’re not done. 34. The founder is personally accountable for every product sold. 35. People buy stories. Invest heavily in storytelling. Why your product exists. How it is made. Who made it. 36. Control is more important than money. 37. When you own the whole company all decisions are your own. 38. How bad do you want it? Dyson made a new prototype, every day, for more than 1,000 days. Alone. 39. Perseverance is not cheap. 40. A project will die if the original mule doesn’t stay on it. The self-belief is not there to press through the hard times. 41. Your company should be the most exciting adventure of your life. 42. If you make it, sell it yourself. 43. Only the person with the closest relationship with the product can make a success of it. 44. There's nothing wrong with being persistently dissatisfied or afraid. 45. You need the confidence — and the stupidity — to do things differently. 46. One decent editorial counts for 1,000 advertisements. 47. Difference for the sake of difference and the continuous improvement of products simply for improvement’s sake. 48. Persistent trial and error allows you to wake up one morning, after many, many mornings, with a world-beating product. 49. Seek out originality for its own sake. 50. Companies are built, not made. 51. You are more likely to solve a problem by being unconventional and determined than by being brilliant. 52. Never sacrifice quality for speed. 53. Magic — the unique way a product does what it does — is never to be underestimated. There are 100 more ideas in the episode. I hope you listen to it. 50 years of Dyson's career + 70 hours of reading (and simplifying) and me just ripping through idea after idea at 2x speed for 90 minutes. It will be hard to find a better use of time.
David Senra177,522 views • 8 months ago