David Senra
@FoundersPodcast • 203,140 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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Charlie Munger said "Henry Singleton's financial returns were a mile higher than anyone else's, they were utterly ridiculous." NEW episode: "HOW HENRY SINGLETON WORKED" based on the hard-to-find book Distant Force: A Memoir of the Teledyne Corporation and The Man Who Created It 0:00 — "He aggressively repurchased his stock, eventually buying over ninety percent of Teledyne's shares." 0:45 — "He was known as The Sphinx for his reluctance to speak with either analysts or journalists." 1:25 — Charlie Munger: "Singleton's financial returns were a mile higher than anyone else's, they were utterly ridiculous." 2:00 — Buffett: "The heads of many companies are not skilled in capital allocation. Their inadequacy is not surprising. Most bosses rise to the top because they've excelled in an area such as marketing, production, engineering, administration, or sometimes institutional politics." 4:10 — Singleton: "Our conclusion was that the key was cash flow. Our attitude towards cash generation and asset management came out of our own thinking. It is not copied." 4:30 — Buffett: "Henry Singleton has the best operating and capital deployment record in American business. If one took the hundred top business school graduates and made a composite of their triumphs, their record would not be as good as Singleton's." 9:40 — Singleton: "If anyone wants to follow Teledyne, they should get used to the fact that our quarterly earnings will jiggle. Our accounting is set to maximize cash flow, not reported earnings." 10:50 — Singleton believed buying stock at attractive prices was self-catalyzing, analogous to coiling a spring that at some future point would surge forward to realize full value." 11:50 — Singleton: "I don't reserve any day-to-day responsibilities for myself, so I don't get into any particular rut. I do not define my job in any rigid terms, but in terms of having the freedom to do whatever seems to be in the best interest of the company at any time." 14:35 — Singleton: "If everyone's doing them, there must be something wrong with them." (on share repurchases by Fortune 500 companies) 26:30 — Singleton: "Teledyne is like a living plant, with our companies as the different branches and each putting out new branches and growing so that no one business is too significant." 28:35 — Singleton: "We work our heads off to increase our own capability at collecting and promoting the right people. To the extent that we succeed, the whole company will succeed." 32:30 — "What's unique about him is that I'll ask him a question about one of these companies that I've asked him to supervise, and he always knows the exact numerical answer. That's the kind of fellow that you pick who runs a company and does it well." 35:00 — Singleton: "There are tremendous values in the stock market, but in buying stocks, not entire companies. Buying companies tends to raise the purchase price too high." 41:35 — Claude Shannon on Singleton: "He always tries to work out the best moves, and maybe he doesn't like to talk too much because when you're playing a game, you don't tell anyone else what your strategy is." 42:00 — Singleton: "We are not particularly persuaded by quick, temporary gains. We'd rather get something permanent, and that takes time." 44:40 — Munger: "Henry Singleton was the smartest single human being I've ever known in my entire life." 45:00 — Munger: "Henry was a lot smarter, but Warren had thought about investments a lot longer." (distinguishing raw intelligence from accumulated experience)
David Senra227,650 Aufrufe • vor 2 Tagen
This is hilarious. Mark Normand discovers Founders podcast: “It’s this crazy guy named David Senra. This guy is a nut but he’s a file cabinet of information. He reads autobiographies and then tells you the greatest hits. I listened to the one on Agassi, and Henry Ford and all these guys are unbelievably interesting. So he just breaks down the best parts. I listened to the Roger Federer one. The Rick Rubin one is great too. But the Christopher Nolan one woah! I had no idea. mark normand’s recall of the Christopher Nolan episode is incredible:
David Senra188,373 Aufrufe • vor 8 Tagen
New episode: Peter Thiel on How to Build a Creative Monopoly Or what I learned from reading Zero to One for the 3rd (or 4th) time: 0:00 Every great entrepreneur is first and foremost a designer. 0:21 Long-term planning is often undervalued by our indefinite short-term world. 1:24 Founders only sell when they have no more concrete visions for the company. Definitive founders with robust plans don't sell. 2:03 A startup is the largest endeavor over which you can have definitive mastery. 3:44 Don’t do anything someone else can do. 4:29 Today's best practices lead to dead ends. The best paths are new and untried. 5:05 Technology is miraculous because it allows us to do more with less, ratcheting up our fundamental capabilities to a higher level. By creating new technologies, we rewrite the plan of the world. 6:25 Indeed, the single most powerful pattern I have noticed is that successful people find value in unexpected places, and they do this by thinking about business from first principles instead of formulas. 9:16 Brilliant thinking is rare, but courage is even in shorter supply than genius. 9:53 The present is the past biting into the future. 10:37 Small groups of people bound together by a sense of mission have changed the world for the better. 11:25 This is what startup has to do: question received ideas and rethink business from scratch. 13:36 The most contrarian thing of all is not to oppose the crowd, but to think for yourself. 15:57 Creative monopoly means new products that benefit everybody and sustainable profits for its creator. 18:50 If you're interested in making things, you'll be less afraid to pursue this activity single-mindedly and thereby become incredibly good at them. 22:03 If you focus on near-term growth above all else, you miss the most important question you should be asking: Will this business still be around a decade from now? 26:30 Every monopoly dominates a large share of its market. Therefore, every startup should start with a very small market. Always err on the side of starting too small. If you think your initial market might be too big, it almost certainly is. 28:53 Competition is for losers. Avoid competition as much as possible. 29:44 The definitive person determines the one best thing to do and then does it. The definitive person strives to be great at something substantial. They strive to be a monopoly of one. 31:15 What is luck? The ability to exploit accidents. — Napoleon 33:20 We do not live in a normal world. We live under a power law. And as a result, company outcomes follow a power law. A small handful of companies radically outperform all others. 34:00 If you do start your own company, you must remember the power law to operate it well. 34:05 The most important things are singular. 36:29 Making mistakes is the privilege of the active. 38:00 The best entrepreneurs know this: Every great business is built around a secret that is hidden from the outside. A great company is a conspiracy to change the world. When you share your secret, the recipient becomes a fellow conspirator. 40:54 A small company depends on great people much more than a big company does. 41:15 The founding of a company lasts as long as a company is creating new things, and it ends when creation stops. 41:25 No company has a culture. Every company is a culture. 41:48 Since time is your most valuable asset, it is odd to spend it working with people who you don't envision any long-term future together. 42:09 Recruiting is a core competency for any company. It should never be outsourced. 42:37 Your company should be a tribe of like-minded people fiercely devoted to the company mission. 44:02 Superior sales and distribution by itself can create a monopoly, even with no product differentiation. The converse is not true. 44:24 Advertising matters because it works. It works on nerds and it works on you. 44:49 Advertising doesn't exist to make you buy a product right away. It exists to embed subtle impressions that will drive sales later. 46:29 Poor sales rather than bad product is the most common cause of failure. If you can get just one distribution channel to work, you have a great business. 49:00 When Howard Hughes was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 1939 for his achievements in aviation, he didn't even show up to claim it. 52:00 The most important task in business, the creation of new value, cannot be reduced to a formula and applied by professionals.
David Senra718,714 Aufrufe • vor 1 Monat
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 Senra3,751,300 Aufrufe • vor 1 Jahr
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 Senra1,108,059 Aufrufe • vor 9 Monaten
New episode: How Claude Shannon Worked Claude Shannon changed your life and you probably don't even know it. Claude is the father of information theory. He transformed “information" into bits and created the intellectual foundation for computers, the Internet, digital media, high-speed communication, and Artificial Intelligence. He is the reason Anthropic named Claude, Claude. The way Claude Shannon worked is what interested me the most. He combined extraordinary abstract reasoning with an engineer’s instinct to build. He reduced complex problems to their essential structure. (The episode begins with his ideas on how to simplify and then solve complex problems) He connected ideas across mathematics, engineering, cryptography, artificial intelligence, investing, chess, juggling, and robotics. He treated every experience as material that he might later combine into a new insight. He was also relentlessly independent, guided more by curiosity and freedom than recognition, money, or usefulness. This episode is what I learned from rereading "A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age" by Jimmy Soni and Rob Goodman Quotes and highlights: 0:00 — "The great insights don't spring from curiosity alone, but from dissatisfaction... A genius is simply someone who is usefully irritated." 1:36 — "It seems to be much easier to make two small jumps than one big jump in any kind of mental thinking." — Shannon 4:41 — "He was a man almost entirely written out of a history that's defined by self-promoters. His was a life spent in the pursuit of curious, serious play." 5:20 — "He worked with levity and played with gravity. He never acknowledged a distinction between the two." 6:00 — "Geniuses are the luckiest of mortals because what they do is the same as what they most want to do." 6:59 — "I do what comes naturally, and usefulness is not my main goal. I keep asking myself, 'How would you do this? Is it possible to make a machine to do this? Can I prove this theorem?'" — Shannon 11:50 — "Chemistry always seemed dull to me. There's too many isolated facts and too few general principles for my taste." — Shannon 19:09 — "Specialization is the death of genius." — Vannevar Bush 19:18 — "The possibilities of being at once both broad and deep did not pass with Leonardo da Vinci or Benjamin Franklin." — Vannevar Bush 25:13 — "I had the freedom to do anything I wanted from almost the day I started. They never told me what to work on." — Shannon on Bell Labs 26:41 — "I've been working on three different ideas simultaneously, and strangely enough, it seems a more productive method than sticking to one problem." — Shannon 32:55 — "My fondest dream is to someday build a machine that thinks, learns, communicates, and manipulates its environment in a fairly sophisticated way." — Shannon 35:05 — "Before Shannon, information was a telegram, a photograph, a paragraph, a song. After Shannon, information was entirely abstracted into bits." 38:04 — "After the effort of discovery, the effort of communication was secondary by far. He had solved a problem to his own satisfaction, and that, as far as he was concerned, was enough." 40:55 — "I've spent lots of time on totally useless things... He made no distinction between his interest in information and his interest in unicycles. They were all moves in the same game." — Shannon 46:54 — "Shannon seemed to think with ideas more than with words or formulas. A new problem was like a sculptor's block of stone, and Shannon's ideas chiseled away the obstacles until an approximate solution emerged." — Ed Thorp 47:19 — "I simply removed everything that was not David." — Michelangelo 47:25 — "I don't think I was ever motivated by the notions of winning prizes... I was more motivated by curiosity, never by the desire for financial gain. I just wondered how things were put together." — Shannon 47:49 — "I think the history of science has shown that valuable consequences often proliferate from simple curiosity." — Shannon 48:37 — "The important people and events of history are the thinkers and innovators, the Darwins, the Newtons, the Beethovens, whose work continues to grow influence in a positive fashion." — Shannon
David Senra66,573 Aufrufe • vor 24 Tagen
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 Senra682,671 Aufrufe • vor 9 Monaten
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 Senra392,422 Aufrufe • vor 5 Monaten
![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 Senra255,708 Aufrufe • vor 5 Monaten
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 Senra389,051 Aufrufe • vor 11 Monaten
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 Senra270,065 Aufrufe • vor 10 Monaten
The case for reading biographies from Elon Musk: You can find ideas and mentors from history. I tell Ivanka Trump what sparked the idea to start Founders: “I remember watching this interview with Elon that Kevin Rose did back in 2012. They're in Tesla's factory and Kevin asked him how did you learn business? Did you have mentors? And Elon said something that changed my life because then I started reading biographies. He goes "No I didn't have a lot of mentors. I looked for mentors in an historical context. I thought biographies and autobiographies were helpful.” And I thought “oh maybe I should start reading more autobiographies and biographies. Turns out you can find mentors in historical context.”
David Senra90,465 Aufrufe • vor 3 Monaten
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 Senra101,149 Aufrufe • vor 3 Monaten
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 Senra176,492 Aufrufe • vor 7 Monaten
“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 Senra179,608 Aufrufe • vor 9 Monaten
I was shocked to learn Thomas Petterfy is 81 years old, worth $80 billion, and has built his $120 billion business into one of the most efficient companies in the world. He's been obsessed with automation since the 1960s. This episode is full of WILD stories:
David Senra205,712 Aufrufe • vor 11 Monaten
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 Senra169,771 Aufrufe • vor 9 Monaten
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 Senra195,041 Aufrufe • vor 11 Monaten