David Senra
@davidsenra • 117,519 subscribers
Conversations with the greatest living founders.
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Elon didn’t start SpaceX to build a rocket company: “The original vision for SpaceX was not to start a launch company. Elon’s original goal was to increase NASA’s budget, and he was willing to just burn 100 million dollars on a philanthropic mission to display a greenhouse on Mars. Shooting a greenhouse to Mars with existing rocket technology, get this photo on the front page of every paper. A little plant on the red planet, the first time life had transferred to another planet. That’ll probably increase NASA’s budget and spur this wave of exploration and interest in space. When he tried to do that, he discovered that the space launch market was so expensive and un-innovative and hadn’t been moving forward. That’s actually how he discovered the opportunity to start SpaceX. That’s what’s actually going to move this market forward.”
David Senra8,637,708 Aufrufe • vor 14 Tagen
Ivanka Ivanka Trump and Elad Gil are working on a project that uses Al to translate the world's great public-domain books into every major language, making them accessible for free to anyone: “What are some of the positive use cases for AI? And we started talking about how so much of history's great works of information and literature are not accessible to so many people due to lack of access. AI has gotten so good that we could create high-fidelity translations of these incredible literary works. So you think about Dostoevsky, you think about Bronte, you think about Marcus Aurelius, or Epictetus. All of these works are available in the public domain. We can use AI to translate them into all the world's commonly spoken languages and make them accessible and available for free if you have internet access. So we're democratizing access to this incredible knowledge. We're calling it Alexandria Library”
David Senra595,414 Aufrufe • vor 3 Tagen
Marc Andreessen (Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸) on what it’s like to work at SpaceX: “It’s like being dropped into a zone of shocking competence.” “Everybody is ultra competent, and the reason everybody’s ultra competent is because if they’re not, Elon sniffs it out and fires them. He knows, ‘cause he’s talking to the people actually doing the work.” “The best engineers in the world want to work for him, ‘cause he’s the one CEO like this 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 Senra3,135,091 Aufrufe • vor 13 Tagen
Marc Andreessen on why Starlink may be the most misunderstood success story in tech right now: “Elon’s not the first guy who said we’re going to do satellite-based internet access. There was Bill Gates, Craig McCaw. Complete catastrophe, total bankruptcy, complete disaster. Elon’s like, ‘I know, I’m going to do another three of those. We’re starting as a side project at the rocket ship company.’ If the rockets are reusable, we’re going to be launching them all the time. What’s going to go in the rockets? I could wait for the customers to come to me, or I could just put up my own satellites. Anybody who knew anything about the history of satellites knew that was the craziest idea in the world. And of course it’s like this giant success. It’s the side project. It’s clearly the least studied and understood thing I know of in the world right now.”
David Senra12,059,010 Aufrufe • vor 1 Monat
!["We're naturally drawn to people who are extremely authentic." Ivanka Trump on authenticity and how to create a life that's tailor-made for you: "Dana White is a great example of somebody who knows himself so well. He's authentically who he is. He would be wildly uncomfortable wearing a mask and performing in some other role. I think Rick Rubin [is too]. Dolly Parton. I love her. She is who she is and she's always been the same and she really owns it." "We're naturally drawn to people who are extremely authentic." "You can't outsource decision-making for major decisions in your personal or professional life." "You have to do the work of really getting to know yourself and what feels right." "When decisions —regardless of how hard they are —align with your values it always feels good. It can be difficult but you never question it. You never second-guess. You don't look back and wonder what if. It's the decisions you take that don't fully feel right, that don't align with your true self, that don't align with those core values that you hold, those are the things that I think you always regret." "So many people are really afraid to be themselves. The reality is you're going to get criticized either way. You might as well be the best version of you possible."](https://image.24vids.com/tw-2061132897747378338/amplify_video_thumb/2061132020403908608/img/S-wiriMaKNeGluBG.jpg)
"We're naturally drawn to people who are extremely authentic." Ivanka Trump on authenticity and how to create a life that's tailor-made for you: "Dana White is a great example of somebody who knows himself so well. He's authentically who he is. He would be wildly uncomfortable wearing a mask and performing in some other role. I think Rick Rubin [is too]. Dolly Parton. I love her. She is who she is and she's always been the same and she really owns it." "We're naturally drawn to people who are extremely authentic." "You can't outsource decision-making for major decisions in your personal or professional life." "You have to do the work of really getting to know yourself and what feels right." "When decisions —regardless of how hard they are —align with your values it always feels good. It can be difficult but you never question it. You never second-guess. You don't look back and wonder what if. It's the decisions you take that don't fully feel right, that don't align with your true self, that don't align with those core values that you hold, those are the things that I think you always regret." "So many people are really afraid to be themselves. The reality is you're going to get criticized either way. You might as well be the best version of you possible."
David Senra401,403 Aufrufe • vor 3 Tagen
IBM built a cloud of suits to make sure the CEO never talked to anyone actually doing the work. Elon Musk does the opposite. "Elon's method is extreme focus on substance. Extreme focus on getting to the truth. In any organization with multiple layers, there's compounding lies. Each layer wants to look good. Each layer puts a little spin on things. If one layer lies to the next layer above it, maybe that's okay. When that happens two or three times, the lies compound. If that happens six times, the lies really compound. If that happens 12 times, the CEO has no idea what's happening. That was IBM. By the time I got there as an intern, I calculated there were 12 layers of management between me and the CEO. They even had a term for it: the great cloud. A cloud of men in gray business suits who followed the CEO around and prevented him from ever talking to anybody who was actually doing the work. When he would come to visit, it was like a visit from the king. A completely impervious bubble. That's the polar opposite of the Elon approach." — Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸
David Senra17,637,522 Aufrufe • vor 2 Monaten
Rick Rubin describes his daily struggle: “There is a part of me that doesn't want to show up for anything and I have to overcome that every day.” “I'm lazy. It's a real part of it. I'm telling you an honest piece of this which is every day it's not like "Let's go!” Every day it's like "Oh no. I've got to go work.”
David Senra999,209 Aufrufe • vor 10 Tagen
Rick Rubin’s House on the Mountain test: Create according to your own taste, not for applause, critics, algorithms, or market demand. “Imagine going to live on a mountaintop by yourself, forever. You build a home that no one will ever visit. Still, you invest the time and effort to shape the space in which you’ll spend your days. The wood, the plates, the pillows—all magnificent. Curated to your taste.” “This is the essence of great art. We create our art so we may inhabit it ourselves.” “I'm willing to go to extremes to make the thing that I want to inhabit and it's not for anyone else. it's just for me.”
David Senra415,914 Aufrufe • vor 6 Tagen
A recurring theme from the history of entrepreneurship: Seeing opportunity where others only see waste. Ivanka (Ivanka Trump) on (1) expanding the secondary market to offset the 40% of produce grown that never makes it off the field, (2) supporting small and medium-size farmers, and (3) connecting their fresh produce with partners like Chobani instead of letting it go to waste: “There was no secondary market for any fruit or vegetable that didn't meet an exact specification in terms of size and color, even though the taste and the quality were in no way compromised.” “Well that makes no sense at all. Let's stimulate the demand side so that we could support these small and medium-sized farmers.” “Why isn't there a secondary market? Why aren't these great strawberries going to a juicer if they can't be displayed at stores because they don't meet cosmetic specification that's really exact?” “We stimulate demand by working with companies and getting offtake for these small and medium-sized farmers that's meaningful. Companies like Chobani. Now all of the fruit that we find in their beautiful yogurt products and smoothies is all sourced by Planet Harvest from small and medium farmers. That would've been 100% waste.”
David Senra102,316 Aufrufe • vor 1 Tag
.Eric Jorgenson 📚 ☀️ on why Elon calls engineering magic: "He's been thinking about these problems since he was in college. As a kid, he was very influenced by sci-fi and thinking about things that are possible. He talks about engineering as magic. 'If you build something that couldn't previously exist, that's like being a magician and who wouldn't want to be a magician?'"
David Senra792,631 Aufrufe • vor 12 Tagen
Ivanka (Ivanka Trump) on escaping competition through authenticity: "Naval always says escape competition through authenticity. If you're competing it's because you're copying. Build something that fully comes from you and that will feel most right. It’s also the thing that's least replicable. I love the idea of just escaping competition through authenticity but you have to do the hard work of knowing who you are."
David Senra128,296 Aufrufe • vor 2 Tagen
.tobi lutke says the photo of SpaceX’s Raptor evolution is the “most inspiring picture that exists.” “That's today’s Picasso.” “Very few teams can move forward by subtraction.” “The world belongs to the fast. The people who iterate. The people who adjust. The people who understand what’s costly, what’s unnecessary, and prune away the rest.”
David Senra1,924,253 Aufrufe • vor 28 Tagen
When Shopify stock dropped 80% from all-time highs some employees were left with stock options that were essentially worthless. So tobi lutke completely rebuilt Shopify’s compensation structure in a way no other company does: letting employees choose how much they want to be paid in stock, RSUs, cash, and even Shop Cash. “ You can change it every quarter. You decide how much money you want.” “ You can even use a tool to lock in the value of the stock you receive for three years.” “ You have full agency and you make this choice.” “ It's very popular.”
David Senra446,971 Aufrufe • vor 8 Tagen
Rick Rubin on why a lot of successful people sabotage themselves: “Success is a funny thing. You think that's the thing that you want, but when you get it it's not like what you think it is.” “All these pressures that come with it no one's ready for.” The 4 most common ways successful people implode: drugs, alcohol, women, and megalomania. “Genius level talents have completely imploded and destroyed their lives.” “It's a brave face. They might not know this. They rarely know it. It's different sides of the same imbalance.”
David Senra247,284 Aufrufe • vor 6 Tagen
Dana White on why he doesn’t believe in introspection: “If you just sit around and talk about your fucking problems all the time it actually makes it worse. I never take in any negativity. I literally block it out. I block all the noise out. Like these guys who report on what we're doing that have no clue on what we're doing? Why would I want to hear anything they have to say? They're zeroes. They've literally never done anything in their life, especially in this business. Why would I listen to anything that they have to say?” CC Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸
David Senra1,066,350 Aufrufe • vor 24 Tagen
![How Elon Musk fixed Starlink: “Starlink was a mess. It was 10X too expensive and they were building 1/10 of how many they needed. Elon’s like I've had it. This is now the bottleneck. I'm fixing this. He grabs a team of engineers that he trusts and they fly up to Seattle. They fire the entire Starlink leadership team. They sit down in a war room and they start running the algorithm. •What is the first principles of satellite design? •How simple can we make this thing? •Why does this exist? •Why are these two things so far apart? •Why do we need this much energy? •Why do we need this manufacturing process? And over the course of a few months they make a two order of magnitude leap. These people had never encountered this design before, but just by applying the algorithm and working with maniacal urgency towards this extremely high design bar, they created this product that's now —if it was a standalone business —would be worth tens of billions of dollars [or more].”](https://image.24vids.com/tw-2046729718993768659/amplify_video_thumb/2046729543147499520/img/zZ-UJk4sbFg60FQi.jpg)
How Elon Musk fixed Starlink: “Starlink was a mess. It was 10X too expensive and they were building 1/10 of how many they needed. Elon’s like I've had it. This is now the bottleneck. I'm fixing this. He grabs a team of engineers that he trusts and they fly up to Seattle. They fire the entire Starlink leadership team. They sit down in a war room and they start running the algorithm. •What is the first principles of satellite design? •How simple can we make this thing? •Why does this exist? •Why are these two things so far apart? •Why do we need this much energy? •Why do we need this manufacturing process? And over the course of a few months they make a two order of magnitude leap. These people had never encountered this design before, but just by applying the algorithm and working with maniacal urgency towards this extremely high design bar, they created this product that's now —if it was a standalone business —would be worth tens of billions of dollars [or more].”
David Senra1,581,222 Aufrufe • vor 1 Monat
![Great men of history had little to no introspection. The personality that builds empires is not the same personality that sits around quietly questioning itself. Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 and I discuss what we both noticed but no one talks about: David: You don't have any levels of introspection? Marc: Yes, zero. As little as possible. David: Why? Marc: Move forward. Go! I found people who dwell in the past get stuck in the past. It's a real problem and it's a problem at work and it's a problem at home. David: So I've read 400 biographies of history’s greatest entrepreneurs and someone asked me what the most surprising thing I’ve learned from this was [and I answered] they have little or zero introspection. Sam Walton didn't wake up thinking about his internal self. He just woke up and was like: I like building Walmart. I'm going to keep building Walmart. I'm going to make more Walmarts. And he just kept doing it over and over again. Marc: If you go back 400 years ago it never would've occurred to anybody to be introspective. All of the modern conceptions around introspection and therapy, and all the things that kind of result from that are, a kind of a manufacture of the 1910s, 1920s. Great men of history didn't sit around doing this stuff. The individual runs and does all these things and builds things and builds empires and builds companies and builds technology. And then this kind of this kind of guilt based whammy kind of showed up from Europe. A lot of it from Vienna in 1910, 1920s, Freud and all that entire movement. And kind of turned all that inward and basically said, okay, now we need to basically second guess the individual. We need to criticize the individual. The individual needs to self criticize. The individual needs to feel guilt, needs to look backwards, needs to dwell in the past. It never resonated with me.](https://image.24vids.com/tw-2033297822691516853/amplify_video_thumb/2033297659830861824/img/MUiYYoNHXGEBqCuY.jpg)
Great men of history had little to no introspection. The personality that builds empires is not the same personality that sits around quietly questioning itself. Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 and I discuss what we both noticed but no one talks about: David: You don't have any levels of introspection? Marc: Yes, zero. As little as possible. David: Why? Marc: Move forward. Go! I found people who dwell in the past get stuck in the past. It's a real problem and it's a problem at work and it's a problem at home. David: So I've read 400 biographies of history’s greatest entrepreneurs and someone asked me what the most surprising thing I’ve learned from this was [and I answered] they have little or zero introspection. Sam Walton didn't wake up thinking about his internal self. He just woke up and was like: I like building Walmart. I'm going to keep building Walmart. I'm going to make more Walmarts. And he just kept doing it over and over again. Marc: If you go back 400 years ago it never would've occurred to anybody to be introspective. All of the modern conceptions around introspection and therapy, and all the things that kind of result from that are, a kind of a manufacture of the 1910s, 1920s. Great men of history didn't sit around doing this stuff. The individual runs and does all these things and builds things and builds empires and builds companies and builds technology. And then this kind of this kind of guilt based whammy kind of showed up from Europe. A lot of it from Vienna in 1910, 1920s, Freud and all that entire movement. And kind of turned all that inward and basically said, okay, now we need to basically second guess the individual. We need to criticize the individual. The individual needs to self criticize. The individual needs to feel guilt, needs to look backwards, needs to dwell in the past. It never resonated with me.
David Senra2,794,623 Aufrufe • vor 2 Monaten
![Rick Rubin is a lazy workaholic. He explains what that means: “I'm a lazy workaholic. I have to force myself to do it. My demeanor would be to do nothing. I love the beautiful thing and it takes a lot of work to get to the beautiful thing. I like to get to the point where it's like okay press the send button and share it with the world. That's a great feeling. But all of the work up until then it's like "Oh my God I have to go to the studio today” It's such a beautiful day. Wouldn't it be nice to just go out and have lunch with friends? The first 25 years [of my career] were spent in a dark room for 16 hours a day, seven days a week in New York City working on music.”](https://image.24vids.com/tw-2058674457003356362/amplify_video_thumb/2058674318813614080/img/6mX3slb5z8etSnwd.jpg)
Rick Rubin is a lazy workaholic. He explains what that means: “I'm a lazy workaholic. I have to force myself to do it. My demeanor would be to do nothing. I love the beautiful thing and it takes a lot of work to get to the beautiful thing. I like to get to the point where it's like okay press the send button and share it with the world. That's a great feeling. But all of the work up until then it's like "Oh my God I have to go to the studio today” It's such a beautiful day. Wouldn't it be nice to just go out and have lunch with friends? The first 25 years [of my career] were spent in a dark room for 16 hours a day, seven days a week in New York City working on music.”
David Senra264,008 Aufrufe • vor 10 Tagen