Explore every episode of the podcast Founders

What I learned from reading Ari Emanuel's incredible autobiography Roll The Calls. Made possible by: Ramp: ⁠https://ramp.com⁠ Applovin: ⁠https://applovin.com⁠ Vanta: h⁠ttps://vanta.com/founders

What I learned from reading Mark: A journey to the heart of history's largest nonterritorial empire by Jeremy Stern. Made possible by: Ramp: ⁠https://ramp.com⁠ Applovin: ⁠https://applovin.com⁠ Vanta: ⁠https://vanta.com/founders⁠ 0:00 — "For these, I set no bounds in space or time. I have given empire without end." — Latin verse from the Aeneid, recalled by Mark Zuckerberg 2:55 — "Carthage must be destroyed." — Mark Zuckerberg on Google 2:59 — Sean Parker observed "this kind of imperial tendency" in Mark. 3:35 — "Either a Caesar or nothing." (Zuckerberg's shirt) 4:25 — "What is it like to be one of the most powerful men in human history, who, by age 42 has secured a place in the books that'll be written about his era for centuries after his death?" 4:55 — "People call him arrogant. He's not. But time after time, his arrogance just turns into truth." 7:25 — "One day they will be out of office and eventually dead, while Zuckerberg, whose majority control of Meta's voting power makes his removal effectively impossible, could in fifty years still be ruler of his empire." 8:05 — "The more power a man acquires, the more his empire expands, the more he depends on other people for information about everything from his own court to the furthest reaches of the empire." (The Dictator's Dilemma) 14:15 — "I think we all have a void in our lives, and the lucky ones find something that fills that space to make us more optimal, to make us a better human being. Mark filled the void with fighting." — Zuckerberg's MMA coach 16:40 — "There have been too many things that I've tried to build and then have been told, 'Nah, you can't really build that,' by the platform provider. At some level, I'm just like, 'Nah, fuck that.'" — Mark Zuckerberg 18:05 — "Meta's capital expenditure this year will exceed the military budget of every country on Earth except the United States, China, and Russia." 18:15 — "This is how it is for him; there is no stopping. He is not like the others of his vintage, who all at some point abdicate, or sell, or are overthrown." 20:15 — "I'm never going to stop." — Mark Zuckerberg 31:15 — "Mark is the fucking Terminator. He's actually not an asshole. He's not a miserable fuck. His source of advantage is he's never happy. He just doesn't fucking stop." — A researcher at a competing AI lab, who formerly worked at Meta 39:55 — "This is who I am. I love this. I didn't set out to build a company. I just love building things." — Mark Zuckerberg 40:35 — "You can't take this away from him. He wouldn't be him if he stopped."

What I learned from reading Sam Walton: The Inside Story of America's Richest Man by Vance Trimble. Made possible by: Ramp: https://ramp.com Applovin: https://applovin.com Vanta: https://vanta.com/founders 0:00 — "To him, making money was only a game, a test of his imagination and expertise to see how far he could drive a business concept." 1:35 — "Sam's idea was absurdly simple: buy cheap, sell low, every day, and while doing it with a smile." 2:15 — "If he adopts a business course that doesn't work out, he's neither too vain nor too blind to see his mistake, to say so, and to change his heading one hundred and eighty degrees." 3:34 — "The secret is work, work, work. I taught the boys how to do it." — Sam's father 4:34 — "Sam Walton plunged into this new world of merchandising with the keen and furious dedication of a quarterback who was one touchdown behind with two minutes to go." 5:55 — "Boys, you know we don't make a dime out of the merchandise we sell. We only make our profit out of the paper and string that we save." — J.C. Penney 11:10 — "No, I'm not whipped. I found Newport, and I found the store. I can find another good town and another Ben Franklin. Just wait and see." — Sam Walton, after losing his first store 11:35 — "I insist on buying the building that the store is in. I need control over my own destiny." — Sam Walton, arriving in Bentonville 11:45 — "My store will be number one. It's important for me to be the best. Not one of the best. I must be the best. I want to be the leader in the category I compete in." — Sam Walton 13:05 — "Sometimes hardship can enlighten and inspire." 13:15 — "That same boredom and frustration triggered ideas that eventually bought him billions of dollars." 18:55 — "Many of our best opportunities were created out of necessity, the things that we were forced to learn and do because we started out under financed and under capitalized." — Sam Walton 19:30 — "If they had something good, we copied it." — Sam Walton 24:35 — "This is just part of the education process. I'm still learning." — Sam Walton, on his hands and knees examining a competitor's display 25:00 — "You can make a lot of different mistakes and still recover if you run an efficient operation, or you can be brilliant and still go out of business if you're too inefficient." — Sam Walton 30:55 — "Remember Walmart's golden rule. Number one, the customer is always right. Number two, if the customer isn't right, refer to rule number one." — Sam Walton 31:35 — "Move from Bentonville? That would be the last thing we'd do unless they run us out of here. The best thing we ever did was to hide back there in the hills and eventually build a company that makes folks want to find us." — Sam Walton 32:05 — "I had no vision of the scope of what I would start, but I always had confidence that as long as we did our work well and were good to our customers, there would be no limit to us." — Sam Walton 32:55 — "He also had a very interesting competitive strategy in the early days. He was like a prizefighter who wanted a great record so he could be in the finals. So what did he do? He went out and fought 42 palookas. And the result was knockout, knockout, knockout—42 times. Walton, being as shrewd as he was, basically broke other small-town merchants in the early days. With his more efficient system, he might not have been able to tackle some titan head-on at the time. But with his better system, he could sure as hell destroy those small-town merchants. And he went around doing it time after time after time. Then, as he got bigger, he started destroying the big boys. Well, that was a very, very shrewd strategy. It’s an interesting model of how the scale of things and fanaticism combine to be very powerful." — Charlie Munger on Sam Walton's strategy 37:30 — "We have a low resistance to change. We call it our RC factor." — Sam Walton 39:45 — "Control your expenses better than your competition. This is where you can always find your competitive advantage. We rank number one in our industry for the lowest ratio of expenses to sales." — Sam Walton 48:20 — The day the market dropped 500 points and knocked a billion dollars off the value of his stock holdings in Walmart, reporters asked Sam what his reaction to the disaster on Wall Street was. He hadn't heard about it.

What I learned from reading Bloomberg by Michael Bloomberg. Made possible by: Ramp: ⁠⁠⁠https://ramp.com⁠⁠⁠ AppLovin: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.applovin.com⁠ Vanta: ⁠⁠⁠https://vanta.com/founders⁠ Sage: ⁠https://founderspodcast.com/sage

What I learned from reading The Mind of Napoleon by Napoleon. Made possible by: Ramp: ⁠⁠https://ramp.com⁠⁠ AppLovin: ⁠⁠https://www.applovin.com Vanta: ⁠⁠https://vanta.com/founders Sage: https://founderspodcast.com/sage Some of my favorite quotes: 0:00 — " The book gives you insight into the mind of a man who combined energy of thought and energy of action to an exceptional degree." 0:30 — "Work is my element. I am born and built for work. I have known the limitations of my legs, I have known the limitations of my eyes; I have never been able to know the limitations of my working capacity." 0:52 — "He knows that men have always been the same, that nothing can change their nature. It is from the past that he will draw his lessons in order to shape the present." 1:33 — "All my life I have sacrificed everything: comfort, self-interest, happiness, to my destiny. Destiny must be fulfilled that is my chief doctrine." 2:33 — "A consecutive series of great actions never is the result of chance and luck; it always is a product of planning and genius. Is it because they are lucky that [great men] become great? No, but being great, they have been able to master luck. What is luck? The ability to exploit accidents: The vulgar would call this luck, but in fact it is the characteristic of genius." 3:30 — "Hesitation is fatal; once an action is begun, it must be followed through with the utmost exertion of the will." 3:44 — "If I have any ambition, it is so natural to me, so innate, so intimately linked with my existence, that it is like the blood that circulates in my veins, like the air that I breathe." 4:14 — "To have lived without glory, without leaving a trace of one's existence, is to have not lived at all." 6:25 — "Without great men, we have only mediocre men, and if there had never been anything but mediocre men, we would still be half apes." 7:20 — "The great majority of men attend to what is necessary only when they feel a need for it-the precise time when it is too late." 7:30 — "True character always pierces through in moments of crisis. There are sleepers whose awakening is terrifying." 9:11 — "Be successful! I judge men only by the results of their actions." 11:15 — "The truth is that everything around us is miracle." 15:18 — "Men of genius are meteors destined to be consumed in lighting up their century." 16:13 —  "A man must know himself. Until then, all endeavors are in vain and all schemes collapse." 17:53 — "All great events hang by a single thread. The clever man takes advantage of everything, neglects nothing that may give him some added opportunity; the less clever man, by neglecting one thing, sometimes misses everything." 18:12 —  "What I am, I owe to strength of will, character, application, and daring." 19:27 — "Imagination rules the world." 20:58 — " History I conquered rather than studied. That is to say, I wanted from it, and retained of it, only what could add to my ideas. I spurned what was of no use, and I seized upon certain conclusions that pleased me." 26:01 — " It is better to eat than be eaten." 26:08 — "Appetite comes with eating."  27:43 — "It may be possible to arrest the surge of progress or to throttle it, but not to destroy it." 29:01 — " I have read your letter. It is utterly worthless. There are too many words and not enough ideas." 31:08 —  "Without talent, without knowledge, there is no equality but the equality of misery and servitude." 33:46 — Napoleon to someone who hasn't studied history: " Speak as little as possible. Your knowledge is too limited, and your education has been too neglected for you to engage freely in discussions." 36:08 — "The corpse of an enemy always smells sweet.” 36:44 — "If you wage war, do it energetically and with severity. This is the only way to make it shorter and consequently less inhuman." 39:30 — ""In war, men are nothing. One man is everything." 40:20 — "Death is nothing, but to live defeated and without glory is to die every day." 46:23 — "Conquest made me what I am. Conquest alone can keep me there." 46:34 — "Power is my mistress. I have worked too hard at her conquest to allow anyone to take her away from me." 47:13 — "My soul is made of marble. Lightning has found no grip on it and had to slide off of it. I have no fear of becoming their victim. They will be biting into granite."

What I learned from reading Distant Force: A Memoir of the Teledyne Corporation and The Man Who Created It by George Roberts and The Outsiders by William Thorndike. Made possible by: Ramp: ⁠⁠https://ramp.com⁠⁠ Applovin: ⁠⁠https://www.applovin.com Vanta: ⁠⁠https://vanta.com/founders Some of my favorite quotes: 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, that 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)

Claude Hopkins was the greatest copywriter of all time. His ideas were so valuable that when he wrote them down in a book the founder of his advertising firm locked the manuscript in a safe for 20 years. When the book was finally published it sold over 8 million copies. David Ogilvy said that nobody should work in advertising until they had read the book seven times. This episode is what I learned by reading Claude Hopkins' autobiography My Life In Advertising and his legendary book Scientific Advertising. Made possible by: Ramp: ⁠⁠https://ramp.com⁠⁠ Applovin: ⁠⁠https://www.applovin.com Vanta: ⁠⁠https://vanta.com/founders Some of my favorite quotes: 0:00 — "Any man who by a lifetime of excessive application learns more about anything than others owes a statement to his successors." 5:12 — "The man who works twice as long as his fellows is bound to go twice as far, especially in advertising." 5:30 — "If I have gone higher than others in advertising or done more, the fact is not due to exceptional ability but to exceptional hours." 6:48 — "To poverty I owe the fact that I never went to college. I spent those four years in the school of experience instead of the school of theory." 9:08 — "Which is work and which is play? If a thing is useful, they call it work. If it's useless, they call it play. But one is hard as the other. All the difference I see lies in the attitude of the mind." 9:32 — "I came to love work as other men love golf. I love it still. The love of work can be cultivated just like the love of play." 9:58 — "We do best what we like best." 13:05 — "A good product is its own best salesman. It is uphill work to sell goods without samples." 15:00 — "We must never judge humanity by ourselves. The things we want, the things we like may appeal to a small minority." 15:23 — "We must submit all things in advertising to the court of public opinion." 17:48 — "Some of the greatest successes I have ever known in advertising were ignorant men. One wrote copy which would induce a farmer to mortgage his barn to respond, but every sentence had to be edited for grammar." 20:23 — "John Powers created a new concept of advertising. He told the truth, but told it in a rugged and fascinating way." 25:47 — "Study salesmen, canvassers, and fakers if you want to know how to sell goods. No argument in the world can ever compare with one dramatic demonstration." 26:35 — "The average salesman seeks favors. He seeks profit for himself. His plea is, 'Buy my goods.' He makes a selfish appeal to selfish people, and of course, he meets resistance. I was selling service." 28:45 — "We must treat people in advertising as we treat them in person." 31:23 — "Others have never told this story. It will startle everyone in print. I gave purity a meaning." (On Schlitz Beer jumping from 5th to 1st.) 32:03 — "Tell the pains that you take to excel. The maker is too close to his product. He sees in his methods only the ordinary." 34:08 — "The greatest two faults in advertising lie in boasts and in selfishness. People will listen if you talk service to them. They will turn their backs when you seek to impress an advantage for yourself." 41:23 — "People will do anything to cure a trouble, but little to prevent it. Prevention offers slight appeal to humanity in general. They want to be told of rewards." 1:01:30 — "Genius is the art of taking pains. The advertising man who spares the midnight oil will never get very far. This is no lazy man's field."

What I learned from rereading Bob Dylan's autobiography. Made possible by: Ramp: ⁠⁠https://ramp.com⁠⁠ Applovin: ⁠⁠https://www.applovin.com Vanta: ⁠⁠https://vanta.com/founders

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. 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. 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. Made possible by: Ramp: ⁠⁠https://ramp.com⁠⁠ AppLovin: ⁠⁠https://www.applovin.com Vanta: ⁠⁠https://vanta.com/founders 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." 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

Raymond Plank founded Apache Corporation with just $250,000 in 1954. 50 years later his company was worth $50 billion. This episode examines the life and entrepreneurial philosophy of Raymond Plank through his memoir A Small Difference Rather than presenting a conventional history of Apache, this episode focuses on the lessons, maxims, and beliefs Plank accumulated over seven decades in business. Written when he was nearly 90, the memoir reads like a lifelong diary of how to think about opportunity, courage, cost control, resourcefulness, and adaptation. Lots of wild stories in this one. Made possible by: Ramp: ⁠⁠⁠https://ramp.com⁠⁠⁠ Applovin: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.applovin.com⁠ Vanta: ⁠⁠⁠https://vanta.com/founders⁠ ⁠Add your email here⁠ and I will send you my top 10 quotes from every episode: https://davidsenra.substack.com

Obsession is the engine of Nolan’s career. This episode examines Christopher Nolan’s life, working methods, and philosophy through The Nolan Variations by Tom Shone. Made possible by: Ramp: ⁠⁠⁠https://ramp.com⁠⁠⁠ Applovin: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.applovin.com⁠ Vanta: ⁠⁠⁠https://vanta.com/founders⁠ ⁠Add your email here⁠ and I will send you my top 10 quotes from every episode: https://davidsenra.substack.com

This episode discusses Joseph Wechsberg’s 1966 book, The Merchant Bankers. Rather than recounting the histories of families like the Rothschilds, Barings, Hambros, Warburgs, and Lehman Brothers, I wanted to extract the principles they shared. Merchant banking is fascinating. It's a very distinctive form of entrepreneurship. There is an old-school way of doing business that appeals to me. The merchant bankers’ profiled in this book have a combination of: personal honor speed of action clear thinking independent judgment seamless webs of deserved trust discretion and willingness to make unconventional decisions. The founder of every merchant banking dynasty was a merchant before he was merchant banker. Once they discovered financing transactions was more profitable than physically trading goods, their real products became credit, judgment, information, advice, access, and—above all—trust. Their greatest asset was not money. Their greatest asset was their reputation. Made possible by: Ramp: ⁠⁠https://ramp.com⁠⁠  Applovin: ⁠⁠https://www.applovin.com Vanta: ⁠⁠https://vanta.com/founders Add your email here and I will send you my top 10 quotes from every episode.

What I learned from reading Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel and Blake Masters (for the 3rd or 4th time) Made possible by:  Ramp: ⁠https://ramp.com⁠  Applovin: ⁠https://www.applovin.com/⁠  Vanta: ⁠https://vanta.com/founders

What I learned from reading Honda: The Man and His Machines by Sol Sanders. Made possible by: Ramp: ⁠https://ramp.com⁠  Applovin: ⁠https://www.applovin.com/⁠  Vanta: ⁠https://vanta.com/founders

What I learned from reading Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print, and Power by James McGrath Morris. Made possible by: Ramp: ⁠https://ramp.com⁠ Applovin: ⁠https://www.applovin.com/⁠ Vanta: ⁠https://vanta.com/founders

What I learned from reading Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple's Greatest Products by  Leander Kahney. Made possible by: Ramp: https://ramp.com Axon by Applovin: https://axon.ai/founders Vanta: https://vanta.com/founders

What I learned from reading Steve Jobs in Exile: The Untold Story of NeXT and the Remaking of an American Visionary by Geoffrey Cain. Made possible by: Ramp: https://ramp.com Axon by Applovin: https://axon.ai/founders Vanta: https://vanta.com/founders

Kelly Johnson’s “14 Points” read like a SpaceX operations manual — 60 years before SpaceX was founded. Kelly Johnson created Skunk Works, which he defined as: “A concentration of a few good people solving problems far in advance—and at a fraction of the cost—of other groups by applying the simplest, most straightforward methods possible to develop and produce new projects. All it is really is the application of common sense to some pretty tough problems.” Kelly Johnson was a great engineer and system builder with genius for organizational design. His autobiography which he wrote when he was 75 years old is full of hard-earned wisdom from his 44 year career. This episode is what I learned from reading Kelly: More Than My Share of it All by Kelly Johnson. Made possible by: Ramp: https://ramp.com Axon by Applovin: https://axon.ai/founders Vanta: ⁠https://vanta.com/founders⁠

What I learned from rereading Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike for the 3rd or 4th time. Made possible by: Ramp:⁠ https://ramp.com⁠ Axon by Applovin: ⁠https://axon.ai/founders⁠ Vanta: ⁠https://vanta.com/founders

What I learned from reading Arnold: The Education of a Bodybuilder by Arnold Schwarzenegger. Made possible by: Ramp: https://ramp.com Axon by Applovin: https://axon.ai/founders Vanta: https://vanta.com/founders

This episode is about a once-in-a-generation mind working on what may be the most important problem in history. Based on the new book The Infinity Machine: Demis Hassabis, DeepMind, and the Quest for Superintelligence by Sebastian Mallaby. Made possible by: Ramp: https://ramp.com Axon by AppLovin: https://axon.ai/founders Vanta: https://vanta.com/founders

My friend Eric Jorgenson spent years—and thousands of hours—studying Elon Musk. Eric read everything Elon has written, read everything written about Elon, and watched every interview Elon's given. He distilled all of Elon's insights into his new book. This episode is all about How Elon Thinks based on The Book of Elon: Elon Musk's Most Useful Ideas in His Own Words. Episode sponsors: Ramp⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud ⁠⁠⁠by going to Ramp.com to learn how they can help your business save time, save money⁠⁠, and grow revenue.⁠ Automate compliance, security, and trust with Vanta.⁠ ⁠⁠⁠Vanta helps you win trust, close deals, and stay secure—faster and with less effort⁠⁠⁠⁠. ⁠⁠⁠Find out how increased security leads to more customers by going to Vanta⁠⁠⁠. Tell them David from Founders sent you and you'll get $1000 off.

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. Read the full essay here. Make sure you add your email so you are notified when the book —SpaceX Foundation— is released. Episode sponsors: Ramp⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud ⁠⁠⁠by going to Ramp.com to learn how they can help your business save time and money.⁠⁠⁠ Automate compliance, security, and trust with Vanta.⁠ ⁠⁠⁠Vanta helps you win trust, close deals, and stay secure—faster and with less effort⁠⁠⁠⁠. ⁠⁠⁠Find out how increased security leads to more customers by going to Vanta⁠⁠⁠. Tell them David from Founders sent you and you'll get $1000 off.

Running Down A Dream: How to Succeed and Thrive in a Career You Love by Bill Gurley has been one of the most valuable talks I've heard. For years I have been using ideas from that talk to build this podcast. Bill has written a new book based on that talk: Runnin' Down a Dream: How to Thrive in a Career You Actually Love. This episode explores the most valuable ideas from the book and talk. Episode sponsors: Ramp⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud ⁠⁠⁠by going to Ramp.com to learn how they can help your business save time and money.⁠⁠⁠ https://ramp.com Automate compliance, security, and trust with Vanta.⁠ ⁠⁠⁠Vanta helps you win trust, close deals, and stay secure—faster and with less effort⁠⁠⁠⁠. ⁠⁠⁠Find out how increased security leads to more customers by going to Vanta⁠⁠⁠. Tell them David from Founders sent you and you'll get $1000 off. https://vanta.com/founders

What I learned from reading The Master: The Long Run and Beautiful Game of Roger Federer by Chris Clarey. Episode sponsors: Ramp⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud ⁠⁠⁠by going to Ramp.com to learn how they can help your business save time and money.⁠⁠⁠ Automate compliance, security, and trust with Vanta.⁠ ⁠⁠⁠Vanta helps you win trust, close deals, and stay secure—faster and with less effort⁠⁠⁠⁠. ⁠⁠⁠Find out how increased security leads to more customers by going to Vanta⁠⁠⁠. Tell them David from Founders sent you and you'll get $1000 off.

Andre Agassi's autobiography is a brutally honest story about a tennis legend who hated the game that made him famous. Agassi traces his journey from a harsh, obsessive childhood training regimen to superstardom, burnout, rebellion, and eventual redemption—revealing the psychological cost of greatness, the search for identity beyond winning, and how he ultimately found purpose on his own terms. This book was as good as everyone says it is. You should read it. Episode sponsors: ⁠ Ramp⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud ⁠⁠⁠by going to Ramp and learning how they can help your business save time and money.⁠⁠⁠ Automate compliance, security, and trust with Vanta.⁠ ⁠⁠⁠Vanta helps you win trust, close deals, and stay secure—faster and with less effort⁠⁠⁠⁠. ⁠⁠⁠ Make sure you go to VANTA.COM/FOUNDERS and you'll get $1000 off. Collateral⁠⁠ transforms your complex ideas into compelling narratives. Collateral crafts institutional grade marketing collateral for private equity, private credit, real estate, venture capital, family offices, hedge funds, oil & gas companies, and all kinds of corporations. Storytelling is one of the highest forms of leverage and you should invest heavily in it.

On his 68th birthday, Kevin Kelly began to write down for his young adult children some things he had learned about life that he wished he had known earlier. Kelly’s timeless advice covers an astonishing range, from right living to setting ambitious goals, optimizing generosity, and cultivating compassion. Excellent Advice for Living is the ideal companion for anyone seeking to navigate life with grace and creativity: Episode sponsors: Ramp gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud ⁠⁠⁠by going to Ramp and learning how they can help your business control your costs and save time and money.⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://ramp.com Automate compliance, security, and trust with Vanta.⁠ ⁠⁠⁠Vanta helps you win trust, close deals, and stay secure—faster and with less effort⁠⁠⁠⁠. ⁠⁠⁠Find out how increased security leads to more customers by going to Vanta⁠⁠⁠. Tell them David from Founders sent you and you'll get $1000 off. Collateral⁠⁠ transforms your complex ideas into compelling narratives. Collateral crafts institutional grade marketing collateral for private equity, private credit, real estate, venture capital, family offices, hedge funds, oil & gas companies, and all kinds of corporations. Storytelling is one of the highest forms of leverage and you should invest heavily in it. You can do that by going to ⁠⁠https://collateral.com Some of my favorite quotes from the episode: 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 are 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. You choose to be lucky by believing that any setbacks are just temporary. 22. The best way to advise people is to find out what they really want to do and then advise them to do it. 23. It is certain that 99% of the stuff you are anxious about won't happen. 24. What is important is not what happened to you but what you did about what happened to you. 25. Your golden ticket is being able to see things from other people's point of view. 26. Pay attention to who you are around when you feel best. Be with them more often. 27. To get your message across follow this formula: simplify, simplify, simplify, then exaggerate. 28. You will thrive more when you promote what you love rather than bash what you hate. 29. To be interesting just tell your own story with uncommon honesty. 30. When you truly think for yourself your conclusions will not be predictable. 31. Don’t measure your life with someone else’s ruler. 32. For maximum results focus on your biggest opportunities, not your biggest problems. 33. Pay attention to what you pay attention to.

There's no one like Rick Rubin. He's a legendary music producer known for his minimalist approach and relentless pursuit of greatness. This episode is what I learned from reading ⁠Rick Rubin: In The Studio⁠ by Jake Brown. Episode sponsors: ⁠ Ramp⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud ⁠⁠⁠by going to Ramp and learning how they can help your business control your costs and save time and money.⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠ Go to Ramp.com to learn how they can help your business save time and money. Automate compliance, security, and trust with Vanta.⁠ ⁠⁠⁠Vanta helps you win trust, close deals, and stay secure—faster and with less effort⁠⁠⁠⁠. ⁠⁠⁠Find out how increased security leads to more customers by going to Vanta⁠⁠⁠. Tell Vanta David from Founders sent you and you'll get $1000 off. Collateral⁠⁠ transforms your complex ideas into compelling narratives. Collateral crafts institutional grade marketing collateral for private equity, private credit, real estate, venture capital, family offices, hedge funds, oil & gas companies, and all kinds of corporations. Storytelling is one of the highest forms of leverage and you should invest heavily in it. You can do that by going to ⁠⁠Collateral.com Some of my favorite quotes from the episode: Less is more but you have to do more to get less. Designing a product is keeping 5,000 things in your brain and fitting them all together in new and different ways. (Steve Jobs) Rubin's most valuable quality is his own confidence. If we're going to do this, let's aim for greatness. You have to believe what you're doing is the most important thing in the world. Everybody engaged in complicated work needs colleagues. Just the discipline of having to put your thoughts in order with somebody else is a very useful thing. (Charlie Munger) The key to it is doing what you believe in, as opposed to what you think is going to work. There were never any plans to make anything happen. I just did what I liked and believed in it, and luckily it all worked out. These things that we don't understand and cannot explain happen regularly. The amateur mind possesses a valuable lack of knowledge about rules when matched with passion and gumption gravity ceases to exist and new things take flight.  To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. (Cicero) I believe in you so much, I'm going to make you believe in you. I try to make records that have a timeless quality.

"I set out to write a book about what to do to make a great work of art. Instead, it revealed itself to be a book on how to be.” —Rick Rubin. This episode is what I learned from reading The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin. Episode sponsors: ⁠ Ramp⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud ⁠⁠⁠by going to Ramp.com and learn how they can help your business control your costs and save time and money.⁠⁠⁠ Automate compliance, security, and trust with Vanta.⁠ ⁠⁠⁠Vanta helps you win trust, close deals, and stay secure—faster and with less effort⁠⁠⁠⁠. ⁠⁠⁠Find out how increased security leads to more customers by going to Vanta⁠⁠⁠. Tell them David from Founders sent you and you'll get $1000 off. https://www.vanta.com/founders Collateral⁠⁠ transforms your complex ideas into compelling narratives. Collateral crafts institutional grade marketing collateral. Storytelling is one of the highest forms of leverage and you should invest heavily in it. You can do that by going to ⁠⁠https://collateral.com Some of my favorite quotes: (00:00) Just one habit, at the top of any field, can be enough to give an edge over the competition. (1:00) It must have been frustrating for these elite athletes, who wanted to get on the court and show what they could do, to arrive at practice for the first time with this legendary coach only to hear him say, Today we will learn to tie our shoes. The point Wooden was making was that creating effective habits, down to the smallest detail, is what makes the difference between winning and losing games. Each habit might seem small, but added together, they have an exponential effect on performance. Just one habit, at the top of any field, can be enough to give an edge over the competition. (8:41) 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. 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. (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. Often, 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.

In 2024 Brad Jacobs wrote the book How to Make a Few Billion Dollars. In the book Brad explains how he built 8 separate billion dollar companies and other lessons from his 40+ year career as an elite entrepreneur. In the two years since Brad has made a few MORE billion dollars and so the sequel to his first book is: How to Make a Few MORE Billion Dollars. In this episode I share some of Brad's ideas on raising tons of money (Brad has raised over $50 billion), mastering his integration playbook, ideas for organizational integration, org chart design, and how Brad keeps his mind centered and in a positive place to handle the inevitable ups and downs of building great companies. Episode sponsors: ⁠ Ramp⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud ⁠⁠⁠by going to Ramp and learning how they can help your business control your costs and save time and money.⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://ramp.com Automate compliance, security, and trust with Vanta.⁠ ⁠⁠⁠Vanta helps you win trust, close deals, and stay secure—faster and with less effort⁠⁠⁠⁠. ⁠⁠⁠Find out how increased security leads to more customers by going to Vanta⁠⁠⁠. Tell them David from Founders sent you and you'll get $1000 off. https://vanta.com/founders⁠⁠⁠ Collateral⁠⁠ transforms your complex ideas into compelling narratives. Collateral crafts institutional grade marketing collateral for private equity, private credit, real estate, venture capital, family offices, hedge funds, oil & gas companies, and all kinds of corporations. Storytelling is one of the highest forms of leverage and you should invest heavily in it. You can do that by going to ⁠⁠https://collateral.com

The Life of Jesus as told in the book Jesus: A Biography of a Believer by Paul Johnson. This episode was originally published on Christmas Eve 2023.

A viciously unhappy childhood causes Bruce Springsteen to retreat into work in an extreme way as he searches for success (and control). He channels his pain into focus and drive and gets everything he thought he wanted. He didn’t yet know he was lying to himself. He will find that out soon. He falls into a deep depression. One that almost leads to s*icide. With the help of his true friend Jon Landau he seeks professional help. This help helps immediately. The lie he was telling himself was that work was the most important thing in his life. What he really wanted, was what he was incapable of doing: forming a lasting and loving relationship with a woman. For that he realizes he can’t run. For that he realizes he has to stay. That thought terrifies him and is what caused him to seek help. He meets a truly singular woman and for the first time in his life he's able to have a healthy relationship with someone he loves. This realization comes almost 400 pages into Bruce’s incredible autobiography (one of the best I’ve ever read) and it is shocking. I originally thought I was making an episode about Bruce Springsteen’s extreme work ethic (one example: He wrote this book out by hand, multiple times, over 7 years. It’s almost 600 pages. He’s like this with everything btw.) But as I read, and reread this book over the last 6 months I realized that is not the most important part of the story. The work Bruce had to do to fix his mind is the heart and soul of the book. The work he did with Dr. Wayne Myers over 25 years is what allowed him to have a life. Not just a job. A life. As Bruce says after coming through the other side of this: “Work is work . . . but life . . . is life . . . and life trumps art . . . always.” This is a very unusual episode of Founders. I hope you enjoy it. If you want to skip to the part where he starts dealing with the struggles going on in his mind that starts 46 minutes in. Episode sponsors: ⁠ Ramp⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud ⁠⁠⁠by going to Ramp and learning how they can help your business control your costs and save time and money.⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://ramp.com⁠⁠⁠⁠ Automate compliance, security, and trust with Vanta.⁠ ⁠⁠⁠Vanta helps you win trust, close deals, and stay secure—faster and with less effort⁠⁠⁠⁠. ⁠⁠⁠Find out how increased security leads to more customers by going to Vanta⁠⁠⁠. Tell them David from Founders sent you and you'll get $1000 off. ⁠⁠⁠https://www.vanta.com/founders⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠ Collateral⁠⁠ transforms your complex ideas into compelling narratives. Collateral crafts institutional grade marketing collateral for private equity, private credit, real estate, venture capital, family offices, hedge funds, oil & gas companies, and all kinds of corporations. Storytelling is one of the highest forms of leverage and you should invest heavily in it. You can do that by going to ⁠⁠https://collateral.com

Christian von Koenigsegg is unapologetically in the pursuit of greatness. Koenigsegg builds some of the fastest and most expensive cars on Earth, has a cult-like following, and relentlessly seeks out challenges he can innovate on. After building his company for more than 30 years, his love and passion for his craft is still as strong as ever. This episode explores some of the most important ideas I found from studying his life and career. It's perfect for anyone that wants to live their dream. Episode sponsors: ⁠ Ramp⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud ⁠⁠⁠by going to Ramp and learning how they can help your business control your costs and save time and money.⁠⁠⁠ Automate compliance, security, and trust with Vanta.⁠ ⁠⁠⁠Vanta helps you win trust, close deals, and stay secure—faster and with less effort⁠⁠⁠⁠. ⁠⁠⁠Find out how increased security leads to more customers by going to Vanta⁠⁠⁠. Tell them David from Founders sent you and you'll get $1000 off. ⁠⁠⁠https://www.vanta.com/founders⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠ Collateral⁠⁠ transforms your complex ideas into compelling narratives. Collateral crafts institutional grade marketing collateral for private equity, private credit, real estate, venture capital, family offices, hedge funds, oil & gas companies, and all kinds of corporations. Storytelling is one of the highest forms of leverage and you should invest heavily in it. You can do that by going to ⁠⁠https://collateral.com Sources: Apex: The Story of the Hypercar Koenigsegg Documentary Ultimate Koenigsegg Factory Tour With Christian Von Koenigsegg BMW Podcast Episode 75 Chronicles of Koenigsegg: The World's Fastest Car Company How To Build A Koenigsegg - NEW Factory Tour How Koenigsegg Sets Hypercar World Records! | Beyond Victory #19 | Nico Rosberg Inside Sweden’s Innovation Factory Christian von Koenigsegg Talks About the Future and His Nerves Leading Up to the Speed Record Christian von Koenigsegg Interview: The Technical Power of Lateral Thinking Interview with Christian Von Koenigsegg Cars and Culture #25 - Koenigsegg Automotive AB CEO & Founder Christian von Koenigsegg Hypercar Boss Chat! Fixing Jaguar, Horsepower Wars & More Koenigsegg History

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. A few surprising things I learned from reading about Dietrich Mateschitz, 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 is worth $20 to $30 billion. 3. He still prioritized fitness deep into his 70s and liked driving fast, piloting his planes, and competing in off-road motorcycle races. 4. The company was started with just $500,000 from Mateschitz and $500,000 from his partner. Outside of a small loan from a local bank all other expansion was funded by profits. 5. The company reached profitability in its 3rd year and has been profitable every year since. (33 years and counting) 6. He took no dividends for the first 13 years and reinvested all profits into growth instead 7. He viewed Red Bull as a “marketing conglomerate” and tried to outsource everything else 8. He was intensely private. When an author tried to interview his elderly mother for an unauthorized biography. Mateschitz threatened to have his knee caps broken. He said it would only cost $500 to hire a Russian to do the job. 9. There are no biographies written in English about Mateschitz. 10. He believed a handshake agreement among gentlemen was sufficient and regularly did business with trusted partners with no written contract. 11. He bought a popular Austrian magazine just so he wouldn’t appear in it. 12. He was universally described by former employees as a gentleman, charismatic, and fiercely loyal. 13. 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." 14. 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.” 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. Episode sponsors: ⁠ Ramp⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud ⁠⁠⁠by going to Ramp and learning how they can help your business control your costs and save time and money.⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://ramp.com⁠⁠⁠⁠ Automate compliance, security, and trust with Vanta.⁠ ⁠⁠⁠Vanta helps you win trust, close deals, and stay secure—faster and with less effort⁠⁠⁠⁠. ⁠⁠⁠Find out how increased security leads to more customers by going to Vanta⁠⁠⁠. Tell them David from Founders sent you and you'll get $1000 off. ⁠⁠⁠https://www.vanta.com/founders⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠ Collateral⁠⁠ transforms your complex ideas into compelling narratives. Collateral crafts institutional grade marketing collateral for private equity, private credit, real estate, venture capital, family offices, hedge funds, oil & gas companies, and all kinds of corporations. Storytelling is one of the highest forms of leverage and you should invest heavily in it. You can do that by going to ⁠⁠https://collateral.com

This episode covers the insanely valuable company-building principles of John D. Rockefeller—and nothing else. I spent over 40 hours reading (and rereading) this obscure biography of Rockefeller that costs $1,000 I then spent several days editing down 25 pages of notes from the book. I deleted everything that was not How Rockefeller Works Episode sponsors: ⁠ Ramp⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud ⁠⁠⁠by going to Ramp and learning how they can help your business control your costs and save time and money.⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://ramp.com⁠⁠⁠⁠ Automate compliance, security, and trust with Vanta.⁠ ⁠⁠⁠Vanta helps you win trust, close deals, and stay secure—faster and with less effort⁠⁠⁠⁠. ⁠⁠⁠Find out how increased security leads to more customers by going to Vanta⁠⁠⁠. Tell them David from Founders sent you and you'll get $1000 off. ⁠⁠⁠https://www.vanta.com/founders⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠ Collateral⁠⁠ transforms your complex ideas into compelling narratives. Collateral crafts institutional grade marketing collateral for private equity, private credit, real estate, venture capital, family offices, hedge funds, oil & gas companies, and all kinds of corporations. Storytelling is one of the highest forms of leverage and you should invest heavily in it. You can do that by going to ⁠⁠https://collateral.com

Todd Graves is one of my favorite living founders. He owns over 90% of Raising Canes — a business that is worth at least $20 billion. Todd's maxim is "Do one thing and do it better than anyone else." It is impossible not to be inspired by his terminator levels of determination. I hope you enjoy our conversation as much as I did. Episode show notes: ⁠https://www.davidsenra.com/episode/to... Made possible by Ramp: ⁠⁠https://ramp.com⁠⁠ HubSpot: ⁠⁠https://hubspot.com⁠⁠ Function: ⁠https://functionhealth.com/senra⁠ Chapters (00:00) The Entrepreneurial Mindset: Sleep and Business Obsession (02:13) The Birth of Raising Cane's: Overcoming Skepticism (03:29) Inspiration from In-N-Out Burger (07:17) The Importance of Quality and Focus (14:49) The Journey to Success: Hard Work and Sacrifice (19:21) The Early Days: Building Raising Cane's from Scratch (21:23) Financing the Dream: Unconventional Paths (32:28) The Relentless Pursuit of Success (33:02) Commitment and Oaths: The Camping Trip (34:02) Fanaticism and Relentless Focus (34:53) Learning from Others and Continuous Improvement (35:06) The Never-Satisfied Mindset (36:04) The Importance of Founders in Business (39:55) The Purpose Beyond Profit (51:52) Financing the Dream: Credit Cards and SBA Loans (55:47) Building the First Restaurant (57:56) Expanding the Vision (58:59) Positive Motivational Management (01:00:51) Creating a Coaching Culture (01:01:42) Intrinsic Motivation vs. Titles (01:02:41) The Importance of Being Present (01:06:35) Respect, Recognition, and Rewards (01:09:12) The Power of Encouragement (01:18:10) The Myth of Delegation (01:22:57) Focus on What You Do Best (01:30:07) Dining at Jiro in Tokyo (01:30:59) The Franchise Model Debate (01:32:50) Challenges of Franchising (01:35:21) Building a Business Authentic to You (01:37:07) Financing and Expansion Strategies (01:49:13) Surviving Hurricane Katrina (01:55:48) Lessons from Estée Lauder (01:58:06) Final Thoughts and Reflections

This episode covers the unique way Larry Ellison thinks. I spent over 40 hours reading (and rereading) this book on Ellison written by Matthew Symonds. ⁠ I then spent several days editing down 40 pages of notes into a one-hour nonstop stream of Larry Ellison's ideas. Episode sponsors: ⁠Ramp⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud ⁠⁠⁠by going to Ramp and learning how they can help your business control your costs and save time and money.⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://ramp.com⁠⁠⁠⁠ Automate compliance, security, and trust with Vanta.⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠Vanta helps you win trust, close deals, and stay secure—faster and with less effort⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. ⁠⁠⁠Find out how increased security leads to more customers by going to Vanta⁠⁠⁠. Tell them David from Founders sent you and you'll get $1000 off. ⁠⁠⁠https://www.vanta.com/founders⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠ ⁠Collateral⁠⁠ transforms your complex ideas into compelling narratives⁠. Collateral crafts institutional grade marketing collateral for private equity, private credit, real estate, venture capital, family offices, hedge funds, oil & gas companies, and all kinds of corporations. Storytelling is one of the highest forms of leverage and you should invest heavily in it. You can do that by going to ⁠⁠https://collateral.com

I’ve started a new show where I have conversations with the greatest living Founders. The show is called David Senra. It will be on a separate podcast feed from Founders.  So it is very important that you follow David Senra on ⁠Spotify⁠, ⁠Apple Podcasts⁠, ⁠YouTube⁠, or ⁠wherever you're listening to this so you don't miss future episodes⁠. Nothing is changing with Founders. I will never stop making Founders.

This episode covers the insanely valuable company-building principles of Jensen Huang—and nothing else. I spent over 40 hours reading (and rereading) this book on Jensen and Nvidia written by Tae Kim I then spent several days editing down 30 pages of notes from the book. I deleted everything that was not How Jensen Works. List of ideas: 1. Professor Jensen 2. The Whiteboard 3. Complacency Kills 4. Insist on a 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 11. 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 Episode sponsors: ⁠Ramp⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud ⁠⁠⁠by going to Ramp and learning how they can help your business control your costs and save time and money.⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://ramp.com⁠⁠⁠⁠ Automate compliance, security, and trust with Vanta.⁠ ⁠⁠⁠Vanta helps you win trust, close deals, and stay secure—faster and with less effort⁠⁠⁠⁠. ⁠⁠⁠Find out how increased security leads to more customers by going to Vanta⁠⁠⁠. Tell them David from Founders sent you and you'll get $1000 off. ⁠⁠⁠https://www.vanta.com/founders⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠ Collateral⁠⁠ transforms your complex ideas into compelling narratives. Collateral crafts institutional grade marketing collateral for private equity, private credit, real estate, venture capital, family offices, hedge funds, oil & gas companies, and all kinds of corporations. Storytelling is one of the highest forms of leverage and you should invest heavily in it. You can do that by going to ⁠⁠https://collateral.com

I’ve started a new show where I have conversations with the greatest living Founders. The show is called David Senra. It will be on a separate podcast feed from Founders.  So it is very important that you follow David Senra on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or wherever you're listening to this so you don't miss future episodes. Nothing is changing with Founders. I will never stop making Founders.

I didn’t know who Thomas Peterffy was. I was shocked to learn that he is 81 years old, worth $80 billion dollars, and has built his $120 billion company, Interactive Brokers, into one of the most efficient companies in the world. I discovered Peterffy by reading this incredible profile about him. I couldn’t put it down. That’s what this episode is about. Episode sponsors: ⁠Ramp⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud ⁠⁠⁠by going to Ramp and learning how they can help your business control your costs and save time and money.⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://ramp.com⁠⁠⁠⁠ Automate compliance, security, and trust with Vanta.⁠ ⁠⁠⁠Vanta helps you win trust, close deals, and stay secure—faster and with less effort⁠⁠⁠⁠. ⁠⁠⁠Find out how increased security leads to more customers by going to Vanta⁠⁠⁠. Tell them David from Founders sent you and you'll get $1000 off. ⁠⁠⁠https://www.vanta.com/founders⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠ Collateral⁠⁠ transforms your complex ideas into compelling narratives. Collateral crafts institutional grade marketing collateral for private equity, private credit, real estate, venture capital, family offices, hedge funds, oil & gas companies, and all kinds of corporations. Storytelling is one of the highest forms of leverage and you should invest heavily in it. You can do that by going to ⁠⁠https://collateral.com

I started a new show so I can have long-form conversations with the greatest living founders. You can watch on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, X, or the web.  The new show is on a separate feed so don't forget to follow David Senra so you don't miss future episodes. Nothing is changing with Founders. I will never stop making that podcast.  Thanks for the support!

This episode is about Bill Gates' obsessive drive and hardcore work ethic. Bill Gates had the rarest entrepreneurial talent—the ability to see the leverage point in a new industry, seize it with relentless intensity, and *will* Microsoft into one of the most successful companies in human history. To make this episode I read Bill's new autobiography, Source Code: My Beginnings, and pulled ideas and notes from 4 more books about his singular career: Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire Overdrive: Bill Gates and the Race to Control Cyberspace Idea Man: A Memoir by the Cofounder of Microsoft In the Company of Giants: Candid Conversations With the Visionaries of the Digital World Episode sponsors: Ramp⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud ⁠⁠⁠by going to Ramp and learning how they can help your business control your costs and save time and money.⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠https://ramp.com⁠⁠⁠ Automate compliance, security, and trust with Vanta. ⁠⁠⁠Vanta helps you win trust, close deals, and stay secure—faster and with less effort⁠⁠⁠. ⁠⁠⁠Find out how increased security leads to more customers by going to Vanta⁠⁠⁠. Tell them David from Founders sent you and you'll get $1000 off. ⁠⁠https://www.vanta.com/founders⁠⁠ ⁠ Collateral⁠ transforms your complex ideas into compelling narratives. Collateral crafts institutional grade marketing collateral for private equity, private credit, real estate, venture capital, family offices, hedge funds, oil & gas companies, and all kinds of corporations. Storytelling is one of the highest forms of leverage and you should invest heavily in it. You can do that by going to ⁠https://collateral.com

This episode covers the extreme perseverance and the stubborn genius of James Dyson. Dyson has a business philosophy which is very different from anything you might have encountered before. A philosophy which demands difference from what exists and retention of total control. For almost four decades, James Dyson has been building one of the most valuable privately-held companies in the world. A company he owns without shareholders — and one that is centered around an obsession with the quality of the product above all. I spent well over 70 hours reading (and rereading) both Against the Odds and Invention: A Life of Learning Through Failure. These books tell the story of the vision of a single man, pursued with dogged determination, that was nothing less than obsession. Episode sponsors: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ramp⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud ⁠⁠⁠by going to Ramp and learning how they can help your business control your costs and save time and money.⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠https://ramp.com⁠⁠⁠ Automate compliance, security, and trust with Vanta. ⁠⁠⁠Vanta helps you win trust, close deals, and stay secure—faster and with less effort⁠⁠⁠. ⁠⁠⁠Find out how increased security leads to more customers by going to Vanta⁠⁠⁠. Tell them David from Founders sent you and you'll get $1000 off. ⁠⁠https://www.vanta.com/founders⁠⁠ Collateral⁠ transforms your complex ideas into compelling narratives. Collateral crafts institutional grade marketing collateral for private equity, private credit, real estate, venture capital, family offices, hedge funds, oil & gas companies, and all kinds of corporations. Storytelling is one of the highest forms of leverage and you should invest heavily in it. You can do that by going to ⁠https://collateral.com

This episode covers the insanely valuable company-building principles of Elon Musk—and nothing else. I spent well over 60 hours reading (and rereading) the biography of Elon Musk written by Walter Isaacson. I then spent several days editing down 40 pages of notes from the book. I deleted everything that was not about How Elon Works. This episode focuses exclusively on the ideas Elon used to build his companies and his truly singular career. There is no one else like him — living or dead. Episode sponsors: ⁠⁠⁠⁠Ramp⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud ⁠⁠⁠by going to Ramp and learning how they can help your business control your costs and save time and money.⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠https://ramp.com⁠⁠ Automate compliance, security, and trust with Vanta. ⁠⁠Vanta helps you win trust, close deals, and stay secure—faster and with less effort⁠⁠. ⁠⁠⁠Find out how increased security leads to more customers by going to Vanta⁠⁠⁠. Tell them David from Founders sent you and you'll get $1000 off. ⁠https://www.vanta.com/founders⁠ Collateral transforms your complex ideas into compelling narratives. Collateral crafts institutional grade marketing collateral for private equity, private credit, real estate, venture capital, family offices, hedge funds, oil & gas companies, and all kinds of corporations.  Storytelling is one of the highest forms of leverage and you should invest heavily in it. You can do that by going to https://collateral.com

A curated collection of Steve’s speeches, interviews, and correspondence, Make Something Wonderful offers a window into how one of the world’s most creative entrepreneurs approached his life and work. In these pages, Steve shares his perspective on his childhood, on launching and being pushed out of Apple, on his time with Pixar and NeXT, and on his return to the company that started it all. Read the book for free courtesy of The Steve Jobs Archive. This episode was originally published April 17, 2023. Episode sponsors: ⁠⁠⁠Ramp⁠⁠⁠⁠ gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud ⁠⁠⁠by going to Ramp and learning how they can help your business control your costs and save time and money.⁠⁠⁠ ⁠https://ramp.com⁠ Automate compliance, security, and trust with Vanta. ⁠Vanta helps you win trust, close deals, and stay secure—faster and with less effort⁠. ⁠⁠⁠Find out how increased security leads to more customers by going to Vanta⁠⁠⁠. Tell them David from Founders sent you and you'll get $1000 off. https://www.vanta.com/founders Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here. 

Jiro Ono is the greatest living sushi chef. He was kicked out his house when he was 9. He started working in a restaurant so he wouldn't have to sleep under a bridge. He never stopped. Over his 75 year career he rose to the very top of his profession. People travel from all over the world to eat at his restaurant. The meal costs $400 per person and lasts 15 minutes. This episode is what I learned from reading the transcript of the documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi and is full of ideas you can use in your work. Episode sponsors: ⁠⁠⁠Ramp⁠⁠⁠ gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud ⁠⁠⁠by going to Ramp and learning how they can help your business control your costs and save time and money.⁠⁠⁠ https://ramp.com Automate compliance, security, and trust with Vanta. Vanta helps you win trust, close deals, and stay secure—faster and with less effort. ⁠⁠⁠Find out how increased security leads to more customers by going to Vanta⁠⁠⁠. Tell them David from Founders sent you and you'll get $1000 off. https://www.vanta.com Join my free email newsletter to⁠⁠⁠ get my top 10 highlights from every book⁠⁠⁠ https://davidsenra.com

I've read hundreds of thousands of words about Enzo Ferrari. For this episode I distilled down his most important ideas into 1 hour. Ferrari was truly one of history's greatest obsessives. Episode sponsors: ⁠⁠⁠Ramp⁠⁠⁠ gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud ⁠⁠⁠by going to Ramp and learning how they can help your business control your costs and save time and money.⁠⁠⁠ https://ramp.com ----- Automate compliance, security, and trust with Vanta. Vanta helps you win trust, close deals, and stay secure—faster and with less effort. ⁠⁠⁠Find out how increased security leads to more customers by going to Vanta⁠⁠⁠. Tell them David from Founders sent you and you'll get $1000 off. https://www.vanta.com ----- Join my free email newsletter to⁠⁠⁠ get my top 10 highlights from every book⁠⁠⁠ https://davidsenra.com Sources: The Terrible Joys of Enzo Ferrari by Winthrop Sargeant. Published in The New Yorker January 7th 1966. The Story of Ferrari by Stuart Codling Enzo Ferrari: Power, Politics and the Making of an Automobile Empire  by Luca Dal Monte Enzo Ferrari: The Man and the Machine by Brock Yates Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari, and Their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans by A.J. Baime Selected highlights:  1. He who travels fast, carries little. 2. All masterpieces bespeaks the character of its creator 3. "When the driver steps on the gas I want him to shit his pants." 4. It is obvious that a Ferrari is the product of a sort of automotive watch-maker. 5. Ferrari has never taken a vacation in his life. 6. Racing is a profession for men who do not wish to die in bed.  7. If there was one essential quality about the man it was his ironbound tenacity, his fierce devotion to the single cause of winning automobile races with cars bearing his name. From 1930 onward, for nearly sixty years, hardly a day passed when this thought was not foremost in his mind. Win or lose, he unfailingly answered the bell. In that sense his devotion to his own self-described mission was without precedent. For that alone he towered over his peers. 8. “I was back where I had started. No money, no experience, limited education. All I had was a passion to get somewhere.” 9. Ferrari had two fundamental talents. He was an agitator of men and he was an absolute marketing genius.  10. "A Ferrari must be desired. It cannot and must not be perceived as something that is immediately available; otherwise, the dream is gone." 11. "I have never considered myself a designer or an inventor, but only one who gets things moving and keeps them running. My innate talent was for stirring up men." 12. Enzo Ferrari was the consummate manager of men— not docile, soft men, but proud, fiercely competitive, egocentric men.  13. He was a pathological competitor. A man with a diamond-hard will to win at all costs. 14. When asked how he wanted to be remembered, he replied: "As someone who dreamt of becoming Ferrari." 15. Ferrari was animated by an extraordinary passion that led him to build a product with no equal. 16. "I had the stubborn determination to capture the trust of those who work with me."  17. “I should not have married because a man dominated by a passion such as mine, can hardly divide himself in half and be a good husband. If I had listened to my wife, I would have been a clerk in a bus company.” 18. He understood that showmanship is salesmanship.  19. They were cars built by Italian artisans, every detail down to the steering wheel handcrafted using some of the same methods used to make Roman suits of armor and the royal carriages of the ancient kingdoms. 20. When asked about the root of his mania, his obsession with victory, Ferrari said, "Everything that I've  done, I did because I couldn't do anything less. One day I want to build a car that's faster than all of them, and then I want to die."

Those on the margins often come to control the center. That maxim ties together the three remarkable people profiled in this episode: Colin Chapman, known as “the mad scientist of F1”, did more to influence F1 design than any other person in history.  Bernie Ecclestone, known as “Supremo”, Bernie transformed Formula One from a disorganized, rag-tag, chaotic collection of racing teams, into the world’s premier motor racing series. He built the business of F1— and made billions for himself along the way.  Dietrich Mateschitz, founder of Red Bull, bought two Formula One teams and insisted on becoming the sport’s foremost disruptor. Determined to question every standard way of operating, Mateschitz’s unlimited ambition transformed his team of outsiders and mavericks into a dominant force, all while building one of the world’s most valuable private companies.  All three were outsiders. All three thrived on taking risks. All three insisted on doing things their way.  This episode is what I learned from reading The Formula: How Rogues, Geniuses, and Speed Freaks Reengineered F1 into the World's Fastest-Growing Sport by Joshua Robinson and and Johnathan Clegg. ------ ⁠⁠Ramp⁠⁠ gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud ⁠⁠by going to Ramp and learning how they can help your business control your costs and save time and money.⁠⁠ ----- Automate compliance, security, and trust with Vanta. Vanta helps you win trust, close deals, and stay secure—faster and with less effort. ⁠⁠Find out how increased security leads to more customers by going to Vanta⁠⁠. Tell them David from Founders sent you and you'll get $1000 off. ----- Join my free email newsletter to⁠⁠ get my top 10 highlights from every book⁠⁠ ----

Your dad dies before you’re born. Your mom can’t afford to take care of you. You grow up without a family and in an institution. You learn a trade and start working full time at the age of 14. You work all day and go to school at night. You’re precise, meticulous, restless, and work circles around everyone. You’re promoted to run the factory at 18 but the thought of working for anyone else terrifies you. For your entire life you’ll be obsessed with control. You’ll do whatever it takes to escape the harshness of poverty and the pangs of hunger. You organize your life around a simple principle: "I want to be the best at everything I do.” You start your own workshop, create the best product, and your biggest customer wants to become your partner. They underestimate you and abuse you. You destroy them. You take all of their customers. You’re not satisfied with being a subcontractor. You want everything. You make your own glasses, you buy your distributor, you list your company on the New York Stock Exchange, you complete hostile takeovers of much larger companies, you buy entire retail chains, and control everything about your product: from the raw materials to the relationship with the customer. Your competitors call you the hawk because you circle, wait, and then strike. You work 20 hours a day and fuse yourself with the factory. You get married four times, to three different women, and have six kids. You don’t look back, you don’t rest on your laurels, and you don’t go to sleep on wins. You make something great, then you do it again. Your biggest deal comes 60 years into your career. The only thing that could stop you was death.  You are Leonardo Del Vecchio.  This episode is what I learned from reading Leonardo Del Vecchio by Thomas Ebhardt and The Spectacle of Big Lens: How One Giant Company Will Dominate How the World Sees by Sam Knight. ------ ⁠Ramp⁠ gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud ⁠by going to Ramp and learning how they can help your business control your costs and save time and money.⁠ ----- Automate compliance, security, and trust with Vanta. Vanta helps you win trust, close deals, and stay secure—faster and with less effort. ⁠Find out how increased security leads to more customers by going to Vanta⁠. Tell them David from Founders sent you and you'll get $1000 off. ----- Join my free email newsletter to⁠ get my top 10 highlights from every book⁠ ----