Guest: David Senra, host of Founders podcast
Host: Patrick O’Shaughnessy
Lifelong love of reading, visiting bookstores
Family has a hard history – parents didn’t graduate high school, first male in family not to go to prison in many generations
Married for 15 years
“Great biography is like a movie for your mind”
Warren Buffett – “pick the right heroes”
Charlie Munger also read hundreds of biographies
Most of the heroes he studies are imperfect human beings
But if he had one as a blueprint, it would be Ed Thorp (math prof, blackjack)
James Dyson – 14 year struggle to build the Dyson vacuum, went through 5K prototypes to finally succeed
Sam Zemurray, Fish that ate the whale – banana company founder – poor teenage Russian immigrant in the US, succeeded through his incremental obsession; funded a coup to protect his business
Vanderbilt – at death controlled 1 in 20 dollars in the economy; tried to kill someone who wanted to seize a part of his business
Francis Coppola – dad was a failed musician; fanatical obsession to learn and make films
Sam Walton – long before he started Walmart, landowner screwed him over and copied his first retail business; but he didn’t quit, he went to more towns and replicated the success
Largest predictor of business success is the market you’re in, more than the idea – yet the great Founders all have to relentlessly execute for decades
All Founders had deep historical knowledge of their industry, influences
Steve Jobs – recruiting talent is most important job as a founder
-Steve said “I wanna make insanely great products” not “I wanna build a billion dollar company” – focused on the right things
-“Made and re-made Apple in his own image”
-At NEXT (after he left Apple), it’s like he was Bizarro Steve Jobs and did all the wrong things
Michael Jordan – “I believe in practice”, realized that he practices on different level than others
Richard Branson – business is a product or service that makes someone’s life better
Ed Thorp – every hour in fitness is one less in hospital
Larry Miller – owned Utah Jazz, wrote book on his death bed, regretted his overwork and how unhappy he was through it all
Masters of Doom – John Carmack: “Romero wants an empire, I just wanna make great games”
In N Out founder – only 17 stores when he died, but was obsessed with quality the whole time
“Who are your entrepreneurial heroes? Everyone copies someone”
Tony Xu – Doordash founder – “culture is 80-90% personality of the founder”
Walt Disney – both he and Ferrari’s first companies went bankrupt; most proud of Disneyland; worked til day he died
“Their mediocrity is my opportunity”
Warren Buffett said David Ogilvy is a genius – no business is boring, only boring advertising
David ends up reading each book 5 times through research, recording, editing, and promoting it – also uses Readwise to refresh highlights
“Find your obsession, and make your exit strategy death”
Most highlighted book of his is Ed Catmull’s biography (Pixar)
“Excellence is the capacity to take pain” – Four Seasons founder
“Podcasting is printing press for spoken word”
-Completely permissionless
-His fave podcaster is Dan Carlin (Hardcore History)
-Also likes Bill Burr’s Monday Morning podcast
-Podcast is like choosing a friend
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Below is “podcaster reading famous biography books, pixar style, photorealistic” from Simple Diffusion:
