David Senra on the founders worth studying now, his dinner with Mike Ovitz, and why he'll never write a book

the A+ players and that is exactly what ramp did ramp has right we're in the middle of a ramp out that's hilarious hey is I'm playing I I was listening to your your latest episode and and there was some good there was there was a really good quote in there and I didn't realize it was in the middle of a rampad that's funny I caught the the tail end of you talking to Eric oh yeah great how you doing man good good I just had actually saw Eric last week we had breakfast I went uh flew to New York for a super secret uh dinner that I'm making an episode about right now so me me and uh Eric had breakfast the very next day very cool very cool amazing uh every time I tried to ask Eric something personal he perfectly redirected it into talking about save businesses time and money uh can you help us psychoanalyze Eric because he's like this in he's truly a one of one in the sense that uh I was kind of positioning it as like building a 13 billion plus company and maintaining that level of sort of genuine kindness is like very tough and uh I'm curious if you if you have any sort of like opinion or sort of like com I just have the answer like when I when I made the documentary about ramp like I was interviewing him that exact question like hey you're so nice but like you're running this like kind of cut through company in this like hardcore industry like how is this possible and it kind of got peeled back the onion and got to the fact like like he had a brother who got bullied a lot and like he developed like this insane empathy that was my takeaway I was like tearing up while I was talking to him about it it was really really like uh kind of like a crazy crazy like early life to like deal with and that clearly gave him like a new level of empathy because he went through all this stuff with his brother it was wild anyway but senra what what's your take one I spent much time with him I do consider when I say on the ramp ads my friend Eric I that's not hyperbolic um I would say the larger uh like the more important idea is like you actually don't have to be like a complete and listen I think Steve Jobs is one of the best you know founders of all time uh if there's a Mount Rushmore of the history entrepreneurship he's got to be on it it doesn't matter like what the other three are but he's definitely one of them but people hear how like you know how he spoke to other people and they just say oh like to be like him I have to be like that and it's just like no you don't um like if you look at the greatest you know when I went to Charlie monger's house and had dinner with him like he said that the greatest he feels the greatest founder of all time was Rockefeller and one of the craziest things about Rockefeller is like there would be people that worked for him for decades that said he never raised his voice and he never said an unkind word so I think there's like this myth that there's like this one size or one way to be successful in fact I was on a long walk with a friend last night and we were talking about Michael Dell you know uh one of regardless of what you think he's like one of the most successful people that ever lived uh has a phenomenal relationship with his son they're like best friends from what I hear uh very very proud that he's still married to the same woman like un anybody that spends time with him says the same thing he's just unbelievably thoughtful and kind um so yeah I I I I one with particular Eric it's definitely not an act and two I don't think you know it's a prerequisite for Success this is like one of the reasons I tend to work alone is because I am really [ __ ] mean and I don't like that I I would wish I wasn't so you know uh like intense around that and I'm perfectly fine being that way with myself I just don't like doing that to other people that's why when you said you liked our podcast I took it really serious because I'm like he just wouldn't say that oh no way very authentically like yeah like this this isn't for you bud I mean I've sent him so many things to review and and I'm just like it's it's not bad right and he's like Have you listened to it so there's a you see this bookshelf behind me let me zoom out a little bit so it is um it holds like 600 books or something like that yeah and uh let me see if I can change this so they're actually in order by episode number yeah and one thing that I love about there's another um like 300 books in my living room and I walk past it every day to get upstairs and one one of the books uh has the title like big bold letters in the spine and it's it's applicable to a lot more Industries than you think of and it's definitely applicable to podcasts but the title of the book is competing with idiots and I think like you know we're doing the same thing here with posts right we have we have every post the Library of Alexandria every post it out in order that we reacted to them on the show it's bigger than your it's bigger than your bookshelf you remember when you guys had this idea of like you were gonna sell your podcast in vinyl yeah yeah yeah and so I actually I hope you make that into a book and I would buy the technology Brothers book of Tweets we're definitely thinking about that definitely thinking about that I think with the final thing where we got was we want to send you our favorite episode of Founders on vinyl something and send that to Patrick and then so like the Jeremy gon episode goes out because you get that on vinyl it's like a fun thing you could like put it on your bookshelf or something it's a little trinket I actually think it's really smart there's been multiple occasions So like um you can't see it but behind my desk so Sam zel there there's a bunch of people I'm actually reading Michael oit's autobiography yeah so I'll give you a preview of the the episode that has been killing me I wanted it out two days ago and it still won't be done um and he had a full-time gift guy and this has actually come up a lot in the books Sam zel had a he spent millions of dollars a year from my understanding yeah on his full-time gift Department in fact he'd build these like automatons right and itd have a theme and I actually spoke at this guy's conference and he's like do you want anything for this I was like it's in Miami I don't give a [ __ ] I'll do it for free and we're friends anyways um and he's like all right I have a gift for you and he actually found one and he bought me a Sam zel like automaton but I think the technology Brothers especially because you're like you're doing a five days a week you're going to have all these guests you should have like a gift department where it's like thoughtful that like that like here here's your favorite episode on vinyl or like whatever whatever isn't that in uh How to Win Friends and Influence People the whole idea of a Rolodex you save everyone you said that was your favorite book right just kid I mean I I thought Patrick hes he said he rereads it all the time I I read it it is a fantastic book it's one of these like Timeless books it's a little ridiculous because it's like so such a like over it's clickbait title but you know clickbait works yeah I know the value I I like things that the value prop is in the title actually also it's so old timey like it it it's just it's an interesting artifact because it's like it's the type of like business advice that you'd see on like a thread on Twitter these days but it's from like the 1920s so all the examples are really an because it's not it's advice on human nature and human nature CH like that's why people still read it and like uh Charlie munger's one of his favorite book was uh influenc by Robert keini he liked it so much he gave him um a single share of birkshire stock when it was like 500,000 I think today it's like 750 wow pretty good composition for writing a book that's awesome that's amazing I love that when are you writing a book what's that when are you gonna write a book never um Domin no because like here's the thing um like I told you before I mean you guys know this because like I kind of like cornered you at hereticon about how important podcasting is yeah and you know I get like uh it's very nice because like I as you guys know most of the books I do I cover like really old but Publishers send me all of their like new books and you know I might do like one new book for every like 50 old books and they all they send me their new books for distribution but they're also like where you be interested in writing a book yeah and my point to them is like I I think of podcasting as like one of the greatest Technologies ever created I think it's the printing press for the spoken word and so me taking and I think it's the highest and best use of my time so me taking time away from that to do anything else but more podcasting doesn't make sense now that I I talked to my friend Jimmy Sony who I absolutely love and uh he's he wrote this great biography on Claud Shannon he wrot what's that he spoke at your event he wrote the PayPal book right yeah he wrote the founders the history of uh Founders he's like another psycho obsessive it took him longer to write the founders book than it took PayPal to be founded and then sold to eBay okay so uh but I called him I was like hey just name your price and you know listen to the podcast we'll have some conversations and if you can write this for me like in Partnership then I'd be interested in doing that so what I told him to do it's one of my favorite books is Will and Ariel Durant the lessons of History right you really think about that book it's like they dedicated 50 years of their life to writing the um history of civilization it's probably I don't know what 10,000 Pages all combined and yet after that they're like hey we're going to do this [ __ ] ridiculous thing of trying to write a biography of the human species and we're going to limit to 100 pages so I was like okay I would want to do that like what are the most important ideas that we've just we've unveiled so far through the podcast and in the eight years of his existence and write like this is a b like the most important idea is in 100 pages um and so he he's got a bunch of stuff going on including two books that are really fascinating that he's writing but he said he's going to do it very cool uh who are the entrepreneurs that are still building their legacy that you are uh hoping that they will live up to their full potential and one day be qualified to be uh you know given the full Founders podcast treatment I would put Eric and Kareem in that in that bucket of you know ultra high potential but still uh you know sort of just getting started in a sense uh are there people that stand out today that that you're excited to cover in you know 15 20 years right I'm going to tell you who my favorite founder alive is right now and it's going to be surprising to people because um I I heard your episode yesterday where you talked about like how I'd call you up John and like find a simple idea and take it seriously and I think that's one of like the best pieces of advice and you see it over and over again I've been able and some of these people I can't [ __ ] name because of the podcast but I've been able to meet like these crazy e you know family businesses where the founders 80 years old still running the company no outside investors worth $10 billion and you know they've just monopolized like crazy stuff like nails or packing equipment or shipping company or just like crazy like not very complicated ideas just like they found a simple idea and took it uh very seriously um I I I think uh one of the things I like about Eric and Kareem is uh before we had this like very deep uh partnership it's not obviously you guys know this it's not just like I'm not just like reading ads for them on my podcast um like we're friends we we spend a lot of time together our wives spend time together our kids play together um and you know it took a long time getting to know them really well um one of the important things when we talked about this is like is this your last company like I'm not interested in like the people that want to start scale and sell I'm interested in people that do something for a very long time if you look at all the books behind me these people literally worked and Zi right here like he died he worked on there's no retirement like like Ferrari is my entire life this is what my life energy goes to this most of the people I cover in the podcast you know their life's work and what I loved about both Eric and Kareem like this is the last company like this is we we want to build this forever um there's actually an interesting idea um and I'm trying to convince Kareem to do more not that he needs my advice by any means but I really want him to be interviewed by Patrick um just because I get to talk to him privately and he he's like [ __ ] brilliant technical mind and one of the things that he said that was very fascinating um is he he optimizes for spikes and uh what that means is like you know especially as as the company grows you tend to like try to like even out and like hire for personality or like yeah this guy's talented but he's kind of like an [ __ ] or he's like comes in late uh or like you know will show up for two days and kind of disappear and I think what Kareem understood is what a lot of hist entrepreneurs understand there's a great line by David ogy where he said that Talent is likely is most likely to be found against uh among Misfits non-conformists and Rebels and uh what Kareem is interested in is not like your total package he's interested in your very best idea so like if you were the very best at X and he just wants you to do that for ramp and if you only last for six months that's fine it's like he just he optimizes for spikes and I think that's incredibly um intelligent because it's also something that Steve Jobs says that he's like you can never ever ever ever forget the dynamic range of human beings that most things in life you know between the average to the best it's like two to three two two times best three times quality where he's like in software and Hardware it's like the difference is like 100x or a THX and marketing too not just not just 10x Engineers 10x ideas 10x you can see it with apple right now what's that you can see it with apple right now J Emoji like it's not crazy to think of the yin and yang camp campaign that they ran is a thousand times better than the than the Gen Emoji campaign yeah and again where does that come from where like Eric and what I like about Eric and Kareem is like they work like dogs just like I do right um and I'm really only interested I just had came back from lunch the reason I texted you guys I'm five minutes late it's because I was meeting another founder friend of mine and and we had lunch with another friend and it's like all three of us have in common it's like we're taking what we do very seriously it's all different businesses um but Kareem Works non-stop right Eric does too and they they want the pressure um and they want they do believe like something that Eric told me that was wild at breakfast was like when ramp was founded um AMX was like a$ 70 billion do market cap company and now it's like 220 or whatever um so I I I heard at the very end he's talking about yeah people were saying hey we're valued at 13 million that's fine but like you know we're missing a zero maybe two zeros like if we're doing this for a long period of time things grow in unpredictable ways like the people that I've met I like didn't ask him the question of uh you know I was I'm genuinely curious like what do you do uh if you have five minutes in the day you know what are you doing uh for fun and I don't even think that's worth asking Eric because I know he's just going to say look you know I like to you know keep in touch with my family and but otherwise I'm at the office thinking about work or I'm calling senra um but uh but yeah it just didn't even seem like worth asking because I already know the answer one of the most interesting things I think they just put this out in uh in that blog post but we definitely talked about it too is like you know they're doing like 54% of their pay rolles on dedicated to R&D like they're not just like oh we're we're look what we did in in this amount of time it's like no we're going to keep pushing the pace this is again the what I uh I I the when I went to New York I had dinner with Mike Ovitz that I had an intense three-hour dinner with ovit so I'm making an episode on the dinner and I'm making an episode on um on the book and the way this came about is because I was uh at breakfast with a friend of mine and his phone is on the table and it rings and it's Mike Ovitz and he picks up he puts on speaker phone he's like hey I'm actually sitting here with my friend David he does this podcast you should know about Founders and Mike without missing a beat he goes I love that podcast I listen to four episodes yesterday and one of the things that me and Mike talked about at breakfast is like nothing that Michael oit said in his book or at dinner is like surprising to me in because it's like Founders a church for entrepreneur it's you're I'm just telling the same story over and over again it's the same personality type over and over and over again um and so yeah of course like when they're saying hey we're extremely dedicated what we're doing we're trying to get better it's like that's exactly what they should be doing if this is going to be your last business if this is your life's work then you will have that like importance of every little detail like how many F you guys see all the tweets when people talk about the difference of like the U UI and ux to ramp to to compared to some other people yeah um yeah and you're you're you're point about Apple there's a great book called creative selection it's episode 281 of Founders I think the title is working with Steve Jobs if I'm correct be wrong maybe 282 probably 281 um and that's one of the best books I've read it three times because it talks about the care that Steve Jobs put to every single Pixel of all the products they're make making and all the advertising so that ad wouldn't have gone out because Steve would have had to approve every single ad they went out that's there a different level of care and love yeah what's your sleep score what's your sleep score not not good and M I love Mato uh they were uh one of my early Partners let's it was here's the problem because every I'm so excited about this is gonna be a big year yeah and I have a lot of stuff coming that people don't know about Okay and like it's it's not good so last night was 70 I got 88 what' you do Jordy the the the night the night before is 56 56 I've never actually got my God I don't think I've ever gotten that low man you're you're grinding too hard no no I'm just very excited this is like uh yeah know makes sense one one of my favorite Founders uh you mentioned earlier is or you were asking earlier is H Dana White I think what he did what him and the fatita brothers did with the U UFC buying it out of bankruptcy for like two billion or two two million and then you know selling selling it for whatever the number is and still staying on there and I saw a clip from a podcast interview that he said that's excellent It's like very again I like simple ideas he's just like build a life that you can't like you can't wait to wake up to and he's like I people always asking me oh when are you going to retire from the UFC and he's just like retire from what yeah like I get to put on the best fights in the world I get to travel in the I get to stay in the nicest hotels eat at the nicest restaurants like put on the best Live Events he's like I'm going to be doing this till I'm 80 yeah you know and I just love that idea like very simple idea am I building a life that I cannot wait to wake up to Fantastic uh one industry oriented question and then I have um I just want you to rant about a specific topic so what's going on with Spotify yesterday for the first time I got a clickbait Style video suggest suggested to me on Spotify that was like I tried zero Star Tech and it was like this like kind of like crazy it looked exactly like a YouTube it was a YouTube video it was just a YouTube video it came out came out uh you know last week that YouTube's the biggest podcast platform in the world now that's obviously not you know sort of not great uh for Spotify how do you see Spotify as a platform uh evolving um so I don't see this is another thing because keep in mind I like study people for a living right I think that's really the only Edge I have so um uh we we've talked about this like um when I think of like people like people think of like their portfolio they tend to like list companies mine is like people people it's like oh I invested in this dude and I invested in Justin or Sebastian or like that um your long Danel act what's that and so and so in this analogy you're long Daniel e Daniel's the best like he's the mo like the car dude yes I I spent a bunch of time with him I consider him a friend like a legit friend and it's shocking that we're friends but like every time I talk to him like he is the idea that what what is Spotify like $120 billion market cap company or something today I don't pay attention to any like the stock market but like it's p up public yeah hold up and inform this it's over 100 billion I would imagine 120 nailed it okay so how the hell is the guy that's been running the company for 18 years the founder he's still there uh he's what 42 like young um 44 I don't know something like that he's like so underrated more people should study him like he doesn't give a bunch of interviews and usually the interviews around product announcements but like I don't know what's going to happen with Spotify but I would back up the truck in anything that Daniel does and as long as Daniel's there and his team I've met his team they're [ __ ] incredible like um yeah they also knew exactly what was going to happen they this is like famous like Founders fund lore is that like Sean Parker and Daniel a come in and they're like and they're like we are going to execute like the Napster type music sharing strategy but it's all gonna be legal we're going to build this platform and they projected something like I I don't remember the exact number but they're like in the in the investment memo it's like in 2025 we'll have 300 million daus and they got it within like 10% or something it was like a 20year projection and they nailed it it was crazy listen more important he's one of the greatest living entrepreneurs without a doubt that's not even including the stuff he's doing outside of Spotify which is [ __ ] also incredible and impactful um more important that he's like a good guy so um I I want I'm I'm gonna do more of these like I had dinner with episodes you know yeah there people seem to like them and I like doing them and um I had dinner with and this one had to be like Anonymous so I don't know I'm I'm not going to make an episode on it but um because I asked the guy I I mentioned this briefly in in a episode but I was like I had dinner with you know one I got the opportunity to have dinner with one of the uh wealthiest people on the planet um very unknown right his family it's a multi-generation dynasty and his family had like commissioned biographies for certain people in the family and of course when he's told me that I was like oh let me get those and he's like this is you know how you say bad boys move in silence that Maxim that reappears over and over again history of Entrepreneurship yeah uh came from Rockefeller uh he's like absolutely not I go why not and he goes because I'm not interested in educating my competitors and the dinner was incredible but he knows Daniel and he was just like there's he's what do you think of Daniel he's incredible one of the best entrepreneurs in the world this guy's telling me he's like but more important than that like he his like when you speak to him like he's a kind person he's not one of these you know [ __ ] he has no ego no ego the he's not much older than all three of us well maybe a lot older than Jordy I forgot how young Jordy is but like it's incredible what this guy has done and you know I I I think more people should spend time studying him like we're g to um true we're going to do he already agreed to like we're going to do I had dinner with uh Daniel episode soon because I had an incredible dinner with him it was the most important you know what I [ __ ] think of him I get to meet a lot of incredible people last year was the craziest life year of my life that convers that conversation I had with Daniel was by far the most important because like he doesn't he sees no ceiling to what he can achieve and then he takes that self-belief and he transfers it to you which I think is very very important so I have no idea that they look what the [ __ ] have they've done in podcasting so far yeah um and they're going to continue to do what I would say if people are interested in learning more about Spotify they made I was just in Stockholm and I found this out they made a short series on the history of Spotify Sean Parker's in there Daniel's in there um it's called Spotify a product story it was out in like 2021 and I think it's eight or nine series eight or nine episodes and then they updated it later but you can just listen to the first ones and again everybody's talking about AI right in whatever I don't 2025 they they were talking about it half a decade ago they were using it half a decade ago they're just he's he's he's great that's all I have to say like two minutes left yeah uh question for you uh we're at a unique moment in time where it doesn't feel like the a lot of entrepreneurs can afford to not pay attention to geopolitics right there's there's been a lot of time in the last 20 years where it was the the generalized advice was focus on your customers you can kind of ignore everything else and if you're delivering value for your customers then you know you'll do well we're at a period where you know there's there's uh you know tariffs coming down it's impacting a lot of businesses you know here in the US and entrepreneurs who should those entrepreneurs study in the sort of Founders world uh in terms of you know uh question entrepreneurs and companies that had to navigate sort of like uh or does it not even matter right or is still this this is the biggest thing man like you're the problem is everybody so focused on on the present right and it it history allows you to like take a step back and have a perspective and instead of like being in front of your [ __ ] face all day long and so like here here's a great book uh I just did this episode it's like absolutely ripping it's called 400 pages of uh Munger and Buffett in their own words and in there it talks about the fact that you you could have bought cocacola you know in after World War II I'm making up the numbers but World War I for like nothing right and it went up by 10,000x since then or whatever the number is right and the point being is um Buffett's point was there's a lot of smart investors and other people and smart capitals that passed because they're like oh like there's all this uncertainty there's political uncertainties there's Wars there's pandemics so if you think about everything that happened from like 1910 to up until when he's saying this is probably like in 1990s you know you went through two world wars you went through multiple pandemics you went through all this turmoil you went through uh asset bubble asset collap collapses High interest rates low interest rates everything else he goes at the end of the day you know what mattered that 60 years from now they're going to be they're going to be serving a billion servings 8 on servings of coke a day and if somebody is making a billion people slightly happier every day by by serving this drink to them that person should make a little bit of money and probably will make a little bit of money so I don't I'm not actually a good person to ask that question surprisingly so because like the amount you guys know this is like the amount of what I don't ignore I figure that the important stuff like all know about war I know about pandemics but I have no idea like who's leading in the stock market I don't pay I don't like reading the news I don't do any of this because what what matters it's like I just stay focused on my customer right so if I wake up every day and I read for a few hours you know a biography of when off entrepreneurs and I sit down once a week and I talk to you for an hour and I just rip through idea after idea in an hour that you can listen to on 1.

5x speed so it takes 40 minutes of you right there's nothing else everything else elide my control I will get every I want in life and that I deserve if I just focus on that just focus delivering value as much as possible um yeah and another another way to look at this is if if you are if the company that if you're an entrepreneur and you're running a company that's not your last company it's the the the sort of geopolitical environment right now is hyper stressful right because you're thinking about oh I want to sell the company I want to exit and all that stuff but if you're thinking about you know still running the company in 20 30 years from now uh it really doesn't matter what happens in the next four years you just need to you know make it through and uh make okay de dead on I'm glad you said that because this just spawn another thought to me right where um for some reason and this has not been like on purpose I've spending a lot of money or lot I've spending a lot of time with like family offices and um and a world I didn't know anything about and I've been asking questions like who's the largest like American Family office and you know a lot of them were dispersed whatever the case was like highly likely it's The Waltons right you know Sam Walton's kids and grandkids uh I was if you if you pass the Miami Beach uh Marina right um if if you're coming from downtown to to the beach you'll see this giant boat I looked it up one day it was like Sam Walton's brother's daughter's boat right it's like bigger or ship bigger than anything else even remote in a giant um Marina and it's like it sticks out like a sord thumb so there's a great biography that I actually read um it's called Sam Walton America's richest man written by Van and it was actually published a year before Sam Walton's autobiography came out and he had a funny story in there because uh Sam was very private just focused on uh satisfying the customer and then everybody sees Walmart stock oh this is the richest man in America so during Black Friday that was I think 1987 right uh Sam doesn't have a cell phone he doesn't have a beeper he doesn't have internet right so he's driving Black Friday the retail no blackid or the act the stock market crash I just want to clarify cuz you're talking about a a retail entrepreneur good point also a big day yeah Black Friday biggest stock I think single day stock crash ever I assume that still holds a record and so anyways on paper he lost like a billion dollars right so he goes he's he's given a speech at like this charity event I think in Arkansas H for like kids or something and somebody he takes questions after somebody ask me questions like how does it feel to Lo lose a billion dollars in the stock market today and his his response was great he goes I didn't I didn't hear about it he like he didn't care just like I don't care I'm just like focused on my business I'm not selling the stock today I'm never selling it like like it all that matters is that he was he really he took a if you mean take a simple idea and take it seriously his dedication to that simple idea e everyday low price so edlp this is everyday low price let's just make sure we have the lowest price for our customers and so let's work backwards from that we just focus on that we'll do that forever and you fast forward and it's like one of the greatest if it was concentrated one person it might be one of the it is one of the greatest Fortune ever created by taking a simple idea and taking it very seriously it's fantastic David we love you thanks for joining thank you for joining uh expect uh expect us to send you a zoom link once a week forever because we're uh we're we all this is the best way to catch up I I love this yeah I feel like it robs people you just next time in California I got a suit up though oh yeah we'll do suit Hey where's you said you were going to frame where's that picture uh oh yeah we we're it's like the M it's like the Monger picture that we're going to do um we're getting a a picture of the poda the most powerful man in Miami David senra you really are the most powerful man in Miami we've been talking not even close not even close I don't know man I think to too you're acting like you've spending too much time with Eric you're too humble you're the most powerful man in Miami I think if you go to Miami you got to check in with sry you got to let him know not there he's he's yeah you got to email him we we'll drop his phone number we'll drop his personal address the comments and you can go stop by socializing invite him to really big events if it's crowded like a you know conference room Hall Las Vegas invite him to that that's where he's really in his element book signing you know podcast signing real quick before I go so our mutual friend Patrick always gets on me because he's just like he'll like try to connect with people like he's like David doesn't read his email like he's just unreachable and he goes why don't you have an assistant I go why do I need an assistant he goes to answer these emails and to like manage your schedule I go why do I need a schedule like I just need to wake up every day read for a few hours sit down once a week and talk about what I read I don't need to do anything else I don't need to do anything else it's that simple it was great this morning we actually published on our ex account that you were calling in and you hadn't fully confirmed you'd been like partially confirmed you saw that I was like David SRA calling in at uh 2m yeah I unless I'm absolutely indisposed by creating a podcast I will always answer for you guys you know that