David Senra on Jony Ive's obsessive design philosophy and what OpenAI is really buying for $6.5B

DAU. I was talking to Quaid Yeah. friend and one of the co-founders and he was like, "Yeah, a lot of like a lot of people actually daily are just DAUs. " Yeah. Regardless if they're like actually shopping right away. Well, we got David Senra from Founders Podcast coming into the studio. Welcome to the show.

How you doing, David? What's up, guys? Uh, before we begin, I have to apologize for not wearing a suit, but I think you'll make an obsession an exception because I'm wearing a ramp shirt. Oh, there we go. Let's hear it. Switch your business to ramp. com. Save time and money. Um, how you doing? What's the latest there?

There used to be this thing I I mean, it's probably still a thing where David like would you would you'd be happy to meet somebody, but the one requirement was that they listen to founders. Eventually, it's going to be you listen to founder and your business runs on ramp. I won't take it.

And if you don't check both boxes, not happening. No shot. No shot. That's hilarious. Anyway, what's the latest? Uh, did you did you read the Bloomberg article uh about Johnny IV joining Open AI? Okay. No, you tell me what's going on.

I just got a bunch of text messages about this and I think there's something related to Steve Jobs coming back to Apple we could talk about too. That's interesting. But no, I have no idea what's happening. Please.

So the article is obviously like it's amazing in the sense that it's Johnny IVive a $6 billion acquisition huge number 2% of open AI equity going over to Johnny Iive and his team but the and it's also super interesting because they're going to build a hardware device for chatbt for for AI an AI first hardware and if there's any team that can break through with a consumer electronics product it's got to be Sam Alman and Johnny IV right like they are an incredible combination to go after this.

At the same time, the article basically said nothing. And and they put out a 9-minute video and it's just them saying, "Oh, he's one of the most thoughtful individuals. He's one of the best people to work with. His family's amazing. " And they're just talking about like how much they like love working together.

And it doesn't actually give us any advice on like or any guidance on like is it a phone, is it a watch, is it going to fold, is it big, is it small. That's very Steve Jobsesque. He'd be very proud. Uh, listen, I guess going into this like I I'm an unadashed like Johnny IV uh fan.

Okay, there's actually an excellent uh biography of him that I think everybody should read. I read it like five years ago. If you want to um listen to the podcast I did on, it's episode 178 before you you get the book, but I'd highly recommend reading the entire book. Um, yeah.

I just I think uh if you think about like the conversation we had this morning uh about taking things very seriously. I facetimed you guys at like 6:30 in the morning and you're in your studio like getting ready and preparing. You're sitting in these exact seats. Yep. Yeah.

Like I I think that's one of the things that jumps out in Johnny's uh biography is just like his intolerance for a lack of effort. So, like there's a great story. Um, I just pulled up a bunch of my highlights from um the book, but when Johnny was in design, he was studying industrial design.

Um, I think it was in England. And there's this great line where a friend of his comes over, they have a project, right? And they're making these like foam pro prototypes of a product they're designing.

And he goes in Johnny's apartment and he found over a hundred foam model prototypes where most students would build half a dozen. So the normal expectation is, hey, I'm gonna make six prototypes of this, you know, new design for this product I'm doing. And Johnny's like, yeah, [ __ ] that. I'm doing a hundred.

And I think when you read the book, you it makes sense. Like, um, I just tweeted this out where it's actually Steve Jobs. Uh, let me pull it up. Steve Jobs talking about Johnny. And he's talking about Johnny with Walter Isacson, and he's writing the book with Walter Isacson as he knows he's dying.

And he calls, you know, he says that essentially if he had a spiritual partner at Apple, it would be Johnny. He's not just a designer. That's why he works directly for me. He has more operational power than anyone else at Apple except me. And there's no one who can tell him what to do besides Steve.

Um, so again, I always think of like actions express priorities, like one of my favorite maximums. And Steve is telling you, you know, he had this probably the highest bar of talent out of anybody that's ever maybe anybody's ever existed. Yeah. And he's saying, "This is the best guy. This is my number two.

" Uh yeah, I think that like speaks volumes about like what he thought of in terms of uh Johnny's talent. Yeah. I mean, I it's it's so interesting because uh I guess the o I guess the open question in my mind is does Johnny IV need a Tim Cook figure to do what he does?

And what I mean by that is that obviously Tim Cook's been the CEO of Apple for over a decade now, but he was a supply chain mastermind and Johnny IV could throw a crazy idea out there like an aluminum mil unibody design for the MacBook Pro and Tim Cook was able to actually go get it done.

And in the new era of global competition with China, faltering relationships and not a legacy at open AI around hardware manufacturing, which is a unique skill set, can Johnny Iive actually deliver a product that gets into the hands of millions of consumers with the quality that Apple is known for without a Tim Cook-like figure.

Will we see another acquisition? Steve Jobs needed a Tim Cook figure. I think anybody does. So like yeah, the answer is of course he does. Like we'll have we have no obviously no idea what they're going to build.

Um what I think is just interesting is which way more applicable to like us and the people that are listening is just like to study I I just tweeted this back at Sam Par from my first million. It's like you don't copy the what, you copy the how.

And so I think the important thing of like yeah, you could hypothesize of like what Johnny's going to build or you could just like, hey, how does this guy approach like his life and work? Is there anything that he said in there that I could actually use?

And I think that's like much more interesting to me than be like, can you predict what's going to happen with this thing that they told no details about and that like who knows? I don't know. Like can they build hardware? Who the [ __ ] knows? Like we're gonna find out. That's the fun part.

Uh but yeah, I'm not into like prediction. I'm just like we'll see. Yeah. So, I mean, he wasn't a founder at Apple. Uh, he became a founder with by founding IO and, uh, his his love for his agency. Uh, now he's back in the senior executive role.

Can you tell me a little bit about his management style, how hardcore he is, anything that ties to Johnny Ives like living like founder mode or any of those kind of uh, ties to other executives? kind of what we might expect or what we might pattern match against. Is it just Steve Jobs or are there other people?

I think he had like I would argue like you know equal to um sense of like a high threshold for quality that Jobs did.

I was just listening to the episode I did five years ago on Johnny's biography and it's like talks about it's like they they thought very similar about design and products and they were very much partners you know almost like a co-founder relationship is that I know that'd be controversial but like that's the way I would think about it like how deeply they were working together.

Um, but what I say is he's like much more diplomatic where Johnny's like, you know, we could do better than this and Steve Jobs like this is [ __ ] Get it out of my face.

And and part of that they I think they hypothesized his biographer hypothesizes that it's like, you know, his his growing up in England like his just more reserved and quiet manner.

Um, but what I loved is I think the very beginning of the book, uh, the the the author is interviewing him and he he was and this is even before he was going to write a book on him. He was just covering Apple at the time. I think he was a reporter if I remember correctly.

And he just like wanted a sound bite on this new Apple product and he says, "I just wanted a sound bite. " But he launched into a passionate 20-minute soliloquy about his latest work. I could barely get in a word edge-wise. He couldn't help himself. Design is his passion.

Um, and I think that's just he's just obviously completely obsessed and willing to like work hard. There's another thing that um I thought it was interesting. He calls it attention to invisible details.

Uh he says, "I've uh Johnny cared deeply about the parts users would never see, believing that quote care was taken even on details hard and soft that people may never discover. " And he says that he was fanatical uh he he he provided a fanatical care beyond the obvious stuff.

Um so these just like that's why I'm just a huge fan of anybody like this. I don't care if you're building the iPhone or you're making a pizza. Like just I I'm very attracted to and obsessed uh with people that take whatever they're doing very very seriously.

It's funny that the opposite is is Enzo who's like I don't care if the door panels align. I care if the driver shits his pants. That's I I would actually argue that they're very similar because Enzo remember like Enzo was building a race car.

He wasn't building like he wasn't trying to it just happened that when they were winning all the races then you have all these consumers say hey I want a Ferrari though too. But I would actually think like what they both share in common is they keep the main thing the main thing. Yeah.

And in Enzo's cases he's not trying to buy build a luxury product. He's trying to literally make the fastest car that he didn't give a [ __ ] about Ferrari the actual auto manufacturer if you read his biography. And in fact, the longest book I've ever read for founders. Let me see if I can find it real quick.

Uh was a thousandpage biography of Enzo Ferrari. Enzo. No way. And it's it was just republished. Same author. Uh this book is excellent. It's Enzo Ferrari by Luca Damonte. So this used to be a thousand pages. No one bought the goddamn book because no one wants to read a thousand pages.

So they edited it down to 450 pages. Um yeah. So, so if you you know Enzo's one of my favorite founders I've ever I've done like three or four uh Johnny IV at Lovefro his his design consulting agency. One of their biggest clients is Ferrari today. I didn't know that. And so there's probably some linkages here.

So So can you give us a little bit more about what we can expect? We were joking about maybe OpenAI should just the device the device integrate with the Ferrari and and and and you just need to buy a Ferrari if you want to access the premium tier of chat GPT.

You can only access You should only experience it saddle leather of a Ferrari. That that that that will only work if they're going to do a collaboration with TBBN. I think that's a Oh, sorry. I I I I can't do my homework today. Uh my Ferrari's in the shop this this summer.

I'm going to I'm going to force you to go to the the Ferrari dealer in LA and uh get one because if you're really such an Enzo fan, you should have a Shouldn't you be honoring his legacy every time you go to the grocery store? It's funny.

I would I drove past the uh my daughter used to go the my the do my the school my daughter used to go to was actually next door to a Ferrari dealership in Miami which is like the most Miami thing ever, right? Super Miami.

But there's a great I tweeted it out when I passed by the other day because it says uh he had this great line where he's like uh passion can't be explained. It can only be lived. And I was like oh that's like a really good uh way to think about the way he lived his life.

But when he finished that thought it's just like his primary thing was just like I want the fastest race car in the world. And so that's what he meant. and he's like, "I don't give a [ __ ] if the doors don't line up. I just when the the race car driver hits the gas, I want him to [ __ ] his pants.

" Which is also [ __ ] hilarious quote. Yeah. I wonder what the AI equivalent of that is. Like what is the Ferrari of AI models right now? Because they're all kind of I'm personally I'm personally very excited about this.

Uh I was just talking to our mutual friend Patrick from Invest Like the Best and we both feel very similarly. It's just like I don't want to look at screens all day long. So I know you had um you had that guy that's building friend. His name escapes me at the moment. Avi. Yeah.

Just this idea like I'm not saying I want to wear something around my neck or have glasses on my face, whatever, but anything that would kind of get me out off of looking at screens. Like I'm I'm very uh like I would buy it day one just to test it out. Yeah.

John was saying like maybe a Walkman style device with wired headphones, you know, kind of analog but just piping the AI right into your brain. Maybe a football pack. It's interesting. I I was thinking it's like Elon, what is Elon's AI hardware plays? One is Optimus, right? But then the other is actually just Neuralink.

He's like, I want to jump, you know, he's he could say, I want to jump to like the end state, which is like human and computer become one. Pretty crazy. Yeah. I I want the opposite of that.

Um I did this episode on Christopher Nolan and I it was very fascinating because this guy makes some of the most high-tech movies of all time. They're very difficult to make and yet he lives a complete like analog life.

Uh one of the famous famous anecdotes from his biography was hilarious where he doesn't have an email, doesn't even carry he carries like a normal flip phone, won't use GPS, like goes to a new city and has to like feel his way around and ask for directions and everything.

But the funny part was he would people, you know, send scripts everywhere. So they're like, "Oh yeah, just like I'll read your script. Email to me. " He's like, "I'm going to fly on a plane tomorrow and I'll be at your house at noon and he'll hand you the script if he wants you to be in the movie.

" And then he sits there and stares at you while you read it and then you're done. You talk about it and then he takes the script back and leaves. There's no other copy. Yeah, man. Everybody's got to figure out their own integration for what they want for technology. I want to disappear in the background.

Many cases like if you study this book and again I would order the book. I would definitely read it. It's worth it. Especially because it's going to play a [ __ ] huge role at one of the most important companies in the world right now. Totally. Um but I I I just like I want a more like I want technology to disappear.

I do uh there is some quotes in the book that might be fascinating that kind of answers your question John. I didn't mean to like sideskirt at all, but as far as like what he how he thinks about design, it says he takes big chances instead of evolutionary approach to design.

And if they focus grouped any of his designs, this is a description of him in college. It was also accurate when he went to um Apple. And if they had focused his designs, they would they wouldn't have been a success. So he's not looking for like really wasn't interested in like any kind of like iterative design.

Uh he wants something that looks completely different.

And there is a weird uh story I think some people might find it odd story from his uh college days when he was studying design that he talked about that the best physical objects they they are very inviting to the touch that humans have this I forgot what he called it like an obsession he has a word for it but essentially obsession with touching things and uh so he was asked to like design a pen and people like okay I'm going to write you know upside down or it never runs out of ink he's like no but what if people do a pence.

Like anybody holding a pen in their hand, they're like clicking it. They they move it around. He's like they want to I didn't think he said this word, but they want to finger it for lack of a better word. So they like play with it a lot.

Um and so yeah, any kind of physical device that he makes, I think isn't going to just be like, oh, this kind of looks like an iPhone. I think it's going to be like drastically different. Yeah, it's a big challenge.

Um, and I mean he he's pulled away from Apple a lot of the people that were integral to so to the magic of of the devices, the MacBook, the iPhone, all these things. I'm really excited to see it. 2026 can't come soon enough. Uh, what about Jim Simons? You did a recent show about him.

Uh, very different from Johnny IV, but what are the similarities? Because you think about a hedge fund versus a consumer electronics manufacturer. I imagine that there are no similarities and yet I imagine you found some. How much would you pay to rip a heater with Jim Simons and Johnny once?

I mean that's a priceless heater right there. That's potentially a seven figure heater. This is why I think I got so many text messages and they linked me to whatever article today. Uh because OpenAI essentially what bought Johnny's company.

Johnny was the founder and it's for like six billion or something I guess is the thing. And everybody said the same thing in the text messages like how much money did Apple pay to like buy back Steve Jobs. Yeah. And this is one of the thing that Jim has in common, Rockefeller has in common.

Bezos suggested Bezos shareholder letters which I think is a really good episode. Michael Dell over and over again. It's like this idea of like you you absolutely must work with the highest quality people you can and everybody [ __ ] says that and nobody does it because it is so hard to do it.

And one of the reasons I also uh Brad Jacobs talks about this like you have to overpay for talent because it's nearly impossible to overpay for talent. So the obviously the canonical example of that is hey uh Apple's going to buy next for 500 half a billion dollars.

They paid essentially half a billion dollars to rehire Steve Jobs and they got the deal of a century. Nobody's going to look back at what Steve did like, oh you overpaid it. It just doesn't happen.

So Jim, the crazy thing about Jim and then actually me and uh a mutual friend of ours that I can't name just stayed up till like 2 in the morning talking to this guy uh that works at Citadel and it was very fascinating like Ken Griffin was the same exact way.

We was like I heard some of the competition for his top people and guess what like they would blow I think it would shock how much money they make but then you look at their performance it's like direct essentially Ken won't cap their compensation.

So like if you make him more money, you're like unlimited money that you'll uh that you'll get because of he understands the the talent. So the thing about Jim is that's that's nuts, right? Is he churns through partners and you know people say Jim Simons had a hedge fund. I don't think about as a hedge fund.

I think he had a magic money machine. Like it was very different than normal. You know, the the fund made well over a hundred billion dollars in profit and it continues to make from what I understand, you know, many many billions in cash flow every every single year and there's no outside money.

It's just owned the only money's in there was Jim's family's money and then you have to work at Renaissance. Yeah. Uh and then if you quit they they you have such low turnover is because if you quit you can't invest in the medallion fund anymore. You're never gonna quit. Go invest your money somewhere else.

But but the crazy thing is so what I'll do is like the fascinating thing is Jim is like churning through partners because it takes him decades of trial and error to to actually get the system that he wants. But then he would talk about and he talks about this when he's an older man too.

Uh he'd give interviews much older because he wasn't doing that when he was younger. But he's just like you have to work with the very best people and when you identify that person you have to just put all the effort you possibly can to convince them to work for you. Okay? A lot of people understand that.

But then you go look up the people he identified and it's just like he hired nothing but mathematicians and physicists and you like yeah it's not just like some professor at in a math department somewhere. It's like this guy has a theorem named after him and he had there's a law named after him.

It's like literally the top of the top of the top of the top um because they were you know made hundred billion dollars plus with 300 anywhere from what I've heard 250 to like 400 employees. So a very very tiny team, small team relative to the profits produced of just unbelievable A players.

And I I have to imagine that's what you know people at Open A are doing. It's like well who's the best in who's the best designer in the world? If we're going to build our own product, who would you go and get and Yeah. Yeah. 2%. It's totally worth it. That's what I was saying. It's a big number, but it's a big company.

It's a big opportunity. And of course Josh uh Josh Kushner was already in IO. So now he's getting so now he's getting uh more open Thrive gets more of Open AI. But um but anyways, speaking of mathematicians, we got Scott Woo. Yeah, we got Scott Woo from cognition coming in. I'm jealous. I love Scott. Big fan of his.

Have you guys ever played uh the video of him at a math competition when he's like 12 on the show? I mean, it's been viral sometimes. cuz we haven't played it on our show, but it still plays in my mind, but it's excellent. We'll bring him in to the studio. Thank you so much for stopping by. Yep, of course.

See you guys soon. Love you. Thanks for having me. Talk to you soon. I love you, too. Bye. Love you, too. Bye. Uh, and we'll bring Scott in in just a second. Jordan, you want to kick off the intro? Take a quick break and uh maybe do some ad reads, talk about his former employer, ramp. com. Switch your business to ramp.

com. John, use the restroom. Use the restroom. Get out of here. No dead air. No dead air. We do not stop