David Senra on the obsessive focus of great entrepreneurs — Ferrero, FedEx, and the prolific output principle

there. Well, we have David Senra coming into the studio. We're going to ask him about VC marketing. We're going to ask him about the the New York election. We're going to ask him about all the things that you've been just waiting to get Senator's opinion on because he cares so much about current events.

That's all he cares about. It's venture capital and current events. Yep. That's his jam. Uh, what's going on? Can you hear me? Yeah. Yeah. The great the great Malibu Blackout of 2025. So, I went to our mutual friends and past esteemed past TPBN guest uh Rob Moore's house.

He's lucky enough to let me post up here on my laptop and talk to you guys. So, we got to thank Rob for this. Your neighbor, your neighbor, your neighbor. I was wondering if you if you were renting a house, how you got so many books uh lined up already, but it makes sense. Could you imagine?

No, I told him we were looking for places to to set up just now. I was like, "Dude, you can't beat this background. Like, this library that has this house is incredible. " The only thing I The only thing I don't like is when people um they organize their bookshelves by color. It drives me [ __ ] insane.

So, that's the only thing. Whoever designed this room, how prove that you don't actually read is just organize it by by pretty colors. It bothers me that you should or organize it by episode number like everybody else does, like I do in my house. Yeah.

But if not, if you're not making a podcast, what is the logical uh better way to order? Is it alphabetical? Is it by year? No, no, no, no. I used to do it by in order that I read it. And so you kind of see your interests evolve over time. Yeah, that makes sense. Interesting. Yeah.

And then you have a And then you have a separate separate like intake shelf for things that you haven't read. Yeah. I mean I mean the bottom half of my all my bookshelves the one that I record at my home like the the studio I use it's all unread books.

So it's like an order by episode number and then the bottom like I don't know two one third is just unread books and then anything out on any bookshelves in living rooms is all all unread books. I have like 600 now. I have to stop buying them. Yeah.

When when are you going to start are you going to start like printing and binding the materials that you put together for the for the shows the episodes that you do that aren't based on a single book? Yeah, I already do that.

So, I used to put them in binders and now now I actually send them to a print shop and they actually do like a spiral binding. I actually have something I'll give you a preview. I I don't think I've talked about this publicly.

Um I went to when I went to Charlie Munger's house, I knew I was like a biography amateur because he he made his own biographies. And so he I asked him I was like, Charlie, can I go through your bookshelf and there's two realizations of why like I no matter how long I do this, I'll never be as good as he was.

Is he doesn't take notes.

So like he would have like a random like word in like every you know 100 pages where I have to like run through all this stuff but at the very bottom because he told me that he thought that the the remember you always want to have me to come on here and have this debate about who's the greatest entrepreneur of all time.

The goat debate the goat debate. The goat debate. Charlie said that it's obviously Rockefeller and that Standard Oil is the best company ever created.

And there was this interview that Rockefeller did at the end of his life and the transcript of it is like 1,700 pages long and Charlie printed it out and put it into binders. Wow. And so I actually a friend of mine who does this podcast called the Rain Maker Pod, he found the 1700 page transcript for me.

And then so if you go to my house right now, it's going to take me [ __ ] months to do this, but I have a 1700 page essentially 1700 pages of Rockefeller's own words. So, that's probably going to be the longest episode of Founders I'll ever do. It's probably, you know, it's probably like five hours long or something.

So, yeah, I already do make them. Why wouldn't you just break it up into multiple episodes? Maybe I should.

No, I think I I don't think I think I would break it up into multiple recordings because sitting down if if if you see like if I do an hourong episode, right, that you know, usually I'll talk for like two or two and a half hours. Like I kind of do like you ever heard of Rick Rubin's idea of like the ruthless edit? Yeah.

I thought it was like really interesting. He's got this highlight when he went on Lex Freedman's podcast. I thought it was really good where he's working with an artist and he's like, "Hey, let's say you make 30 songs. Let's just assume we can only fit five on the album. What are the five best ones?

" And so then they put the five on. And I'm like, "Okay, if we're going to add to these five, that mean six has to be really good. " And so now you have 25 to pick through them. What's the six like the next one that's just as good?

Um, and I think going through and like ruthlessly editing everything is really important, especially if you want a high value audience because they just don't have a bunch of time to like just turn through [ __ ] It's just like your job. It's like what you're doing for them. Yeah.

There's something interesting there about like I I I've I don't have all the numbers, but I feel like some recording artists, you'll hear stats like there were 12 songs on the album and they recorded 200 songs before they cut them down.

So, this is actually the episode I want to talk to you guys about, which is uh Michael Ferrer or Mikuel Ferrer, but I'm not going to use the the American the English translation. Um, I mentioned that in the episode that being prolific is highly coordinated with greatness.

Just because you're prolific doesn't mean you're great, but if you're great at what you do, you're undoubtedly prolific. And so, um, I'm reading Bruce Springsteen's, uh, autobiography right now, and there's a lot of crazy stuff in there other than like the thing is like this thick, and he wrote it out by hand.

multiple times. He wanted to make sure every sentence was like should be in the book. And so he like the only way to force him to do that is to rewrite it. Like what kind of psycho does that? The psycho has probably, you know, recorded thousands of songs and only published maybe less than 10%.

Uh I just read Prince's autobiography, which is the strangest autobiography I've ever read. I can't even do an episode on it cuz I don't understand it. But when he died, he had so many uh unreleased songs in his vault, that he could release a new album every year for the next century. Wow.

So you see this over and over again with like Michael Ferrero who essentially like I'll just give you like the high level thing uh because most people have never heard of him and there's no biographies in English of him. So my friend Cameron Priest who's another psycho that reads all these other biographies.

He translated from Italian for me and uh Ferrero uh owned 100% of his company. Uh he the company does $20 billion a year in revenue. No outside shareholders. Um he worked on it from the age of 19 until he died at 89. So he has got 70 years of experience building his company. Um he vertically integrated the entire thing.

He went to like absurd lengths. He wound up monopolizing like hazelnut production in the world. So like one out of every three hazelnuts went to his company Ferrero. And then he also became the largest not only producer of hazelnuts but he also sold them to other companies. But underrated nut by the way.

It is it's a great one. Underd discussed. He this is the guy that invented Nutella. uh Tic Tacs, Ber O'Shea, uh the Kinder brand of chocolate. He's like the real life Willy Wonka. He would commute to work by helicopter because he lived in Monaco, right? This is something it sounds like Jordy would do.

Jordy came to my house yesterday and I'm watching up the hill and I see this the the TPBN all black Maybach come up and so Michael Pere pulling into your palatial house. Wait, cut that part. Um, so the the funny thing is this guy lived in Monaco, right? And um and he actually moved because he grew up in rural Italy.

He grew up poor, which is really fascinating. But there was all these kidnapping attempts in Italy. So he's worried about, you know, being he was the richest person in Italy for a very long time, one of the richest people in the world.

This the joke is like I titled the episode like, "Oh, Michael Fero and his $40 billion, you know, chocolate empire. " Cuz if you Google him, they're like, "Oh, Fo is worth 40 billion. " No, there's it's worth multiples of that.

the guy's doing like it's insane uh what that company would sell for and his son still owns all of it. Wow.

And so anyways, this guy would commute from he was so obsessed with quality he would commute from Monaco by helicopter and go to every single one of his factories where the product was produced and insist on tasting the the like what they're producing that day himself cuz he says like you have to control the quality yourself.

He was completely obsessed. But the reason I bring up the prolific part is because in his lifetime he ran tens of thousands of different experiments on different uh like mixtures of the stuff that he's making.

And in one case like they said hey he'd get in the tasting room which he considered like his secret laboratory at like 8 in the morning he'd stay till dusk.

they would cover like they'd run experiments all day on one single uh one of their products and they'd run like 70 to you know over a hundred experiments on on one single product each day.

So this like idea of being prolific you see it over and over again like how many how many three-point uh uh shots has Steph Curry put up in practice how many songs has Bruce Springsteen uh written how many different iterations did Steve Jobs do on his products throughout his lifetime it's it's just incalculable.

Yeah, the prolific thing is fascinating. I feel like there's there's a massive underrated hack in just doing something daily if you can work it into your lifestyle. Like I'll give you two funny examples. Uh are you familiar with Bele the NFT artist? So he made a 3D rendering every day for the first thousand days.

It was like it was multiple years. It was almost like a decade of work. And then and then he was he was at a point where his career was was taking off. He had been mentioned on Joe Rogan. his Instagram was growing. He was getting a consulting gigs to do uh motion design and rendering consultancy for like the Super Bowl.

Uh so he was like making good money as a as a commercial artist. Um but then when his work went to went went to auction during the NFT boom, he made $70 million like that. And it was just all the value. I think it was 69 million. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But he sold some other stuff.

So, I think he walked away with like 70 million. He famously like swapped it into USD immediately because he was like not I don't think he was like a crazy crypto person, but he just realized that like I've been building for this forever. This is the time to value capture and so I'm going to do it.

The other funny one is uh Jake Paul. Jake Paul has that has that rap song, it's every day, bro. often uh lam lamp lampuned online, but it really does if you if you flip it around to instead of asking the question of like do you like Jake Paul's work personally as an artist to just why is Jake Paul successful?

Why is he the name that we know? Uh it's very clear that he was vlogging every single day for years and got extremely extremely good at it and and and it built up this muscle where he can produce something and it just got better and better and better and better and better until he was able to just dominate the internet.

I there's a quote there's a clip going around about Michael Phelps about this where he you know on his run when he became the most dominant swimmer of all time he's just like if you any day that I took off I was put me behind two days and so this idea of just and he he went through like his schedule and then he's I forgot he he had the numbers like you know a couple thousand workouts per every like to get ready for Olympics like he count counted how many workouts that he did yeah there's actually um the idea of being prolific have you guys had Jackson doll on the show yet?

Not yet. We got him. Oh, we've invited him a couple times, but it it we're we're working on it. Our people are talking to his people. Okay, perfect. Cuz he actually has a tweet about this I think is really important. And um and I think Jackson's doing an excellent job.

Like he's one of the best he has one of the best new podcasts, Dialectic, and I've been talking to him a lot about his podcast as much as possible. I just saw him in New York last week, but he talked about that uh I'm just going to read this quote, read this tweet rather.

He says uh when you never linger anywhere or on anything, you don't get the chance to sink into the feeling of it to trace the grooves to notice what little details you love uh can be improved. And so Jackson from his posts and his podcast obviously he's a very soulful dude.

But I think one of the things I took away from Ferrero and any really like what I'm trying to do with the podcast is like hey they don't write biographies about people's lives that do something for like a year or two or five years.

It's like in almost any case at the very minimum you know it's two three four decades of their lives that they dedicated something and in Fau's case it's like seven decades.

So when he was able to improve I mean when I talk about vertical integration it's like he took it to another extreme which like I'm going to monopolize all the uh raw materials that my product needs. But then like he wouldn't he he also had to be one of the first people to massproduce chocolate.

And so he invented his own machines.

And so it starts out like you don't do that unless you're spending so much of your life thinking about what you're doing and focus this extreme level of focus and he applied it to marketing to distribution logistics to the machines that he built and he he talked about having a love affair he thought like the robots he built had soul the way he talked about it's really funny because he he comes of age in after World War II right so he's in his early 20s in post World War II Italy where there's not even electricity.

It's like hard. There was two machines that the company had that could that could had enough power to run electricity. At the beginning, everything else had to be done by hand.

And then when he started talking about this love affair that he has with these robots that make this product that he deeply loves and cares about, I'm like, "Oh, there's another obsessive guy that came of age after World War II, was almost the same age that was in Italy and that built one of the best brands in the world and worked until his die until he died.

" It was Enzo Ferrari. Ferrari literally Ferrari. Yeah. When when Enzo built his first car, it talks about in his biography, it's like he couldn't even find electricity. Imagine trying to build the best race car and you don't don't even access to electricity. Wow. It's just incre it's incredible.

And then if there's a great post uh picture on Twitter that's that I think I retweeted one time where it's like Enzo Ferrari's house that he builds right here and then around his house is the test track. Like what work life balance does this guy have?

He just like it's he's in his kitchen and my my my favorite thing, you know, people people hit 30 and they're like, "Oh, is it too late for me? " It's like Enzo didn't start Ferrari until he was 45. That's good. Well, he I don't know if he was it 45 he was working in in racing. The brand didn't start.

Well, he he the funny part about that is he didn't actually give a [ __ ] about the cars other than like he cared that they went fast and they won races, but he realized I just have to sell them to rich Americans so I can fund the racing. And so like there's we talked about this a few weeks ago when I was on here.

He has that great quote. He's just like, I don't care if the door gap is there. I just care that when the driver hits the gas, he shits his pants. It's great cuz he just wanted to go fast. Yeah. I want to dig into the idea of focus more.

Uh I was I was texting with someone earlier today and they were they were ask I was like they were like you you have so many opportunities you could start companies you could raise funds like why are you just focused on media and I was like well really like probably David Senra like I've studied all the history's greatest entrepreneurs and just kind of realized that they all focus.

So David Senra studied history we can study David Senra. Exactly. Exactly. But but really but I I felt like I was saying something so stupid and because I was just like well it's the pattern of success everywhere is that there's focus.

Um and and it's like it should be mind-blowing and let and yet we're talking to we're talking about people all all day long who like love your podcast but don't actually go in focus and they don't actually do it.

And so I'm interested in like the parameters of focus because uh uh Michael Ferraro uh Ferrero did did branch out into Nutella and Kinder and Ferrer Rocher and Tic Tacs, but it's all within the same empire and you've seen that with with Steve Jobs and and so there are areas where you can have multiple products within the same organization, the same focus, but your but your your your impact or the output is slightly different.

Um, and I think that people struggle with that because people will often justify, well, like having a having a fund and a and a startup and actually like three startups is all part of my focus on my massive empire. And it's like, are you really focusing is always the question.

I mean, I I think the person that's built the most impressive company in our lifetime is Jeff Bezos. Um, you know, like obviously I left SpaceX and I have Starlink in my house and all that other stuff.

Like if you look at like what he started out at, the just financial performance of it, like all the the complex logistics behind it and all the different businesses. And so like I just if you're going to do that, I just think you just just follow Bezos's lead.

Literally reread his shareholder letters, which I'm going to do every year. I think I've done four episodes on the now.

I think, you know, I think the greatest description of that was just like reading Bezos's shareholder letters is like uh the person like getting a uh like a history lesson from the person that mastered a high growth internet startup before the playbooks are written, you know, and he kind of like just tells you what he's going to do and then just goes and does it.

But for like Ferrero in his case, it's like it depends on your level of ambition. And I don't mean this is in like a derogatory way at all. Like I'm just happy like building like my little podcast that I'm completely obsessed with. Now my business can scale.

There's like millions and millions of people that listen to it. So like my impact can grow assuming I'm good at and other people tell. But like there's another life where I think Ferrero would be like a Jurro where he's just like no I'm just going to Jurro dreams of sushi.

I'm going to have a you know a 10 seat sushi restaurant in a a Tokyo subway. Uh and I'm going to be the best in the world. But Ferrerero had different ambitions where like he grew up poor. He never forgot what it was like to be impoverished. And his and everybody around him was like hey you're dominating Italy.

Like why don't you just stay there? And he's like, "No, I'm going to build a global brand. If we don't ex," he said this multiple times. He's like, "If we don't expand outside of Italy, then we have failed. " And he wanted to be one of the not only the best chocolate company, but he wanted to be one of the biggest.

And when he died, the day before he died, he actually dies on Valentine's Day, which is, you know, somewhat like ironic, maybe is the wrong word, but um he he wound up being the third largest uh confectionary business in the world the day before he died.

Um, and so yeah, I think it just really depends on like what you do. Now, there's also these this really interesting thing where like people do a bunch of small things and are are like they'll do like a bunch of small startups. It just depends on who you are as a person though.

Like I don't even really have an opinion on them other than like I am the kind of person that just wants to focus on one thing, work on it seven days a week, think about when I wake up, think about when I go to bed. I can't I'm just not interested in working on multiple things.

But I think so when people hear of my lifestyle and how I try to focus like I've heard people have literally told me they're like they find it disgusting like that lifestyle like they literally that's the word they use like this is disgusting like the world's a big place I have other interests and I'm like that's fine but I'm trying to like be narrowly focused and the best in the world at what I do.

And so I think you want to be the best in the world.

If you got distracted and you were you had a fund and you were spending all this time with LPs, you wouldn't have spent yesterday part of yesterday just reading which is allows you to just every day reading like before I met with Rob just now like you know we picked this time for a specific reason because every morning if you call me in the morning you know what I'm doing first of all it's going right to [ __ ] voicemail because my phone's on DND and I'm reading all my job is very s simple it's just like wake up every day wake up work out then read one of biography of fishers for 3 to four hours, then you can have lunch and then reread past highlights in the afternoon and then do it again over and over again seven days a week.

It's just like you couldn't get more simple than that. Yeah. There's also the element of like you probably shouldn't add a second thing or a second project until you've really nailed the first and you're creating something that's great and then you kind of earn the right to work on the second thing.

Like I'm sure that if I go through for uh the the history here like it's not like Nutella and Ferrero and Tic Tacs those were all the same year.

It's probably that Nutella was was absolutely an oiled machine a banger company doing great and then that earned the right to go kind of add on the second skew and still that's all within the same company.

So let let me give for example everybody I have la this week last week two months ago two years ago I have all the big publishers in my inbox saying please write a book please write a book because I also sell the podcast obviously sells a lot of books the audience is full of entrepreneurs investors entrepreneurs investors probably read a hundred times as much as the average population the average population doesn't read at all and all the best entrepreneurs and investors are reading all the time um and my idea was just like I'm never going to write a book because that's not a Now, there's a founders book being written right now.

I can actually tell a story because this has to do with this little company that I know you guys happen to know and are a big fan of called Ramp. Let's go. Um, so let me tell you a Ramp story. And I wish you guys would repost that video you had when you did the ramp. Ramp ramp ramp.

I got it on the soundtrack right here. You want to hear it? Yes. Can I hear it? Using ramp. We'll send you the file. We'll get it on Spotify. No, no. I I you should do it on Spotify. I I play I save the video and I play it for my son and like for a few days after that dude he ran around the house.

He doesn't even know what it is. Um and he knows like Kareem and everybody else like he plays with our sons play together. Um that's great.

So the the funny part was I'll tell you about the founders book and the issue of focus is um me and Patrick did this event at RAMP's um headquarters in New York and it's a guy named like Walter. I can't pronounce his name. Oh yeah.

But he's like this new podcaster guy and he's like he went and spent like thousands of dollars doing uh he listened to every single episode of Founders, spent thousands of dollars design work and then flew from like the Netherlands or some [ __ ] to New York to hand me the book.

He's trying to launch a podcast and like we we you know we talk about this all the time. Most people get in podcast and get really lazy. This guy like tried to do an episode with Andrew Wilson. Andrew's like, "Oh, sorry. " He like pushed him off. He's like, "Oh, I only do it in person. " He goes, "Okay, it's fine.

" Wter flies 15 hours, microphone in hand, does that interviews Eric Lyman, writes a 40page book on the history of ramp and gives it to him before the podcast. So I think I'm attracted to people that take what they do seriously and efforts always rewarded.

So the what happened was he shows up at this event and Patrick now knows what he did. I introduced him to Kareem and Kareem was there. Eric already knew him. And so after the event, me, Patrick, Kareem, and Eric spent time with this young kid. I think he's in his early 20s.

They think about the value of like getting Eric and Kareem's time. They're running a $16 billion company. Like all the crazy [ __ ] that's going on. Those guys work seven days a week. And now because you were so you had so much effort, you have these guys literally like counseling you and giving you advice for free.

And so what I told him, I was like, "Listen, if you are willing to make a worldass book, I'm talking about like like what our friend Eric Jorgensson did with the Almanac. That book changed my life. " Like I read that all the time.

I hand it out like it's candy and like if you want to build that for the stuff you feel you've learned on founders and it's you make something I comfortable reading that I want myself, I will advertise it for you for free on the podcast. Well, we have to put it for free just like what Nal did.

You put it anybody can read it for free online. If you want to buy a copy, you can buy a copy and any money you make off the book is yours to keep. I don't want to make money off off the [ __ ] book. I don't care about that. But I am interested in because people have asked for it. Uh, one, I I can't be the bottleneck.

Uh, two, you're willing to do all the work. And then I want something out there that, you know, it's a tangible like lessons for the for the podcast.

And I think it'd be cool to help this like young kid that's really trying to hustle and trying to like do something with this life and to be like to the degree that I can be like, "Hey," and I I already hear the ad in my head like I'll tell the story and just like if you you know have 20 bucks burning a hole in your product or whatever it is or in your pocket, whatever it is, like let's [ __ ] support this kid.

Like buy companies, buy them for your entire company. But uh yeah, that I I think that's a way to like get something into the world but not take away from the focus I must have on, you know, what I feel I was put on this earth to do. Love it. FedEx. Oh yeah, bro. I am so sad me and Rob are talking about that like that.

I didn't get a chance to meet Fred Smith when he he passed away. He's got the craziest I'm gonna um what I'm going to do is uh I'm going to re-edit that. It's episode 151 of Founders. When I read FedEx, uh Fred Smith's biography, which is one of the craziest biographies you can ever find. It's really hard.

The book is out of print. Um I I will read the opening paragraph for your audience real quick because I think it's like worth it's just people don't understand like everybody sees the planes, everybody sees the trucks, but they don't understand how difficult it was to build that company.

the opening paragraph when when when we were reviewing what the initial operation looked like, how capital intensive it was, how how crazy just like managing the the logistics, insane logistics dance, the idea that you could do that and make money. the hub and spoke model.

The the guy that wrote the book, his name is Vance Trimble. He also wrote um a biography of Sam Walton and he wrote Sam Walton first then Fred Smith and he goes, "Oh my god, like I thought Walmart was difficult to build.

" But Fred, but FedEx is like if you had to build Walmart, you could build one Walmart at a time then expand. He's like the analogy he used in the book was like FedEx is like if you had to from day one you had to have a thousand Walmarts or it doesn't work. Let me just read this opening paragraph because it's so nuts.

Um, the guy that does my short form videos, which I think are really, really good and I think he's a [ __ ] genius, just sent me literally right before I got on, he texted me one that he did on Fred Smith. So, I'll put it out later today.

Um, but this is the opening paragraph of the create, this is still the craziest beginning of any biography that I've ever read. And it says, "At age 30, Fred Smith was in deep trouble. His dream of creating Federal Express had become too expensive and was fast fizzling out.

He had exhausted his father's Greyhound bus millions. He was in hawk for 15 or $20 million more. He appeared in danger of losing his cargo jet planes and also his wife.

His own board of directors had fired him a CEL and now the FBI accused him of forging papers to get a $2 million bank loan and he was and trying to send him to prison. He thought of suicide. That's the first paragraph in the book. Like insane the such he lost his dad at four. He's a a Vietnam war veteran.

He had written about FedEx in college, got an average grade on it. Took a decade to get from the paper to the actual business corporation. You have you have people like Michael Dell who's, you know, one of my personal heroes and wrote one of the best autobiographies I've ever read.

And in his autobiography, he talks about Fred Smith being a hero of his. Like, it's just insane. And there's another paragraph that says, you know, thinking of suicide is ridiculous. uh he's much more likely instead of jumping out a window, he's more likely to throw you out of a window.

He was just like a relentless dude that was like, you know, just unbelievable high Thomas for pain and just refused to quit on this dream of his. And again, like I I just personally find those stories like very inspiring.

It's like, dude, like this guy if this guy can succeed in in under those circumstances, like surely we can keep going on whatever B2B SAS app we're building. a lot of this. Come on. That's amazing. Uh, you want to wrap it up there? Move on. What are you thinking? That was great. This was fantastic.

We'll see you soon, David. I'll see you later. Um, real quick, I just tell you guys every time I see you, I'm excessively proud of everything you guys have done over the the last six months. Uh, I absolutely love what you've done with TPBN. I'm going to say it every single time you let me on your show.

Uh, I think you guys are killing it and I don't expect to see anything different or any I I expect to see you continue to do that for many many years to the future, but I tell you guys privately I'm really proud of you, but I want to tell you publicly. Super proud of you guys and very happy that to call you friends.

We feel the same way. Thank you, David. We love you. All right, I'll see you next week. Uh, John, I'll see you later. I'll see you later. All right. Yeah, come next. Cheers. Bye. Uh, speaking of B2B SAS, let's tell you about Adio, customer relationship magic.

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