David Senra calls in: Bill Gates was the most hardcore founder — worked 36-hour stretches, studied photos of competitors

everyone everyone goes for it. Uh Gary Tan had a post. Uh AI startup founders tout a winning formula. No booze, no sleep, no fun. But Gary Tan disagrees about the no fun though. And this is from the Wall Street Journal. Um San Francisco. This is the vibe right now. Startup founding.

And we talked to a few of these folks. One of these guys came on the show uh just uh at YC Demay actually. So uh fascinating.

And and this was uh this was a second uh this was clearly like a a story that was inspired by that previous story of that that that founder who said that the vibes 996 no run hard lift heavy marry early that whole that whole viral quote.

Uh this is uh probably like downstream coverage of that but uh in San Francisco startup founder Marty Kaussus was at the office on Sunday. Where else would he be? Uh, Kaus is 28 years old. Recently posted on LinkedIn that he put in three 92-hour weeks in a row.

He went on vacation once, he said, but flew home early because he was too stressed about work. His goal is to build a 10 billion dollar company in 10 years. The motive isn't purely financial. There are easier ways to make money. This uh it isn't part of a social mission either. We built customer support software.

Uh it's not like this grand vision that we're saving the world somehow. He compared his pursuit to a board game, one he wants to win. I could be a programmer working at a big tech company, he said. But that doesn't sound cool. Instead, he raised $51 million for Pylon, an AI startup he co-founded. Congrats gone for that.

Um, yeah, I was just reflecting on this this this whole vibe and the coverage of this vibe and thinking about when I got to Silicon Valley and what was similar and what was different. And so, you didn't have a PR person working overtime coverage. That was your mistake.

John, I I know you only raised like 17 grand in your first round. Raised $17,000 and uh there was no concept of going to the office because the office was my bedroom and my co-founder lived in the same bedroom as me.

So, we had two beds in the same room and we would wake up and go sit at the same desk next to each other. That's like a real lock in because you don't even have a private life, right? Like there's not you have nothing. Nothing.

It's purely like there was there's one local bar that we went to once in Sunnyvale because there was nothing to do. But we would we would go outside and we'd throw the football. Pig skin. Yeah, the pig skin.

We would go outside and get some sun and throw the football back and forth and then go back inside and just program. And my and my day was literally like wake up at noon and because you don't have any calls, wake up at noon, program until 4:00 a. m. , fall asleep, do the same thing the next day, seven days a week.

And there was no there was no alternative. And there's other like we were also in this weird I mean also I wasn't 28. I was I was 21 at the time.

It's funny because saying like I put in like three like obviously respect to Marty but saying I put in three 92hour weeks is another way you could say like for the last 3 weeks I've slept and ate and done normal human things for about 12 hours a day. Yeah. And the other 12 hours I spent working. Yeah.

It doesn't hit the same as three, you know. Yeah, it is. It is. It is wild. Um, but I don't know.

I mean, in in general, like if this is a if this is there was there was a time in Silicon Valley also that uh you could raise enough money that you could just immediately be on like a party circuit and like clearly this is a step in the right direction away from that is like actually take the business seriously.

So hugely bullish overall.

Uh it's just funny like thinking about like like the money flowing like there were not that many companies that in 2012 that were raising uh like double digit millions but then there weren't that many companies making money like we certainly weren't we had no users so like who was going to fund us like $17,000 was the right amount of money to give us like and also like it's not like we were being recruited by big tech like if I tried to get a job there no the capital markets were efficient they were they were like it was like I didn't deserve 17K.

I wasn't that experienced.

Like I was just trying to, you know, like do something, build build a Yeah, it is a it is a, you know, it's very real that like a lot of founders would benefit from like having their first fund raise be like $100,000, which is just enough for them to like hack for two years and not have to get a job.

But the current the current state of the capital markets means that if you're like talented and charismatic and compelling and you have an interesting idea, you can get at least a million, probably well beyond that. Um, you know, at demo day, like it was very obvious for the most part when you could tell.

I pretty much was guessing every time. I was like, "Let me guess your rounds. " Closed. Closed. Yeah. Um, I mean, yeah. in in in 2012 like I think there were probably like five or 10 teams that like raised solid rounds coming out of like an 80 team batch.

Like it was it was not it was not snap your fingers and the money shows up. The I mean the hottest like most overheated round was done at like 60 and everyone was like this is a bubble like this is insane. There was one company most what company was that?

It was a company called Virule and they were actually really good at viral videos and they they were great at video production and they'd built an ad network and were doing sort of like some programmatic ads.

So, it was more like an ad business than like I I don't think they ever fully stuck the landing on like becoming like a major platform. Like I I don't think that they IPOed or anything.

I know the founders's done quite well and has I think a number of businesses, but uh um they they launched a few like extremely great launch videos. They I feel like they almost you could almost go back and credit them with like creating the original launch video. You should look up vir by rule. Yeah. V V I R O L.

And the whole idea was like they would get you to go viral and so you would pay them and then they did it's still a I mean it's still it's still going. It's still cooking. Well, Alex Debalov I believe is the founder. Uh great guy. Um still have 50. LinkedIn says uh I don't know this company looks pretty dead. Okay.

Well, but uh I mean oh it's it's now called uh I guess it was a I mean the founder it was super young and and I met him in college and you know was just like he really was the type of person that you would want to fund at 60 because like he was making money in his dorm room like handover fist too like had actually scaled the ad network and was like bringing in real revenue and real profits.

It was just maybe like it wasn't necessarily going to turn into like, you know, AdWords because he didn't have like a Google attached to the front of it. It's still like super impressive business, right?

Um, but they had worked with this uh video production company called Glass and Barker, which I wound up working with later.

Sort of like a precursor to Sandwich Video, a precursor to a Jason Carmen production, and was particularly good at uh at creating this like just super cinematic like Hollywood level video production for like a launch video. Uh, and they they they put out a few that were really good.

I remember that like SWAT team going in pulling in like this like blue uh this like blue goo that was like radioactive and it was like you got to get the formula to go viral. Uh it was great. Are you throwing them on there? You're throwing them on there. Vy rule. V I r O L.

Alex Dealov, if you want to come on the show and tell us the full story, uh hit me up. Uh the moon. Probably the moon. Well, yeah, they were they were going to the moon.

Um yeah, the other funny thing that I I I like is this uh so like uh you know the the these teenagers that they interview interviewed said uh the brass ring is a trillion dollar company with a global user base to grab it.

They rarely drink, scoff at work life balance and are locked in a 247 competition to be or appear to be the most obsessed. Um the there's a framing there's a one framing which is like I don't drink because like it's like I've done the research and it's a carcinogen and it's bad for my health.

Um, there's another one which is like I I don't drink because it's like sacrificing because like I care about work. Like for me and my friends is like we would drink every drop of alcohol that we could afford. It was just not that much.

And so we had like three beers a month because like that was what we could afford and we and we did not we it was like yeah like if we're going to Costco and getting like a huge box of ramen like it's going to be a consideration if you take the 30 rack in the in the bag.

That's going to hurt your burn rate when you're on $17,000 for 6 months. Like an extra 30 bucks in beer is like material. It's it's a serious deal. Yeah. I was hacking Chipotle, you know, with the like double beans, double rice because it didn't add anything.

And then and then you're not being like, "Yeah, throw a Corona in there with my with my meal at Chipotle. " No way. Um but uh I used to go to I used to go to um this is will be funny to you now, but I used to go to the the first like 20 trips I took to Arowan. I didn't go in the building.

I would just bring jugs of water to fill up in this thing outside. And I'd pull up with my car that had like 200,000 miles on it and just like just be like, you know, carrying these huge jugs of water. Uh it's fond memories. Here's here's the trade-off. Um why would I go to drink at a bar if I can be building a company?

Um I mean it is the right tradeoff and it is the thing that you don't want to lose as the capital markets loosen, right? This is such a this all the people that are uh screenshotting this article, why would I go drink at a bar if I could be building a company?

That is a really Yeah, it it there is a little bit of this that's like uh that's like the the whole the whole question the Wall Street Journal is clearly asking here is like I don't even like I don't like bars and I don't like drinking, but this is still a funny quote. Yeah. Yeah.

No, I I I understand what you're saying and I understand what people are are are are screenshotting it about, but the the the interesting thing is like if the money starts flowing in Silicon Valley, like the thing that you would definitely not want to lose is like the time in the office, like the time actually working.

Like that's the worst thing to lose. Um and so and even even if you have to justify it in this like, you know, psychological way. Yeah. Uh it's it's good not to lose that.

Uh because as soon as you actually go to the bar every night like you're definitely not building I was thinking I was thinking like I've always felt I had you know somewhat of a balanced life, right? I have a we we we realistically we work like 60 hours a week and that like we leave home at somewhere around 5.

It's pretty balanced. Get home around 5:30. Um and then obviously working randomly on on you know nights, weekends etc. But I was thinking you know people say like social life, work like you know family like pick two. Yeah.

And I realized recently took me a while to realize like how much I sacrificed like my like social life, right?

cuz I feel like I have a social life at work and and um I'm lucky that uh a lot of the people obviously consider every person on our team a friend and uh and the people that I invest with her are friends and the people that I work with are friends but um yeah, you do have to this this is just um this culture of like sacrifice everything but the company works really well when you're 20 when you're when you're in your early 20s, mid20s depending on when you I think we I think We found the ultimate killer in this article.

Uh, Hassab Oola, he works out of Founders, Inc. , a waterfront campus in Fort Mason that provides desks, a hardware lab, game room, uh, stage area for hackathons. He lives on one Uber Eats meal per day to save time and avoid cooking.

Uh, Oola pays $700 a month to live in a former office building that was converted to a living and workspace for about 20 residents. The beds, which are clustered in a common area, are fully enclosed pods. He literally lives in the pod um with a privacy curtain similar to a train sleeper car.

With the curtain shut, his pod gets pitch black, letting him sleep days after working all night. This guy is a killer. I'm betting on him. I love this is not a LAR. $7 a month is so little to live on in San Francisco. I assume that's where this is. Founders Inc. Fort Mason. He's living in the pod.

He's living in the pod. He's locked in. It is funny. It is funny to do to do. Shout out to this guy. You would think he could maybe eat two meals if he didn't do Uber Eats and he just walked to to grab some food, but it's too locked in. Too locked in. Yeah, I I think it's probably worth the tradeoff.

Um but yeah, I mean this is still I got to put I got to I got to say like getting delivery is still an extreme luxury. Still a luxury.

back in back I would not when when when I I would not I was like on a like once a week like treat yourself to to Chipotle type of thing and otherwise it was like yeah there's we have like chicken breast and rice at home.

No no no like you know in my own head being like you know the quote the meme of like your your your mom says you have you know XYZ at home but that was like in my own head I be like I have food in the fridge I'm not I'd be and I'd be guilty, you know, being, you know, ordering uh ordering delivery.

No, I I remember one one one night I was up like really late working. I boil some water in a in a pot to make ramen and I and I got sucked into a coating problem and I let the water boil and evaporate and it destroyed the pan and it was like that's our capex out the window. devastating hit to depreciation.

Like we were expecting to depreciate that asset over two years and now we have to buy another pan. Like what are we going to do? We don't have a pan. Pans are expensive. Money doesn't grow on trees. You know, we only have 17K. This is rough.

Um Kous the guy uh the the original guy from Pylon um is on the Brian Johnson diet. Okay. So, well, he's raised $51 million. And I and to be clear, I do think that like all of this is proportional.

Like if your business has grown to the point where you can raise 10 million or 50 million, like you do not be you do not need to be living in the potty. Like pay yourself a reasonable wage.

As soon as we raised real money and were making real revenue, like we were in like decent apartments with cleaning and like with And it's amazing to feel like you you you have like a relatively the the lifestyle of like a corporate athlete or or even just an entry level corporate athlete, but it still feels like a massive luxury 100%.

Like my 800 ft in a when I moved Yeah. When I first moved to LA, I had a my apartment. It was a It was a um two-bedroom apartment that I I had a roommate. So, I felt lucky to have my own room, but I had no windows in the room because the window opened up to like a common area at at eye level.

So, if I had my if I didn't have like I literally put cardboard up. If I didn't have cardboard up, people would just see into my bedroom. I was like, and then uh that's hilarious. Super dark. But uh this this quote is hilarious. He said his ideal employee for a sales role at the startup is a quote unquote PhD.

Poor, hungry, and desperate. I like that. That's good. You got to get grinders. You got to get grinders. People that want to be on the on the upside. Yeah. There should be a term for somebody who fasts until their next like steak sales dinner. It's like they only eat when they're closing. I only eat when I'm closing.

Like a real hunter on the on the savannah. It's pretty crazy. Nico Lockoff, $25 25 years old, wants to build a trillion dollar company uh uh with a goal of replacing traditional insurance companies. His father is a lawyer from the insurance company. So, he only hires people willing to work seven days a week.

Of his 40 plus employees, around 30 are ex-founders. That is a crazy stat just because like it really speaks to the to the amount of founders that exist in the Bay Area now.

like in in like you could not I mean this happened like are uh are you familiar with the Y scraper instead of the sky skyscraper there was there was a this was in maybe 2008 2010 uh there was one building where all of the YC companies lived after they graduated from Mountain View and went to San Francisco called it the Y scraper and and there was and there was enough of so you have you have stories about like Coinbase working right next to the Airbnb and B guys.

I don't know if that's exactly right, but like you you could imagine a few different big companies coming and it was like if one company failed it would just be like okay come over to this company like join forces. Um but but you couldn't necessarily do that to the tune of 75% of the workforce in the first 40.

That's that that that feels new and it feels like a a an example of how totally how much more popular entrepreneurship is these days. Um it says he lives at the What? He lives at the office. Loqua said who considers himself the most hardcore of his peers. Employees share similar feelings.

Uh though not a work requirement, Loqua said twothirds of our early employees got corgi tattoos. That is hardcore. Wow, that's crazy. I I have no tattoos. I've never been big into that world, but um that is certainly a commitment. Um hopefully you own the IP. Do not So interesting. this company.

Uh I'm I'm on Nico's LinkedIn and this is a stealth startup still. Well, he's not you're not you're in the you're getting you're in the journal and you're t you're tatted up. I think you're you're safe to come out of stealth then. Yeah. Hopefully you have the IP locked up.

Uh I went through YC with a with a company called Pair that was a uh I think it was like an app for you and your significant other. And so it was imagine a social network. basically all the features of iMessage.

You know how in now in iMessage you can like see all the photos that you've shared between you and one person. So I can pull up like our iMessage and I can go into that info panel and see like here are all the links that Georgie sent. Here are all the images.

I can send you little stickers and and all sorts of different stuff. Pair was that for like a romantic couple so you could like draw to each other. Had all these like fun little games and stuff. Um and pair wound up getting sued by pair networks and they were like whoa whoa whoa.

like we are a consumer dating like messaging app for like a husband and wife to share their life together. you're a networking company, pair networks, like you sell into data centers. Yeah. Like why are you suing us? And they were like, "No, you're a technology company. We're a technology company.

You have to change your name. " Yeah. And so they did and they became couple. And it was like this huge uh huge difficult thing. So uh anyway, the importance of getting your name in IP lockdown before you get the tattoo. We have an important uh ad.

So Senra's in the in the YouTube chat says, "Can we get founders podcast on the board? " Oh, absolutely. We didn't add you because this was so skitso. We want to indict you, but you are really the godfather of podcasting. Created the cat. Yeah. I don't think I don't think we can see up there. I don't know.

We'll have to have to see. We can't we can't see you up there. Uh you have a ton of space to your left though. So get down and go keep going to the left past vibe coding and past Discord to the left past Larry Ellison. That whole area you got like three feet to work with over there. You can draw massive stuff.

There we go. Here we go. Oh, yeah. This is good. Going downwards. This is perfect. Okay, I'm I'm seeing everything. We're good. Uh Lockwell regrets getting his Colombia University degree, he said, because he wasn't solving societal problems in class.

I always want to do the maximally ambitious thing I can think of and make the biggest impact possible. Uh Yuan the Corgi co-founder said her life too centers around work which across the startup scene is populated largely by men.

From a personal perspective I don't mind it as much but it does suck to see not that many women in startups. Jared Freriedman uh partner at Y cominator said the work ethic and energy of San Francisco's young founders feels like a return to the early days of the internet. And I agree with this. This is a great take.

Um when people slept under under their desks at companies such as PayPal I actually see it coming uh as a as a full circle moment. AI is probably 10x as big. Uh Freriedman said the tech Yeah.

I mean it's very helpful if you have, you know, five to 10 other heavily funded companies in your category and so capital is not really a constraint for anyone. Yeah. And it just comes down to raw execution. Do we just conference Senra in right now on this?

Yeah, we got to ask him about I I gotta call Senra and and get him get him to tell us about the sleeping under your desk. Should I give him a call? Senra. Let's see. Let's see if he's available. I'm I'm I'm calling him. I'll put him up if he's available. He's in the YouTube chat, so hopefully you can come on the show.

Uh I totally emphasize Hey, how you doing? You're live. Did you mean to call me? Yeah. Yeah, you're live. We saw you in the We saw you in the chat. We got Elias. We're doing Happy Friday, man.

We're doing a whole deep dive on this Wall Street Journal article about the young founders in San Francisco who are working 12 hours a day, six days a week. There's a bunch of examples. Yeah. So, we wanted to ask you, is hard work important or is it overrated? We'll go to an article about people working part time.

No, no, really hard. And the article focused on the job. The article is framed as like as like are they working too hard a little bit or like is this a LAR? Are they pretending? And uh we wanted to go to the source and get the get the final answer. They do with the other that's what Journey said. That's what I said.

It's like put differently. They're they're spending eight hours a day sleeping, four hours a day, you know, doing whatever they want. Watch Netflix, I guess. I'm like, what would I what would my what would our lives look like if we didn't have five kids? It's crazy. Like and wives that we that I don't know. Yeah.

Love dearly. Sorry. That's part time, buddy.

996 is part-time raking David Senra has called it working 996 is considered part-time in the founders podcast world did you guys ever I know you're into like bodybuilding did you ever read the education of a bodybuilder by Arter no I should sounds fantastic oh my god okay so um somebody posted like the great lockin and it's just like nine episodes of founders yeah oh I saw that I think so one of them I think is Arnold So auto wrote two autobiographies.

One when he was a 70, which is fine. Yeah. But the way more extreme one he wrote when he was 30. Oh wow, that's young. Half of it. So the first half of it is really like 110 10 page biography, right? Autobiography. And then the second half is like his workout routine, which like another 100 pages.

But uh basically he would, you know, people were just like, "Yeah, I work 12 hours a day. " He's like, "So what else did you do with all the time? " like Wow. Yeah, that's awesome. I I don't want to get kicked off stream, but uh he tells I'm going to do the PG version of this.

Like this is before he made it to America, right? Yeah. So, he would go to like him and his other bodybuilder friends. They go to like this forest out in Austria or maybe in Germany and they would bring a bunch of women and they'd bring a bunch of like beer and food like schnitle or whatever that is. Schnitle. Okay.

Yeah. And they would essentially like go out there, they'd strip off their clothes and they would like lift like tree trunks and they'd swim in the and they swim in the uh lake or something in the lake and they would just essentially just work out all day. Uh I was like this guy's ex incred all day.

Uh who's the who's the hardest working founder purely by hours working hours spent working on a single company that you've ever studied? E Elon probably because if the the how Elon thanks for um reading and covering that episode last you guys did a good job on it but it was awesome.

So there there I actually had a really interesting conversation recently with uh somebody everybody knows who's been a founder for multiple decades and I and he he came up in the technology industry and he's been there forever and I actually asked him that question.

I was just like who's the greatest like entrepreneur you ever dealt with or like you knew about? And uh he's like, "Listen, you might not like him. You might not like working with him, but it was undoubtedly without hesitation a young Bill Gates. " Young. That would be my other answer if it wasn't Elon. Yeah.

From the time they started Microsoft in that little strip that little um strip mall in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Yep. The guy until he left the company. Like I don't think he did a single other thing.

Do you think that Bill Gates hardcore uh founder mode era was defined by his ruthlessness with regard to deal making or actually the amount of hours he spent in the office?

Like have you heard stories about early Microsoft being this 996 culture working 12, 13, 14 hours a day or was it strictly that when he went into every single negotiation he was willing to do anything to win? Well, so like he's not working 12 hours a day. He what he do. So I'll give you a preview. Okay.

Um the next episode I'm working on right now is about a young Bill Gates. It's gonna The title has to be something with hardcore because his favorite word. Yeah.

So he would work 36 hours straight until he couldn't literally stay awake and then he'd just crash and sleep in his office for like a few hours and pop back up. That's hardcore. That's I don't want to hear about, oh, I slept I got a good night's sleep. I'm I'm a grinder, but I got a great night's sleep last night. Yeah.

So, like, let me Oh. Oh, you're a grinder. Let me see your sleep score. Better be in the single digits. Better be in the single digits. But let me tell you one of the funniest stories about Bill Gates. So, the best book written about him is it's called Hard Drive. Bill Gates and the making of Microsoft Empire.

So, the same guys that wrote that essentially it's it's a biography of the first 35 years of his life. Then they it was so successful they wrote a follow-up. The follow-up book is not good. But there is a story in the follow-up book that is one of my favorite Bill Gates stories of all time.

And the the thing I the thing I would say about Bill Gates is like he has a ruthless competitive drive that would terrify people. And so one of his main competitors is this French guy, I can't remember his name. Uh they would like, you know, they were going to war over and over again.

And they would go they would the only time they would like interact they'd find themselves at the same like computer conferences. And so he he sees Bill Gates sitting on a folding chair in the corner of this computer conference alone looking at something.

And remember this they're like head head-to-head competitors, you know, now this guy's completely disappeared. And so he goes over and he wants to say hi to Bill and then he walks up to him and he realizes that Bill's in the corner by himself staring at a picture of the guy of his of his competitor.

He's just obsessed with like a picture of you and Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, next time I see you, I'm gonna make uh, you know, my profile picture when I call you your phone's background. Just remind you remind you of me constantly. You hard drive.

The way I described him in the first episode I made about him on episode 48 long time ago is that Bill Gates is a Genghask Khan in a Mr. Rogers costume. Yeah, that's about it. There's a few ways to read that. That was true. That is uh that's hardcore. That is that that is hardcore. Yeah.

Well, thank you so much for giving us more context on what it means to hardcore be hardcore and grind in an entrepreneurship context. Hope you have a fantastic rest of your day.

And thanks for uh calling me and I'm just going to say publicly what I said to you guys yesterday after seeing what you did in New York Stock Exchange. I'm super proud of you guys. Thank you. Uh you're absolutely crushing it. I just don't I don't think you could have any kind of limit involved.

very curious where you take this for the next few years. Thank you, brother. We'll catch up soon. See you. Love you. Bye. And always good to guest even when you thought we weren't going to have a guest. They said we couldn't do it.

They said it was impossible when you just got two random mics in the conference room that you could have a guest on your show, but you can. Um anyway, uh honestly, congrats to everyone who got mentioned in this article. I think there'll be some snarky takes. I think there'll be some supportive takes.

Uh overall it seems pretty high leverage to uh throw up a flag that says, "Hey, I'm working hard on my startup. " Get mentioned in the Wall Street Journal. They probably had to take what half an hour off to do a little phone call for this. Um and overall probably pretty high lever effort.

So, uh congrats to all the all the young grinders in San Francisco working 80hour weeks. Uh good luck to you all and uh and congrats on your first Wall Street Journal mention first of many hopefully. And if you want to help grow your startup, get on Adio, customer relationship magic.

Adio is the AI native CRM that builds, scales, and grows your company to the next level. You can get started for free. Um did you see that uh Poly Market is getting offers up to 10 billion? Whoa. Poly Market is of course a sponsor. Um what uh is volume just going through the roof?

Isn't aren't most of Poly Market's metrics kind of public because you can just look at the chain, right? Yeah. Check driving. That is they're about moment. They're about to be, you know, launching their app in the US. Everything to date has been international. That is a big catalyst. Yeah. Um so lot going on.

They're they're obviously duking it out with Kelshi, but uh it's great to see Shane on an absolute run and put more put more uh put more cash in the coffers, more opportunity to to build and and scale the business. Uh it's been a fantastic data source for us.

Uh of course, Poly Market Powers the ticker that you see on the show all three hours long every day. Uh, and it's been a it's been a source of uh of insight for us through our entire partnership. So, thank you to Poly Market for sponsoring us. Y