David Senra on the Founders podcast, Marc Andreessen going viral, and Toby Lütke's belief that 2026 is the year every business is up for grabs
Mar 23, 2026 · Full transcript · This transcript is auto-generated and may contain errors.
Featuring David Senra
Cheers, Robin.
We'll talk to you too soon, Robin. Let me tell you about Graphite code review for the Age of AI. Graphite helps teams on GitHub ship higher quality software faster. Our next guest is live in person in the TV with us, the one and only David Center. How you doing?
Miss you, man.
Thanks. Watch. Good to see you. Uh, tell us how are you how are you feeling?
What is this?
How are you feeling?
That's just the Yahoo button. Does that reflect your your your inner feelings? I want to hear I want to talk about your inner monologue. I want you in I want you to introspect. I want you to introspect. How are you feeling? You're doing well.
Yeah. Like unbelievable.
And do you feel aligned? Do you feel like you're you're you're reaching your goals in life? Do you feel like you're doing what you're meant to be doing?
Oh, you don't answer that question. What kind of question is this?
I'm just messing with you. Introspection questions. Um, yeah, it it was the background to what you're
Sure. Sure. So, so, uh, David Senra, host of David Senra and host of, uh, founders,
uh, went viral last week after an interview with, uh, Mark Andrees, uh, where you were both in discussion in agreement around this idea of
maybe you don't need to, you don't need to be constantly introspecting. You need to have some forward motion in your life. You need to be ruminating.
It wasn't like advice. It wasn't advice for other people.
Oh, yeah.
At all. Like, so it was an observation. Yeah. Like
I wanted to talk to Mark for a long time. Yeah. And um I actually had dinner with him last year in Miami and it took him a while to warm up, but then once he gets going, the same person you see on the podcast is like the same person in person, right?
And I've like consumed everything. I I told him before I was like, I think you and Palmer Lucky are probably like the two best podcast guests on the planet.
He's great.
Right. Yeah.
And you know cuz he doesn't have any notes in front of him. I spent eight hours need to knee with Palmer and I couldn't. He was inexhaustible. I've never come across a mind like that before.
Yeah.
And Mark's the same way. It's like you can ask him anything and he'll just he has this crazy recall.
And the difference between like me and most people that talk to Mark is like I've read all the same books that Mark has done. I read his blog archive like eight years ago.
Yeah.
And which was excellent before long before he was like tweeting
an episode about I think it's episode 50 of Founders.
That's great.
I think this is in 2018.
Episode 50. Wow.
Yeah. Exactly. I should redo it because there's a lot of really good advice for like founders in there. Um, and so like I was just excited to to talk to him.
It was the by far I think we've done like 13 or 14 of these that we've released so far. We've now recording like mad so we have a ton uh banked. But
it's like one of the people I was most excited to talk about just because like we have the same passions and he had he was the only person that I've come across in today that came to the same conclusion that like I would read all these biographies and these people that went on to build great companies, invent new technology, everything else. They talk about this all the time. They actively avoid introspection. And so the reason I brought up I was not trying to be provocative. I'm not in like I have a 10-year [ __ ] history of not being provocative. But
so I mean I understand the push back which is that there's so many examples of of history's greatest entrepreneurs introspecting. Uh I think that maybe the the the nuance here is when does the introspection happen? I always go back to that Disney chart. you know, the Disney napkin map of how Disneyland fits into Disney films, fits into the radio business, fits into the merchandise business. It all is crystal clear right now. And a lot of founders, a lot of content creators, a lot of people like us will look at that and be like, I need seven things that all piece together. But Disney drew that map and then died like two years later. It was a reflection on his life. He was introspecting about what made his business successful, but he did it after he had done all the things.
I think people are confusing thinking with introspection. So, I was actually thinking about you. We're like the the again I went back and listened to the first like 10 minutes of that episode. There's nothing remotely like controversial about this. And I guess one part you're like, "Yeah, there should be more nuance." Yeah.
The internet. No one needs the context. They're not going to watch for 10 minutes. They're just going to see the caption and then disagree with the caption. So what I would say is like this is the difference between pre and post life's work. And so like you're a perfect example. Yeah. This is like we've talked about this a few times on the show is like there was a huge prehistory with me and you pre-TPVN. Yeah.
And where you're the at Founders Fund. Um you're making these [ __ ] incredible docu I can't cuss, right? You guys got on me last time about that stuff.
You can. It's up to you.
Depends on how you want to go.
If our kids start swearing we're going to be mad at you.
Yeah. I'm I'm going to take the stand that no none of history's greatest entrepreneurs have ever sworn.
Yeah, you'll go far with that. Um, so what I would say is like the prehistory here is like you were uh ei.
I found you. I started talking to you. I was like, you're gifted at this. Like you're a generational media talent. I because I was like the first thing I saw of you was your history of Silicon Valley documentary which I've read at least 40 books on the same topic and I'm learning stuff I didn't even know. So I was like oh this guy's like this is incredible
and if you remember at the time you were trying to figure out what's that
go and you were trying to figure out it sounds like a sheep.
Um you were trying to figure out okay do I start another company? Do I become a VC?
So you were trying to figure out do I start another company? Do I become a VC? God forbid. Yes. Um, do I? And I was like trying to push you to podcast.
Yeah. Yeah. Tell me it was a good business.
And then you went through multiple different variations.
God damn it, Jordy. Stop. Um, this is your show. And I'm
So you went through multiple different variations, right,
of different forms of podcast. You even tried something like this with like a co-host a few different times. I saw all of them.
Lulu and Jason Carmen. And then I also had a solo show that was sort of a copy of yours, but about live people instead of dead people. And we were I remember cuz we were walking in Miami. We were walking to dinner. We actually ran into Keith Ra boy on the way there randomly and we had this dinner and you're like this show just doesn't feel right. You didn't like the the the power law.
Yeah, it's true.
Yeah. Yeah. The power law was not like it it wasn't getting me out of bed cuz I would make a I would make an episode and then somebody would be like I'm alive and I'm I'm going to debate you about this like you got this wrong and I was like oh okay I don't want to do like this.
Rockefeller is not coming from the grave yelling at me.
Exactly. Yeah. You can say whatever. You can say, you know, Steve Jobs never introspected and then he's not going to hit you up and be like, I did.
Again, we're not saying like never. But even like Elon commented on this, like I sent it to our group chat. We should pull up the tweet that he even commented on.
Yeah. He said, reinforcing negative neural pathways via therapy or introspection is a recipe for misery. Don't cut a rut in the road. But isn't this just like don't ruminate?
Some people were saying, "Oh, you guys are using the term wrong." Whatever this is. Let me finish.
But it was like negative introspection.
Let me finish the We have friends that all they do is introspect. One of them has still not done his first deal. We will not name him. Like he thinks too much and not enough action. That is the point. It's just like Yeah. People that built This is not controversial. People that built great [ __ ] turned out to do a lot of action. Like they take a lot of action as opposed to like just sitting there thinking about how they
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
And even even the isn't it Blackstone whose first deal like Steve's first deal was like a total flop
if I remember correctly.
I don't know. I remember that. But let let me go back to John.
It's like I wasn't I wasn't sitting there thinking about like what's the perfect media product. I was trying things being very forward motion being aggressive about these different things.
The important part is you were trying to figure out a business that fits for you. And then this is why when I immediately saw you guys, you were in like the wrinkled t-shirts. You were filming at the Jonathan Club. I was like, "This is it. You found it."
The reason I bring that up for you is because I think it's a great illustration of the point. It's like I talk to you guys every day. You don't wake up thinking about like how do I feel today or like what should I do? You guys just are unbelievably dedicated to because you found your life's work. Yeah.
And I know this cuz like how many people try to buy the show? How many people have tried to invest in the show? How many people try to get you to do other things and you're like, "No, like we just want to do this and we just want to do this forever."
And the example I use on the episode was Sam Walton. Yeah.
Like Sam Walton was figuring retail out. He had one store for the first 5 years of his life. Yeah.
Right. But then you fast forward 25 years into his life, he wasn't waking up like, "What should I do today?" He's like, "No, I like Walmart. I like building Walmart. I'm going to make more Walmarts and just keep doing this until I die."
Yeah. That's the point we were making. And then I love that Mark just refused to back down. Oh, he just like it was like 10x down.
Oh, day after day after day after day of just not fighting this back. And then
you did very well.
And then what I would say about this is like
perfect.
We hit on this like weird like political divide where like a lot of like my liberal friends were texting me and saying like this is wrong, this is evil. And I'm just like
oh interesting.
I think you know I'm not a wrong like evil person. And then you know more of my conservative friends like yeah no [ __ ] Mhm.
And that again that was unintentional. So a lot of the the hate comments came from like the socialist side of Twitter which okay [ __ ] them people. Like I hate socialists like good by the socialist. Good
more
more more inspiration to grind harder. Um tell us more about the show. What's coming down the pipe? How are you thinking about it? How much are you on the road these days?
A lot of people. So Jordy has seen the new studio which you got to come out and see. It's crazy.
Yeah. Yeah.
It's crazy. Yeah,
it's it's probably actually the craziest podcast studio ever in history.
Wow.
Just just like the actual dirt that it's on.
Okay.
Yeah.
Love it.
Um we just had Evan Spiegel out there. Thank you for making that connection. But he started watching the show and he's like can I be on the show and then he had known cuz he's like I love these guys.
Um so
the answer is just like I'm not I mean we will travel if we have to. I'm trying to push as many people as possible to Malibu. We're having a lot of success with that. And you know you we're all really friends with my good friends with my co-founder Rob Moore and like every time like the Andre one we did I probably did that like three weeks before he came out and I was like again I don't do any drugs but I was like high as a kite and I was just like shaking Rob. I was like just put a founder in front of me every single day like that's the biggest thing. So yeah I definitely feel like I'm not waking up thinking what should I do today? It's like I'm completely
What's the What's the pipeline of uh people that that are that are coming on the new show that have never done a podcast.
Okay. So
one of Okay, so we all know
cuz that's the real alphas. Like there's there's a thousand there's there's not not I'm saying like all of it, but I'm just saying like there's a thousand people out there
that are that would break the internet if they did a show and they just for one reason or another.
Who who's your Sarah Payne?
Okay, so there's there's two things here. One, I there's a lot of other podcasters, a few have tweeted this publicly and I I don't really respond to anybody on Twitter, but I've said, "Hey, you know, I I think of this differently." They're like, "I don't like doing people that have the podcast circuit."
Sure.
And when you say that, you're just admitting that you you have no differentiation. You have no unique perspective. So, like I really wanted to do Mark because
you would never interview someone here if they were if they had done a different podcast.
Yeah. Exactly. But I wanted to interview
What? This is your sixth show today? Let's ring the gong. I wanted to have conversation with Mark because of all the things that I knew about him that I had never heard anybody else talk about course conversation. So if you listen to episode
and and and the virality is evidence that you had a new conversation. You got to a different place.
Well, not only that, but like that was the the stuff that was controversial, but there's stuff in there like, okay, the fact that when Mark was 20 years old, he was mentored by like the Elon of his day. Jim Clark was the first person to ever in history to ever found three separate billion dollar technology companies. And he didn't start his first company till he was 38 years old. at 38 he started his first company and then and check this out and then there was this book from like 2001 that was published that I read by Michael
and before he was 38 was he just like introspecting or
no no no no he was an academic
the moment he stopped
he he was he was an academic but
straight to the top
he describes himself in the book he just said as a self-described loser because he was smart he had papers written and he was teaching but he had no money and then I think his second or third divorce the guy's like
literally he literally just who who is this again?
Jim Clark.
Jim Clark Silicon Graphics, Netscape, the company that turns into WebMD.
And Mark Andre was really young when he co-ounded Netflix, but he had Jim Clark or sorry, Netscape. Uh but but he had Jim Clark as like this older mentor mentor. It's a wild thing because normally if you walk into Andre's office and you say like, "I'm 20 and I have a 40-year-old co-founder." People would be like, "This is odd." Like normally we fund like two Stanford grads.
So I read an entire book on this.
Very interesting. It t he talks about it in his blog archive and I did two other episodes on the same book like two or three years apart. Yeah.
I don't know how no one ever brought that up to Mark, but it was so fascinating. And he tells three different stories on the podcast spread by like 30 minutes in between each story about how formative this was that the reason he is the way he is is because he was mentored by Jim Clark at 20. How is that not interesting?
Yeah.
So there's a I want to have my own spin on people that
Yeah.
you know or do other podcasts. There is another one coming out. We're actually flying to New York to do this one because it's going to be one of the craziest locations that you could possibly film in. This was suggested by somebody I can't name on the show. He's a good friend of us three. Sure.
He's probably the smartest person that we all know. Sure.
And he's like, "Hey, we were at dinner in Miami and he's like,
he who shall not be named."
Exactly. And so basically he's like, "What are you talking about this guy?" I can't tell you who it is yet, but this guy's product, if you are wealthy in the world, you will know and probably have, you know, frequented this guy's product. And it's outside of tech. nothing to do with technology and so he's never what' you say
chrome hearts
no but he's never done a podcast he doesn't even have any this guy doesn't even have any social media
he designed wraps that go on huracans
the chat is saying you're bringing vague posting to podcast
you are you're vague post
who you're vague posting on a pod which is which is innovative
let's be let's be less vague what do you think about the AI podcast That's at the top of the charts right now. Uh it is programated. It's it's putting us all out of a job.
Is this is this the Epstein one?
Yes. Yes.
Yeah. But I think they're transitioning to
they're going to do more. They're going to do a bunch of stuff. Everything that you want like if they if it's a hot topic, they're going to have a podcast that's, you know, single narrator like very fact-based, deep researched.
Yeah. And the reason that it's interesting is like it's not
it's not an AI app. Yeah,
it is like somebody used AI to make the media product and then just uploaded it to traditional channels.
Yeah, Kareem from RAM showed me this like a month ago.
Um, yeah, obviously there's going to be great AI generated podcasts like
of course now they I think they got to top of the charts not because they have a large listenership if I'm not mistaken, but the frequency in which you produce
and so that's a way to actually like manipulate that. Sure. Sure. where you see this with this this some other media companies doing this where they like essentially record for three hours and they just break up
uh every all the episodes are like 15 minutes long and they upload like you know 15 a day or whatever and they're like look we're on the top of the charts but if you actually look at overall listenership it's like really low.
Yeah we would
but yeah like there's there's there's obviously like
three a day
I mean I spent I got I got to spend uh
I think I can talk about this pretty sure I got to spend some time with Demis from from Deep Mind and just like you know that is the most AI aging person I've ever come across in my life. So he thinks it's coming for everything.
Um, so yeah, obviously there's going to be great AI generated podcasts.
I think the people making AI podcast would stop if they knew they were competing against you.
I found this hilar I was looking back
like the Chuck Norris of podcasting.
You guys are hilarious because I I went through our um look at this
here. You guys texted me this when I did the new show and you didn't like the profile picture that I that I originally picked.
Yeah, you smile. You were smiling. I was like read it.
Yeah. I said, uh, you you you created a new account for the new show. And I just immediately texted it to you and I said, I think no smile on profile picture. John says, "Agree." And I says I said, "You look good. It just doesn't seem on brand. You're more serious than 99% of people." And then John said, "Unless it's a deliberate ploy to make enemies underestimate how seriously you take podcasting." And I said, "You look like you should look like you're going to kill someone."
Yeah.
Um so anything like I I think like being the best in the world like trying to
like dominate whatever niche you like you guys are dominating your niche right now. Uh I'm amazed. I hear listen to every single interview you guys do and like just your your relentless focus of like this is what we do. you don't even want to travel, which I heard like you changed something, you know, plans recently.
Um, yeah, I think like the key for us and anybody is just like whatever your core competency is, it's like focus in on that. Try to get as far down that line as possible and then just say no to everything else. And again, is that even new? Like
yeah, it's interesting on the AI topic like the the like the speed with which AI can produce an audio deep dive on a hot topic like the Epstein files which drops. It has thousands of thousands of pages of documents like a human team's not going to be able to read through that and people want to consume that media through audio. That makes a lot of sense. At the same time, it does feel like interviews, you know, with particular people that everyone knows is not AI like Mark Andre and then they can react to that and feel something emotionally because it's a real person with a real impact on the world. That feels very very sticky. So debate de we just had this conversation. So, some of the stuff like how we're using AI for the new show, like I'm not going to talk about publicly. I obviously tell you guys because we share information, but it's just like I'm not giving an edge to competitors. It's not going to happen.
Uh, what I would say is
Oh, you have a course.
No, never do that.
Never. Um, so what I would say is like we had I had dinner like a month ago and this is exactly it was with Kareem and the guy that we can't mention
and they're just like, "You're moving way too [ __ ] slow." These are close friends so like they're not like being mean to me. You're moving way too slow. you're not using AI enough. Like Founders is more like susceptible to being overtaken by AI than the new one and you should drastically ramp up production on the new one. Yeah.
Um and they made the exact same point that you did.
But I do think again like
everything the the world is like run on power laws and I think podcasting is the same way and it's just like yeah you guys are making media and you're you're delivering news and commentary but your audience has a relationship with you. Like I see when they come up to you like how they act. They act like you're Jordy and John are my best friends. Like that's what I I've been saying this. You can go I've been going on podcast for half a decade. Like I'm not making media. I'm creating relationships at scale.
And that's why your your shows are not just like you ask one. Yeah. Like it would be very different to like use AI and walk into an interview with Mark Andre just with like 10 questions and be like Mark how did you start your career? didn't have Mark can put up an insane podcast just with that format where the guests could say like a total of a thousand words and he just like goes off
but yours are more like you know all of your I think a lot of your episodes will end up being like
50/50.
I'm trying to like I didn't have anything I think they're better if I don't have anything in front of me like I I prepared for the last decade like I can just sit down and talk to you. I we do have one. So I met Tony from Door Dash here. Remember he came on your show. Yeah.
And we had this crazy conversation. You were writing the newsletter, but me, you, Patrick, and uh Tony had this crazy conversation for like 45 minutes. And in 15 minutes in, I was like,
"Hold up, dude. You got to do more podcasts cuz he's so impressive."
That one I think is coming out
uh next weekend. That one I had maybe too much in front of me just because like the way I think about Tony is just he's like again like not financial advice, but he just gives me out of any anybody I've ever spoken to, I think he's 41, just gives me like Jeff like young Jeff Bezos vibes. Like I have no idea the quality of Door Dash. I don't look into the stock, anything like that. All I know is if you think that guy's going to stopping a food.
Yeah. The other thing that's notable there is all three of the original co-founders are still working in the business and it's what are they 15 years in or something.
Crazy.
Maybe maybe a little bit less, but but that it's so so rare to have that much success.
All the all the founders, you know, somebody steps back normally. Somebody's got to start a venture fun. Think about how humble he is though, right? And you know, I even said this on the episode. It's like, you're not going to like what I'm about to say, Tony, but I'm going to say it anyways. This is like
your competitors are afraid of you.
Like I've I I had a dinner in Stockholm with the guy that sold his company for like $8 billion to um to Tony. Uh his name's Mickey. The companyy's called Vault or something like that. It was like the Door Dash European.
And it was he told this crazy story I told on the episode with Tony. He still reports directly to Tony St. And we were like he he's like, "I thought of myself as an entrepreneur my entire life. I thought there's no way in hell it ever work for anybody else. We had we had a term sheet right in front of me. We could raise a fresh billion dollars of capital to fight them. And I'm looking at it, thinking about this, and something involuntarily came out of my mouth that I never thought I would have made. And he's looking at it, he goes,
I can't beat him.
Whoa. You can't beat him.
He's like, I can't beat him. So, I either could like sell for life-changing money and then learn from him, or I could fight this ego and maybe light this billion dollars on on fire. and he did the difficult decision like I'm going to go and sell.
You're still going to get stock in the new company and be able to grow that.
Yeah. But I would say that out of um all the conversations I've had so far, the one that they're all like I've all enjoyed them, but what I would say is like Toby Luke was if if no one if the people listening to this have not listened to any of the new show yet.
Yeah.
I would if if you want to go in tech, go Toby Lu. If you want to find this these crazy people that are not in tech, go Todd Graves.
Todd Graves. But Toby Luke was very fascinating to me because he's your favorite founder's favorite founder. So everybody that you admire, you ask who they admire and they'll bring up Toby. And what they like about him is that he thinks through every single thing independently. So therefore, he has all these beliefs that are not correlated with one another, which means when you have a conversation with him, you are unable to predict what his response to your question or your statement is going to be.
And that we talked for four hours. So we talked for a half hour before we recorded. Then we recorded for three hours. We edited down to whatever it was. Then we recorded for another 30 or talked for another 30 minutes after and I could have kept talking. I was like, "Dude, I gotta catch a flight. I'm gonna have dinner with Charlie Rose that night." Like I had to like fly down there. I was like, we would have kept talking.
Like he just blew my mind. And one thing he said I think would be interesting to your audience is he believes and I think he said this on the episode that we're going to look back on the year 2026 as the year that every single business in the world was up for grabs.
That AI is coming for everything. Every single other business will have to be reimagined. and you're going to look back at this is the year where it was it should have been obvious to you that you can rebuild the AI native version of whatever exists out there.
Interesting.
Uh Meta has scaled back their metaverse plans, kind of refocused the company. A lot of people over the last couple weeks have been kind of dunking on Zuck for that. anything stand out in history where great entrepreneurs, CEOs made like massive massive bets and they didn't pan out. Uh I would say as a Meta shareholder I think it's great that Zach is willing to like bet heavy heavy heavy on uh you know trends that he really believes in. And also, it's great if you kind of run it down and then uh realize you're hitting a dead end or need to re refocus, but what's your view on on, you know, swinging for the absolute fences and missing sometimes?
I mean, it's obviously inevitable. Jeff Bezos has this great line in shareholder letters where he's like, "The size of your failure has to scale with the size of your company." So, he's like, "I can't make a $300 million mistake anymore. I need making I think the Firephone was like a $3 billion." I was like, "Yeah, that's good." Like, okay. So, cuz I want to I'm going to somewhere like I have to like it's just inevitable. What I will say is I I I've spent some time with Zuck.
Uh I don't I don't think he has a peer.
Like I told him this. It's like who else is his age?
And he's still somewhat of a puzzle and mystery to me. And that's why I'm like interested in like to continue to talk to him because it's just like I've read every single book on Facebook. They're all bad. There's no good books on Facebook. uh there some of his you know most of his interviews like they just there's just certain things I want to talk to him about that because I'm just naturally curious about I think this is the whole point where you know people like you guys are having this immoral conversation about introspection it's just like
it's funny because yeah you actually want him to introspect you want the interview that you would do with Zuck would be very reflective it would not be tell me how you're thinking about MSL's product roadmap
no I don't even think it would be introspective it would be like Just I want to know how like the the reason I I I signal signalled out the Toby Luk episode because when I sat down with Toby and I did this for Brian Armstrong too who was awesome. It's just like I want to make like a how Toby Luke works episode.
Yes.
Like and this is what I just want to know. I'm not there's no gotcha here. It's just like how do you think about building businesses? How do you think about retaining talent? Why did you do this product? Like just tell me the stuff that's you have 25 years as in his case 20 I think 20 years experience as an entrepreneur. Like that's one very rare especially one in a single company like you've learned all kinds of crazy stuff like just like let's get some of this on record and like let's talk about this. So same thing with Zuck. Um I'd just be very interested. What I like about him is like he has this just like inner clock where you know he's he he's going to make these massive bets and you know obviously he knows he's obviously not stupid like some of them are going to fail of course.
Yeah.
What do you think about retired interviews? people that are out of the game. The risk with a live player, someone who's actively running a public company, is that the SEC is listening to what they're saying, that they want to stay on talking points, that they have a bunch of different incentives. Well, if they say, "Oh, well, you know, the easiest thing I ever did was cut back my marketing spend because none of that stuff was working." Well, then their head of marketing is going to be upset. There's internal politics. Whereas when you do an interview with somebody who's retired and no longer in the game, sometimes they can speak a little bit more freely about their industry, their life's work, their career, etc.
Yeah. I I would if if I could have a show of just 80-year-old billionaires for like that would talk like I got to spend time with Sam before he died. The fact that I was able ever able to record a podcast with him like now that I have this new vehicle, it's like man because he's just like doesn't care. he's dying of cancer. Like
he's going to say whatever. So my friend Sam Hanky, I just saw him like two weeks ago and he actually gave me advice. He's like, "You should organize your guest list in reverse chronological order
because like there's one guy we're working on right now who's, you know, one of the most successful people. Uh we already had to reschedule with him. He's 87."
87
and he is like unfiltered.
What about you?
Incredible.
What about um the the tension between uh a name brand live player like like a Toby look? somebody who's done other podcasts, people are, you know, know Shopify, maybe they've built a business on Shopify, like it is not fully a consumer brand, um, but it will draw a certain level of attention versus 80-year-old billionaire who's been, you know, owns half the farmland in Montana, might have had a fantastically rich life, but one behind the scenes. Is there still an interview to be done there?
Yeah. Like, how do you guys choose the people you want to talk to? like
well a lot of it's news driven so a lot of it's about you know what's happening right now in the world who can we talk to to contextualize that and so I enjoy those reflective moments when they come up but they aren't as much of a driving force at all
so I I like try to um so I was went on a walk yesterday or maybe yesterday I don't know where it was yesterday uh yeah it was yesterday morning and a really good friend really smart person just like you have one of your gifts is like uh distilling everything down to like what is actually essential
and so and he's like you help me talk through all the these issues I'm having with my business this way
um but you do it for yourself where it's like this I'm just going after things I'm intensely interested in especially in the age of AI if you're not following what you're obsessed with like I don't I think you're doing it wrong so founders is just the books that I'm intensely interested in reading and the new show is just people I'm intensely interested in speaking to some of the stuff the the people we have recorded they'll like maybe know this like small niche thing. I'm not going after like just big names. That's not interesting to me. It's like the the rubric is very or the the like the decision making here is very simple. It's just like am I intensely interested to sit down and talk to this person? Like um Evan Spiegel, I I I showed him too this is like I did an episode of Founders on him. I think it's episode like 25 or 24. It's like a long time ago. And what I what the there was like one thing that happened with Evan because I talk about Edwin Land all the time. Founder of Polaroid, Steve Jobs hero. Steve Jobs copied a lot of Edwin how Edwin Land build Polaroid and use those ideas in in building Apple.
Steve Jobs of mentoring technologist.
Yeah. And like he's the patron saint of founders. And so I read this book about Evan and Evan is 21 years old and he's talking about that he's got two heroes and it happens to be Steve Jobs which makes sense. Every 21-year-old kid trying to be an entrepreneur at the time had Steve Jobs and then Edwin L. I was like, "How the hell does a 21-year-old even know
we got another land?"
Yeah. We had we had an incredible conversation about that.
No, it's a different land.
Yeah. And so like that, you see what I mean? Like I just like we have the same interest. This is a guy that is has influenced my thinking. He influenced your thinking. And of course you wind up with a camera company.
Like it makes perfect sense to me.
Oh, that makes sense.
And I I don't care. Everybody's like, "Oh, market cap. I don't care about that."
iPhone is also
But but people are like, "What about what about like if the stock price is down or the market cap?" So I don't give a [ __ ] I want him to win. He he's like a very interesting person to me.
Yeah, totally. Totally.
Okay. Uh Saturday I watched Elon's kind of new pitch for Tesla, XAI, and SpaceX.
Mhm.
And one of the products that he was kind of presenting was a mass driver. Did you follow this at all?
Do you think I did?
I know. I know you didn't.
We have Hold on. We have two episodes. But we were having Yeah. Yeah. We were we were having we were having a debate uh on the show at the beginning around the timeline for the product and we were pretty John where did we actually land? You were saying under 20 years.
I said I said under 20 Tyler said under 30 and you said 75 or something.
And so
or you you said 10 but then also 75
but also five years. Also
no I I have literally I have I have no idea. I'm not going to pretend that that I I think I have like an accurate read on it. Uh but has there any any entrepreneurs throughout history that were kind of pitching their business overall on on timelines where the market was like I don't know if this is like like going back to like inventing flight people telling the Wright brothers like you're never going to be able to fly. That's impossible.
People were saying that.
Yeah. No, I know. I know. I know. But they did it on like a they weren't being like like like this chain of events will lead to the 747 50 years from now.
Yeah, exactly. So get ready for the 747. So invest in my bicycle plane
because the 747's coming. Like it was coming in 50 years, right?
So I would say about Elon in particular, I did this episode of Founders which I'm really proud of. It's probably the most downloaded episode ever. It's called How Elon Works.
And it strips away all the biographical details and just talks about him speaking about the way he runs his companies. And in that episode, I said like usually there's some kind of like historical equivalent for everybody operating today.
And you know, you could name a person. I could find somebody in history that you know, but for him, I do think he is like a singular character. I can't think of anybody living or dead that is like him.
Yeah. Um there's
it's weird because he's an industrialist, but he's also incredibly promotional and like very good at the marketing side as well as the building side.
The best in the world at that might be the best salesperson.
That was why that was why the week the weekend presentation was tough because I didn't think the all the technology was cool and I have zero doubt that Elon can do hard things that no other
set of companies can do. And you see it today because a decade ago people were like Roadster is coming next year. Everyone's talking about Roadster and no one's really talking about Mass Driver. It didn't break through in the same way.
So probably because it's the name like
M driver they got to get a new name. Yeah, they should call it
I didn't see it so I don't know what that means but that's fine. Hold on. There is to answer your question, there is tons of examples from history of somebody having an idea saying that they're going to dedicate to that life their life to making that idea come to fruition and taking multiple decades to to to actually do that. So like the the thing that comes to mind just because I'm rereading about him now and I'm probably going to do another episode on him. I've done like six episodes on Henry Ford
and Henry Ford had one idea. He will tell you I had one idea in my entire life and that was to figure out a way to make the car for an everyman. Meaning at the time when you made less than a dollar a day, cars are like $6,000. You can't afford the people making them cannot afford them. How can we learn to massproduce that? And it took him, you know, 20 years of how of pounding on that idea till he actually accomplished that goal. So he probably thought it was going to be done three or five or 10
and it took 20. Um but yeah, you're going to find a ton of examples like that. It always takes longer.
And that's why the Raptor R exists.
It's the car for the ever van. Henry Ford would
well the the thing that that that example doesn't quite satisfy this this example because this pitch is like
these eight things need to happen perfectly synced together in order for this other thing to be possible.
Yeah.
But again
so
betting against Elon has not worked.
Midcurve alert. Midcurve alert. There is there's a book by our mutual friend Eric Jorgensson that's coming out tomorrow.
Midcurve.
Midcurve.
Uh we Yeah, I think we I mean we can show the cover, can't we?
Yeah, you can read the whole thing right now live. You guys want to read another seven hours?
Let's do a table reading.
Um
this is the book Elon with a forward by Naval Ravocant by none other than Eric Jorgensson. And the visuals are by Jack Butcher. That's great. So, in the book, Elon talks about the fact that he gets a lot of [ __ ] on the fact he that his timelines are usually, you know, off.
Yeah.
Um, and he explains why and everything else. But I think what Eric, we're actually doing something Eric uh was actually the first American
uh to ever put me on a podcast.
Really?
And so like the first podcast I ever did of somebody else's podcast was this one that only went in like China.
Yeah. And so it was like really popular on WeChat, but but no one but Eric uh he just like gave me a shot when no one really knew who I was. That's awesome.
And it wind up being important because one of the listeners of that episode, there's only like a thousand people listened to it was Patrick
and Pat Russell who was running Colossus. And there's a there's a a there's a comment in the Colossus Slack, the Colossus Podcast Network Slack, which Patricky is the founder of,
uh talking about the episode. This is before I was signed to them. And he they said, uh, "This guy sounds like he's going to bite the microphone. And so they're like, "Oh, he's actually like
might be good at this." Um, but I think what Eric is the reason what I'm doing is I'm dropping an episode of Founders on this book tomorrow, which is a normal solo episode. Then I did something different for the new show, which I think could be another um another like not just having conversations with great founders,
but conversations with uh charismatic authors who are writing about great founders. Eric, which is a friend, he's also very articulate and charismatic. And so we essentially, that episode's coming on the the David Center feed tomorrow. Yeah.
Say because he's a friend, he's articulate.
No. No. No. Because I spent a lot of time talking to him. We're like, you guys have interviewed authors. Yeah. You know, some of them like
authors are are are almost universally fun to talk to in the moment that they're launching their book because they've spent more time than anyone else on Earth just thinking about that one.
So, we when you see the shot tomorrow, it's like we have like, you know, I don't know a thousand pages of Elon documents in front of us. A lot of it is just me going through asking my notes and highlights with Eric and then you essentially can prompt him and then he can tell you crazy Elon stories.
Yeah.
Do you think that
this a lot of the CEOs that you're talking to, the ones that are kind of in their prime, let's say, you know, 5 to 10 years or 20 years into their company, do you think they are more AGI pill than they let on on the internet? because a lot of them will like talk about how they're using AI and talk about how they're excited about it, but I feel like you've given me some examples where behind the scenes they're actually like much stronger believers.
I mean, you guys had I think Lulu I think has been on here talking about that AI has like a a communication like a branding problem. It's like very unpopular with the general population. Yep. um actually talking I I spent over an hour with Kareem yesterday talking about about this topic um and about ways to actually get good information. What I would say is like yeah like most of the stuff they're talking about they're not going to talk about on a podcast. They're not going to talk about you'll see this in group chats. Some of the ones that like you and I are in but even that like yeah most of them is like whispers and like private conversations and completely off the record stuff.
Mhm.
Do you think you'll ever write a book?
Do you think I'll ever write a book?
I
the things that we three share No man. The thing that we three No, the thing that we
That's a narrative violation.
What we share is like, do you want to do anything else than than the show?
Why haven't you raised the fund yet? Why aren't you starting a new company? Why aren't you on a plane right now traveling?
I I I'm just thinking like I don't know like like the book of David Senra with Eric Jorgensson.
He's writing it.
Could make sense. But basically already he is.
Yeah. Hey, he tried to work on it with me and he's just like you you're you don't answer my phone and if I talk to you cuz I can't get a hold of you and I talk to you have your idea changes all the time. I was like I can't be the bottleneck of anything. This is why I have to run my own [ __ ]
Yeah, that's fair. I I'm just thinking about in terms of like uh just
are you trying to like sabotage me? You're trying to like get on podcasting.
I've just seen I've just seen more and more like Dorcash wrote that book with with Stripe Press that was heavily based upon the interviews that he did. Uh it had a bunch of interesting graphics. It was clearly a collaborative project and I feel like there's an aura effect to to writing that can work very well. I mean, we had uh um we've had a number of people on that that have been able to stick the landing and uh
no, I think again like just focus is more important than ever in in this age and focus on things that you just you think about all the time and that you're like obsessed with. And
like the reason I could do a new episode every day is because I'm I never get tired of talking about how people build their business or think about their products or like I find that [ __ ] infinitely fascinating because you could do it. This is what I loved about Toby.
Yeah.
And it's just like he's like the reason he think he said this on the episode. The reason he thinks through every single thing because he's like there's not one right way to do it. There's probably a hundred and I'm looking for the right way for me.
And so like talk about AGI Build. He said something that was shocking on that episode where, you know, cuz he's like, I started Shopify in my in I was he had no money. He was living in his like mother-in-law's house at a small desk in a bedroom there.
It was inside of a cave, right?
No, I don't think so.
With scraps.
With scraps. No, he built the company with scraps.
And uh and then what was interesting about that, he right right before all the the new innovation in AI happened, he said that he was like act he he thought like I'm not the right person to run this company anymore. I shouldn't be CEO anymore. And then he's like, "If it wasn't for a uh for for AI, I wouldn't be running the company anymore."
So many stories about of like that where someone had a really good business growing and it's just stable growth, 20% topline, they're doing fine, but they are just lost for purpose or energy. And then AI happens and they're like, "I'm back in gear." I love seeing it, especially with the folks who are at that like multi-billion dollar phase. It's just been uh it's been a remarkable remarkable moment in tech.
Yeah. I wouldn't you you want those people to be playing as long as possible. He's still relatively young. He's probably what his 40s 45 or something like that. Like that's way too early.
But it's so easy to step back and think about something else, get distracted or do a fund or something or just retire. Like there's a lot of people out
and also he went public really early. I think he said on the episode they they went public like $ 1.5 billion valuation or it was like some crazy number like
IPO for
it's high for Canada. There's a lot of stuff on the TSX that's like tiny.
Yeah. But I think at one point he was at 200 billion. I don't know what he's at now. Um Yeah. And so it had to feel like he was sprinting, you know, for for 20 years.
Totally.
But fantastic.
No, you want I'm glad those people are like that. And I do think that you know the point somebody was making this point to me yesterday where it's just like these technical founders just have you know a massive advantage over everybody else and you see this with like Toby constantly writing more code Brian Armstrong is doing the same thing. You just see this over and over again.
There's a lot of folks
there was a peptide you could take that would allow you to podcast for 25 hours a day. Would you take it?
Well, okay. What? Here's the thing. I keep hearing about peptides. I think I accidentally took one one time. What What happened?
Yeah. Justin. Justin, I think had some
Oh, no. That was Yeah, Justin gave Justin had like I don't even know if we could talk about this.
He gave me and you. That's right. It was like Justin May.
It was some sleep it was some sleep peptide, but it was like something you get on Amazon.
Okay.
But I thought his friend he said his friend made it in like his own compound pharmacy. We might get Justin arrested for this. Uh but he we us hang out and then you text or maybe we hung out the next day and you text him. He's like, "I didn't feel anything about this." No, I um one of the benefits of partnering with Andrew Human is you get access to like weird health [ __ ]
And so um
I was like over like I remember recording with like John Mackey. It was the day I recorded with John Mackey. Felt fine. We we stopped at like 1:00 p.m. By like 5:00 p.m. I feel like I'm going to die and I had a an unbelievably important thing to do.
Mhm.
Like 36 hours later I could not mess mess around. And so I just text the the group and they sent like this IV guy
and it was like a fourhour IV
and I was like listen and I don't know anything about I I was like telling Rob I was like I trust you so like you don't give me like I don't want to this has to be good. Would you take this? And it's something they do to make sure that like they're when they're on the edge of getting sick.
Well the next the next meta or goat
one of them there was some kind of peptide in there. One of them
the by the next morning I woke up feeling 100%. Like I went from deadly sick to I feel like a completely normal person.
Well, the next meta is leeches. You're going to be purifying. No,
you can get medical leeches. This this every podcaster
Stop. Stop.
Oh, yeah. You don't like snakes.
What What happened? Because I walked in and all the guys were talking about you guys had some kind of debate.
Yeah, we had a debate. Martin Scrowley.
What happened?
From Superpower.
Uh, yeah. whether or not like the the the the more out there peptides that are not fully FDA approved yet. Maybe there's some data. Should those be sold? Uh what's the correct path to bring the next generation peptides to market? Martin Screy's position was that uh the FDA has the path laid down. These companies should be these products should be developed by biotech companies, approved by the FDA, then sold in the pharmaceutical context, prescribed by a doctor. And Max uh from Superpower had a more liberal view. He sell does one of the guys sell peptides? Uh, I don't know if Superpower does, but a lot of a lot of Silicon Valley companies are getting into that market and a lot of people in San Francisco and Silicon Valley broadly are like taking Chinese peptides, quote unquote, meaning that they're like going to a gray market marketplace that then manufactures these drugs that are not FDA approved and not made in FDA approved facilities and certainly are not to the economic benefit of the pharmaceutical companies that spent a a lot of money developing these drugs. So, there's some company out there that's been working on something. They developed the intellectual property. They're hoping to recoup 100% of that because they have a patent on it and so that they should be able to sell it and get all the value. And there are a whole bunch of third parties that are going around copying the homework. Uh maybe changing it a little bit, maybe making it worse, maybe making it less effective, maybe making it less safe. Uh and and then selling it. And so there there's a big debate in Silicon Valley right now about like the pepper. Are you taking any of this stuff?
Nope.
You like protect your body like a temple.
Yeah.
I'm surprised you took what Justin gave you.
I trust Justin. Justin and I have a very similar ethos around health.
Yeah.
Anyway, this has been a fantastic conversation.
I'm excited to continue this podcast as soon as we go off that podcast never stops.
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