Founders

David Senra

Learn from history's greatest entrepreneurs. Every week I read a biography of an entrepreneur and find ideas you can use in your work. This quote explains why: "There are thousands of years of history in which lots and lots of very smart people worked very hard and ran all types of experiments on how to create new businesses, invent new technology, new ways to manage etc. They ran these experiments throughout their entire lives. At some point, somebody put these lessons down in a book. For very little money and a few hours of time, you can learn from someone’s accumulated experience. There is so much more to learn from the past than we often realize. You could productively spend your time reading experiences of great people who have come before and you learn every time." —Marc Andreessen

#2 in the Top 100 entrepreneur Monthly chart

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Top 10 Founders Episodes

Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best Founders episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to Founders for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite Founders episode by adding your comments to the episode page.

#330 Les Schwab (Charlie Munger recommended this book)

Founders

12/11/23 • 97 min

What I learned from rereading Les Schwab Pride In Performance: Keep It Going! by Les Schwab.

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(8:00) I didn't know how to ride a bike. We never had one. All the other young kids delivered newspapers on a bike.

He's got no money. He doesn't have a bike. So he ran his routes for two months in order to get enough money to buy his first bike. He’d run nine or 10 miles a day.

(8:00) I was too proud to complain.

(10:00) For a poor boy, money was much more important than pride.

(10:00) Am I Being Too Subtle?: Straight Talk From a Business Rebel by Sam Zell. (Founders #269)

(13:00) I was young. I was cocky. But the same cockiness helped me a lot in going through life.

(15:00) The very first sentence describing his very first day in business is mind blowing: I had never fixed a flat tire in my life.

(15:00) the NEW Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charlie Munger (Founders #329)

(29:00) Sam Walton: The Inside Story of America's Richest Man by Vance H. Trimble (Founders #150)

(35:00) I always knew that if we fixed all the flat tires in town, we'd have all the tire business in town.

(40:00) If we become complacent, then brother, it's all over with.

(52:00) Grinding It Out: The Making of McDonald's by Ray Kroc (Founders #293)

(56:00) If you’re not serving the customer, or supporting the folks who do, we don’t need you. —Sam Walton

(1:00:00) The company paid low wages and had a lower overhead. The flaw was they didn’t get —with the low pay— near the quality of employees we had.

(1:01:00) Life is hard for the man who thinks he can take a shortcut.

(1:06:00) Decision making should always be made at the lowest possible level.

(1:08:00) Whatever you do, you must do it with gusto, you must do it in volume. It is a case of repeat, repeat, repeat.

(1:08:00) Charlie Munger analyzes why Les Schwab was successful.

(1:11:00) Extreme success is likely to be caused by some combination of the following factors:

1 Extreme maximization or minimization of one or two variables. Think Costco.

2 Adding success factors so that a bigger combination drives success, often in nonlinear fashion, as one is reminded by the concept of breakpoint and the concept of critical mass in physics. Often, results are not linear. You get a little bit more mass and you get a lollapalooza result. And, of course, I've been searching for lollapalooza results all my life, so I'm very interested in models that explain their occurrence.

3 An extreme of good performance over many factors. Example, Toyota or Les Schwab.

4 Catching and riding some sort of big wave. Example, Oracle.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers.” — Gareth

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Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here.

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Michael Jordan (The Life)

Founders

06/30/23 • 99 min

What I learned from reading Michael Jordan: The Life by Roland Lazenby.

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(5:07) His competence was exceeded only by his confidence.
(5:58) He worked at the game, and if he wasn't good at something, he had the motivation to be the best at it.

(6:33) It seemed that he discovered the secret quite early in his competitive life: the more pressure he heaped on himself, the greater his ability to rise to the occasion.

(14:06) At each step along his path, others would express amazement at how hard he competed. At every level, he was driven as if he were pursuing something that others couldn't see.
(16:10) Whenever I was working out and got tired and figured I ought to stop, I'd close my eyes and see that list in the locker room without my name on it, and that got me going again.

(19:29) Jordan could sense immediately that he had something the others didn't.

(59:53) The Jordan Rules succeeded against the Bulls so well that they became textbook for guarding athletic scorers. The scheme helped Detroit win two NBA championships, but it also helped in the long run, by forcing Jordan to find an answer. "I think that 'Jordan Rules' defense, as much as anything else, played a part in the making of Michael Jordan," Tex Winter said.

(1:16:35) Jordan had been surprised to learn how lazy many of his Olympic teammates were about practice, how they were deceiving themselves about what the game required.

(1:19:56) I have always liked practice and I hate to miss it. When you miss that one day, you feel like you missed a lot. You take extra work to make up for that one day. I've always been a practice player. I believe in it.
(1:29:47) Jordan presented a singleness of purpose that was hard to dent.

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The Most Inspiring Autobiography I've Read: Chung Ju-yung Founder of Hyundai

Founders

12/27/24 • 75 min

Chung Ju-yung grew up so poor he had to eat tree bark to survive. He founded Hyundai and became the richest person in Korea. When Chung was in his 80s, he wrote an autobiography that tells the devastating reality of growing up in dire poverty, how he escaped through manual labor, and how he founded and grew one of the world's largest conglomerates. Along the way he shares advice like why you should emulate bedbugs, the importance of going where the money is, and why people called him "The Bulldozer."

This episode is what I learned from reading Born of This Land: My Life Story by Chung Ju-yung.

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#1 Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, & the Quest for a Fantastic Future

Founders

09/19/16 • 58 min

What I learned from reading Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

The conventional wisdom of the time said to take a deep breath and wait for the next big thing to arrive in due course. Musk rejected that logic by throwing $100 million into SpaceX, $70 million into Tesla, and $10 million into SolarCity. Short of building an actual money crushing machine, Musk could not have picked a faster way to destroy his fortune. He became a one-man-ultra-risk taking venture capital shop and doubled down on making super-complex physical goods in two of the most expensive places in the world, Los Angeles and Silicon Valley. [2:13]

What Musk has developed that so many of the entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley lack is a meaningful worldview. He’s the possessed genius on the grandest quest anyone has ever concocted. He’s less a CEO chasing riches than a general marshaling troops to secure victory. [9:17]

The life that Musk has created to manage all of these endeavors is preposterous. [9:53]

He felt as if the public had lost some of its ambition and hope for the future. [14:34]

His fears that mankind had lost much of its will to push the boundaries were reinforced one day when Musk went to the NASA website. He expected to find a detailed plan for exploring Mars and instead found bupkis. [14:58]

The men were heading to Russia at the height of its freewheeling post-Soviet days when rich guys could apparently buy space missiles on the open market. [24:32]

Musk wheeled around and flashed a spreadsheet he’d created. “Hey guys, I think we can build this rocket ourselves.” [27:53]

Some of these people had spent years on the island going through one of the most surreal engineering exercises in human history. They had been separated from their families, assaulted by the heat, and exiled on their tiny launchpad outpost— sometimes without much food — for days on end as they waited for the launch windows to open and dealt with the aborts that followed. So much of that pain and suffering and fear would be forgotten if this launch went successfully. [32:17]

It took six years-about four and half more than Musk had once planned — and five hundred people to make this miracle of modern science and business happen. [34:38]

Well that was freaking awesome. There are a lot of people who thought we couldn’t do it. There are only a handful of countries on Earth that have done this. It’s normally a country thing, not a company thing. My mind is kind of frazzled, so it’s hard for me to say anything, but this is definitely one of the greatest days in my life. [35:19]

To avoid bankruptcy Musk made a last-ditch effort to raise all the personal funds he could and put them into the company. “It was like the fucking Matrix,” Musk said, describing his financial maneuvers. [42:53]

The 2008 period told him everything he would ever need to know about Musk’s character. He saw a man who arrived in the United States with nothing, who had lost a child, who was on the verge of having his life’s work destroyed. “He has the ability to work harder and endure more stress than anyone I’ve ever met. What he went through in 2008 would have broken anyone else. He didn’t just survive. He kept working and stayed focused.” [48:37]

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#383 Todd Graves and his $10 Billion Chicken Finger Dream

Founders

03/17/25 • 68 min

Todd Graves is one of my favorite living entrepreneurs. He's a great example of Charlie Munger's maxim: Find a simple idea and take it seriously. Todd wanted to create a quick service restaurant that only focused on quality chicken finger meals and nothing else. Everyone told him that couldn't possibly work. The college paper that described the idea that would turn into Raising Canes got the lowest grade in the class. Banks wouldn't loan him any money —but nothing could stop Todd from living out his "chicken finger dream." He worked 95 hour weeks as a boilermaker, risked his life on a commercial fishing boat off the coast of Alaska, and scrounged up startup money from his bookie and a guy named Wild Bill. Todd made every mistake in the book, over leveraged himself, almost lost everything and yet he refused to give up or sell out. Today he has over 800 locations, 50,000 employees, and owns 90% of a business that's worth at least $10 billion. Todd's maxim is "Do one thing and do it better than anyone else."

Sources:

Trading Secrets: Raising Cane’s founder Todd Graves reveals his path to building the wildly popular restaurant

Theo Von: Raising Cane’s Founder Todd Graves

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#10 Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike

Founders

07/27/17 • 64 min

What I learned from reading Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike by Phil Knight.

The best teacher I ever had, one of the finest men I ever knew, spoke of the Oregon Trail often. It’s our birthright, he’d growl. Our character, our fate—our DNA. “The cowards never started, the weak died along the way—that leaves us.” [0:35]

Some outsized sense of possibility mixed with a diminished capacity for pessimism. [1:03]

I found it difficult to say what or who exactly I was, or might become. Like all my friends I wanted to be successful. I didn’t know what that meant. [2:11]

Deep down I was searching for something else, something more. I had an aching sense that our time is short, shorter than we ever know. And I wanted mine to be meaningful. And purposeful. And creative. And important. Above all . . .different. [2:35]

I asked myself: What if there were a way, without being an athlete, to feel what athletes feel? To play all the time, instead of working? Or to enjoy work so much that it becomes essentially the same thing? [4:23]

The only answer was to find some prodigious, improbable dream that seemed worthy, that seemed fun, that seemed like a good fit, and chase it with a single-minded dedication and purpose. [4:47]

Maybe my Crazy Idea just might . . . work? Maybe. No, no, I thought. It will work. By God, I’ll make it work. No maybes about it. [5:29]

So much about those days has vanished. Faces, numbers, decisions that once seemed pressing and irrevocable, they’re all gone. [6:39]

What remains is this one comforting certainty, this one anchoring truth that will never go away. At 24 I did have a Crazy Idea, and somehow, despite being dizzy with existential angst, and fears about the future, and doubts about myself, as all young men and women in their mid-twenties are, I did decide that the world is made up of crazy ideas. History is one long processional of crazy ideas. The things I loved most — books, sports, democracy, free enterprise — started as crazy ideas. [7:03]

So that morning in 1962 I told myself: Let everyone else call your idea crazy. Just keep going. Don’t stop. Don’t even think about stopping until you get there. Whatever comes, just don’t stop. [7:45]

That is the advice I managed to give myself, out of the blue, and somehow managed to take. Half a century later, I believe it’s the best advice — maybe the only advice — any of us should ever give. [8:08]

I knew Japanese cameras had made deep cuts into the camera market, which had once been dominated by Germans. I argued in my paper that Japanese running shoes might do the same thing. [9:00]

He was impressed. It took balls to put together an itinerary like that, he said. Balls. He wanted in. [12:01]

Carter never did mess around. See an open shot, take it—that was Carter. I told myself there was much I could learn from a guy like that as we circled the earth. [12:14]

What Phil was doing was looked upon by most of his family as crazy and extremely dangerous. [12:37]

Go home, a faint inner voice told me. Get a normal job. Be a normal person. Then I heard another faint voice equally emphatic, “No. Don’t go home. Keep going. Don’t stop.” [14:15]

Bill Bowerman was a genius coach, a master motivator, a natural leader of young men, and there was one piece of gear he deemed crucial to their development. Shoes. He was obsessed with how human beings are shod. [15:55]

He always had some new scheme to make our shoes softer and lighter. One ounce sliced off a pair of shoes is equivalent to 55 pounds over one mile. [16:42]

Lightness, Bowerman believed, directly translated into less burden, more energy, and more speed. Lightness was his constant goal. [17:11]

Frugality carried over to every part of the coach’s makeup. [17:56]

Bowerman didn’t give a damn about respectability. He possessed a prehistoric strain of maleness. Today its all but extinct. He was a war hero, too. Of course, he was. [18:47]

Bowerman never considered himself a track coach. He detested being called coach. He called himself a professor of competitive responses. His job, as he saw it, was to get you ready for the struggles and competitions that lay ahead. [19:41]

In my mind, he was Patton with a stopwatch. [20:00]

He had tested me. He had broken me down and remade me just like a pair of shoes. [23:31]

The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones. [23:57]

He always went against the grain. Always. He was the first college coach to emphasize rest, to place as much value on recovery as on work. [24:12]

He [his Dad] said he hadn’t sent me to O...

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#380 Four Hundred Pages of Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger In Their Own Words

Founders

02/25/25 • 81 min

For over 30 years the Berkshire Hathaway Annual meetings were recorded. Munger and Buffett answered over 1700 questions from shareholders during that period. Alex Morris watched hundreds of hours of these meetings and then he gathered, organized, and edited the most interesting ideas into 450+ pages — all in Buffett and Munger's own words. I thought it would be fun to rip through a bunch of Munger and Buffett's best ideas very rapidly. It was.

This episode is what I learned from reading Buffett and Munger Unscripted: Three Decades of Investment and Business Insights from the Berkshire Hathaway Shareholder Meetings by Alex Morris.

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#375 The Single Biggest Individual Financier In The World. The Richest Woman In America: Hetty Green

Founders

01/06/25 • 53 min

Hetty Green bailed out New York City. Her decisions on what interest rates to charge moved markets and were reported in major newspapers. She was a one woman bank and the single biggest individual financier in the world. She took no partners and ran her own money. She built a financial empire of stocks, bonds, railroads, and real estate. She battled the great men of her day and kept a gun on her desk. She did all of this alone. Defiantly independent and ferociously intelligent she built a vast, liquid fortune at a time when women couldn't even vote. She used her intelligence to increase her wealth, her independence to live as she wished, and her strength to battle anyone who stood in her way.

This episode is what I learned from reading Hetty: The Genius and Madness of America’s First Female Tycoon by Charles Slack and The Richest Woman in America: Hetty Green in the Gilded Age by Janet Wallach.

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