@founderspodcast1
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 and invent new technology. They ran these experiments throughout their entire lives. At some point, somebody put these ideas 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
What I learned from reading Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel and Blake Masters (for the 3rd or 4th time) https://amzn.to/4yhebFh *Made possible by:* Ramp: https://ramp.com Applovin: https://www.applovin.com Vanta: https://vanta.com/founders
What I learned from reading Honda: The Man and His Machines by Sol Sanders. https://amzn.to/4amHvjp Made possible by: Ramp: https://ramp.com Applovin: https://www.applovin.com/ Vanta: https://vanta.com/founders
What I learned from reading Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print, and Power by James McGrath Morris. https://amzn.to/3SflkWd Made possible by: Ramp: https://ramp.com Applovin: https://applovin.com Vanta: https://vanta.com/founders
What I learned from reading Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple's Greatest Products by Leander Kahney. https://amzn.to/3QAuPi5 Made possible by: Ramp: https://ramp.com Axon by Applovin: https://axon.ai/founders Vanta: https://vanta.com/founders
What I learned from reading Steve Jobs in Exile: The Untold Story of NeXT and the Remaking of an American Visionary by Geoffrey Cain https://amzn.to/4o6mQpj Made possible by: Ramp: https://ramp.com Axon by Applovin: https://axon.ai/founders Vanta: https://vanta.com/founders
What I learned from reading Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike https://amzn.to/4euWASQ Made possible by: Ramp: https://ramp.com Axon by Applovin: https://axon.ai/founders Vanta: https://vanta.com/founders
What I learned from reading Arnold: The Education of a Bodybuilder by Arnold Schwarzenegger. https://amzn.to/4tfMp9a Made possible by: Ramp: https://ramp.com Axon by Applovin: https://axon.ai/founders Vanta: https://vanta.com/founders
This episode is about a once-in-a-generation mind working on what may be the most important problem in history. Based on the new book The Infinity Machine: Demis Hassabis, DeepMind, and the Quest for Superintelligence by Sebastian Mallaby https://amzn.to/3OfYGLz Made possible by: Ramp: https://ramp.com Axon by AppLovin: https://axon.ai/founders Vanta: https://vanta.com/founders
My friend Eric Jorgenson spent years—and thousands of hours—studying Elon Musk. Eric read everything Elon has written, read everything written about Elon, and watched every interview Elon's given. He distilled all of Elon's insights into his new book. This episode is all about How Elon Thinks based on The Book of Elon: Elon Musk's Most Useful Ideas in His Own Words https://amzn.to/40OuOJ5 Episode sponsors: Ramp gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud by going to Ramp.com to learn how they can help your business save time, save money, and grow revenue. https://ramp.com Automate compliance, security, and trust with Vanta. Vanta helps you win trust, close deals, and stay secure—faster and with less effort. Find out how increased security leads to more customers by going to Vanta. Tell them David from Founders sent you and you'll get $1000 off. https://vanta.com/founders
SpaceX is one of the most dominant companies on the planet and their performance gap just keeps getting bigger. In 2025, SpaceX launched more mass to orbit than every other provider on Earth combined. MUCH more: every payload from China, Russia, Europe, and all American launchers wasn’t even a fifth of what SpaceX put into orbit. They’re the only company producing rockets at an industrial scale. The practices that made SpaceX dominant aren’t unique to rockets. They’re a blueprint for building anything hard. This episode — and the essay it is based on — explores How SpaceX Works. Read the full essay here. Make sure you add your email so you are notified when the book —SpaceX Foundation— is released. https://futureblind.com/p/atoms-are-cheap-process-is-pricey Episode sponsors: Ramp gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud by going to Ramp.com to learn how they can help your business save time and money. https://ramp.com Automate compliance, security, and trust with Vanta. Vanta helps you win trust, close deals, and stay secure—faster and with less effort. Find out how increased security leads to more customers by going to Vanta. Tell them David from Founders sent you and you'll get $1000 off. https://vanta.com/founders
Runnin' Down A Dream: How to Succeed and Thrive in a Career You Love by Bill Gurley has been one of the most valuable talks I've heard. For years I've been using ideas from that talk to build this podcast. Bill has written a new book based on that talk: Runnin' Down A Dream: How to Thrive in a Career You Actually Love. https://amzn.to/4cowVdy This episode explores the most valuable ideas from the book and talk. Episode sponsors: Ramp gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud by going to Ramp.com to learn how they can help your business save time and money. https://ramp.com Automate compliance, security, and trust with Vanta. Vanta helps you win trust, close deals, and stay secure—faster and with less effort. Find out how increased security leads to more customers by going to Vanta. Tell them David from Founders sent you and you'll get $1000 off. https://vanta.com/founders
The Long Run and Beautiful Game of Roger Federer based on this biography of Roger Federer: https://amzn.to/3OBgf8F Episode sponsors: Ramp gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud by going to Ramp.com to learn how they can help your business save time and money. https://ramp.com Automate compliance, security, and trust with Vanta. Vanta helps you win trust, close deals, and stay secure—faster and with less effort. Find out how increased security leads to more customers by going to Vanta. Tell them David from Founders sent you and you'll get $1000 off. https://vanta.com/founders
Andre Agassi's autobiography is a brutally honest story about a tennis legend who hated the game that made him famous. Agassi traces his journey from a harsh, obsessive childhood training regimen to superstardom, burnout, rebellion, and eventual redemption—revealing the psychological cost of greatness, the search for identity beyond winning, and how he ultimately found purpose on his own terms. This book was as good as everyone says it is. You should read it: https://amzn.to/4a7OKuA Episode sponsors: Ramp gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud by going to Ramp and learning how they can help your business control your costs and save time and money. https://ramp.com Automate compliance, security, and trust with Vanta. Vanta helps you win trust, close deals, and stay secure—faster and with less effort. Find out how increased security leads to more customers by going to Vanta. Tell them David from Founders sent you and you'll get $1000 off. https://www.vanta.com/founders Collateral transforms your complex ideas into compelling narratives. Collateral crafts institutional grade marketing collateral for private equity, private credit, real estate, venture capital, family offices, hedge funds, oil & gas companies, and all kinds of corporations. Storytelling is one of the highest forms of leverage and you should invest heavily in it. You can do that by going to https://collateral.com
“I don't see Larry as conventionally resilient. I see him as a driving force. Larry gets what he wants and when he focuses on something, he gets it. Larry had his foot to the floor at 150 miles per hour trying to leave all of his competitors behind. He knew that eventually he would shoot the car over the cliff, but it was like in a James Bond movie, the car makes it across the cliff on the other side, even though it's broken into 10,000 pieces. I liked the fact that it was risky. The bigger the apparent risk, the fewer people will try to go there. I have always been more motivated by fear of failure than greed. I hate to lose. Silicon Valley is a killing field. Very few technology companies survive. We did.”
"Good habits create good art. The way we do anything is the way we do everything. Just one habit at the top of any field can be enough to give an edge over the competition. The only person you're ever competing against is yourself. The rest is out of your control. The details matter. Treat each choice you make, each action you take, each word you speak, with skillful care. The goal is to live your life in the service of art." From the “The Creative Genius of Rick” episode
On his 68th birthday, Kevin Kelly began to write down for his young adult children some things he had learned about life that he wished he had known earlier. Kelly’s timeless advice covers an astonishing range, from right living to setting ambitious goals, optimizing generosity, and cultivating compassion. Excellent Advice for Living is the ideal companion for anyone seeking to navigate life with grace and creativity: https://amzn.to/4adhQd7 Episode sponsors: Ramp gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud by going to Ramp and learning how they can help your business control your costs and save time and money. https://ramp.com Automate compliance, security, and trust with Vanta. Vanta helps you win trust, close deals, and stay secure—faster and with less effort. Find out how increased security leads to more customers by going to Vanta. Tell them David from Founders sent you and you'll get $1000 off. https://www.vanta.com/founders Collateral transforms your complex ideas into compelling narratives. Collateral crafts institutional grade marketing collateral for private equity, private credit, real estate, venture capital, family offices, hedge funds, oil & gas companies, and all kinds of corporations. Storytelling is one of the highest forms of leverage and you should invest heavily in it. You can do that by going to https://collateral.com Some of my favorite quotes from the episode: 1. Choose to believe that the entire universe is conspiring behind your back to make you a success. 2. Mastering the view through the eyes of others will unlock many doors. 3. If you can avoid seeking the approval of others your power is limitless. 4. The reward for good work is more work. 5. Don’t be the best. Be the only. 6. The urgent is a tyrant. The important should be your king. 7. Find smart people who will disagree with you. 8. The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing. 9. The most counterintuitive truth of the universe is that the more you give to others the more you'll get. 10. Life gets better as you replace transactions with relationships. 11. Courtesy costs nothing. 12. Life lessons will be presented to you in the order they are needed. 13. Cultivate an allergy to average. 14. If you repeated what you did today 365 more times would you be where you want to be next year? 15. If you are alive that means you still have lessons to learn. 16. Master something.Through mastery of one thing you'll command a viewpoint to steadily find where your bliss is. 17. Trust is earned in drops and lost in buckets. 18. First, always ask for what you want. Works in relationships, business, life. 19. If nobody else does what you do you won't need a resume. 20. How to apologize: quickly, specifically, sincerely. 21. You choose to be lucky by believing that any setbacks are just temporary. 22. The best way to advise people is to find out what they really want to do and then advise them to do it. 23. It is certain that 99% of the stuff you are anxious about won't happen. 24. What is important is not what happened to you but what you did about what happened to you. 25. Your golden ticket is being able to see things from other people's point of view. 26. Pay attention to who you are around when you feel best. Be with them more often. 27. To get your message across follow this formula: simplify, simplify, simplify, then exaggerate. 28. You will thrive more when you promote what you love rather than bash what you hate. 29. To be interesting just tell your own story with uncommon honesty. 30. When you truly think for yourself your conclusions will not be predictable. 31. Don’t measure your life with someone else’s ruler. 32. For maximum results focus on your biggest opportunities, not your biggest problems. 33. Pay attention to what you pay attention to. 34. Do more of what looks like work to others but is play for you. 35. Don't bother fighting the old just build the new. 36. Don't compare your inside to someone else's outside. 37. When you are stuck explain your problem to others. 38. It is useful to organize your thoughts with someone you trust and admire. 39. Most stories are improved significantly if you delete the first page. Start with the action. 40. A long game will compound small gains that will be able to overcome even big mistakes. 41. Constantly search for overlapping areas of agreement and dwell there. 42. It is your destiny to work on things that only you can do. 43. Make stuff that is good for people to have. 44. You'll get 10 times better results by elevating good behavior rather than punishing bad behavior. 45. Life is not a straight line for anyone. 46. Aim for tasks that you never want to stop doing.
There's no one like Rick Rubin. He's a legendary music producer known for his minimalist approach and relentless pursuit of greatness. This episode is what I learned from reading Rick Rubin: In The Studio by Jake Brown https://amzn.to/4qp3njW Episode sponsors: Ramp gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud by going to Ramp and learning how they can help your business control your costs and save time and money. Go to Ramp.com to learn how they can help your business save time and money. https://ramp.com Automate compliance, security, and trust with Vanta. Vanta helps you win trust, close deals, and stay secure—faster and with less effort. Find out how increased security leads to more customers by going to Vanta. Tell Vanta David from Founders sent you and you'll get $1000 off https://www.vanta.com/founders Collateral transforms your complex ideas into compelling narratives. Collateral crafts institutional grade marketing collateral for private equity, private credit, real estate, venture capital, family offices, hedge funds, oil & gas companies, and all kinds of corporations. Storytelling is one of the highest forms of leverage and you should invest heavily in it. https://collateral.com Some of my favorite quotes from the episode: Less is more but you have to do more to get less. Designing a product is keeping 5,000 things in your brain and fitting them all together in new and different ways. (Steve Jobs) Rubin's most valuable quality is his own confidence. If we're going to do this, let's aim for greatness. You have to believe what you're doing is the most important thing in the world. Everybody engaged in complicated work needs colleagues. Just the discipline of having to put your thoughts in order with somebody else is a very useful thing. (Charlie Munger) The key to it is doing what you believe in, as opposed to what you think is going to work. There were never any plans to make anything happen. I just did what I liked and believed in it, and luckily it all worked out. These things that we don't understand and cannot explain happen regularly. The amateur mind possesses a valuable lack of knowledge about rules when matched with passion and gumption gravity ceases to exist and new things take flight. To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. (Cicero) I believe in you so much, I'm going to make you believe in you. I try to make records that have a timeless quality.
I set out to write a book about what to do to make a great work of art. Instead, it revealed itself to be a book on how to be.” —Rick Rubin. This episode is what I learned from reading The Creative Act by Rick Rubin. https://amzn.to/4puwzoy Episode sponsors: Ramp gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud by going to Ramp and learning how they can help your business control your costs and save time and money. https://ramp.com Automate compliance, security, and trust with Vanta. Vanta helps you win trust, close deals, and stay secure—faster and with less effort. Find out how increased security leads to more customers by going to Vanta. Tell them David from Founders sent you and you'll get $1000 off. https://www.vanta.com/founders Collateral transforms your complex ideas into compelling narratives. Collateral crafts institutional grade marketing collateral for private equity, private credit, real estate, venture capital, family offices, hedge funds, oil & gas companies, and all kinds of corporations. Storytelling is one of the highest forms of leverage and you should invest heavily in it. You can do that by going to https://collateral.com Some of my favorite quotes from the episode: 1:00 It must have been frustrating for these elite athletes, who wanted to get on the court and show what they could do, to arrive at practice for the first time with this legendary coach only to hear him say, Today we will learn to tie our shoes. The point Wooden was making was that creating effective habits, down to the smallest detail, is what makes the difference between winning and losing games. Each habit might seem small, but added together, they have an exponential effect on performance. Just one habit, at the top of any field, can be enough to give an edge over the competition. Wooden considered every aspect of the game where an issue might arise, and trained his players for each one. Repeatedly. Until they became habits. The goal was immaculate performance. Wooden often said the only person you’re ever competing against is yourself. The rest is out of your control. This way of thinking applies to the creative life just as well. For both the artist and the athlete, the details matter, whether the players recognize their importance or not. Good habits create good art. The way we do anything is the way we do everything. Treat each choice you make, each action you take, each word you speak with skillful care. The goal is to live your life in the service of art. 6:23 How to get ideas from your subconscious. 8:41 Faith allows you to trust the direction without needing to understand it. 10:16 If you make the choice of reading classic literature every day for a year, rather than reading the news, by the end of that time period you’ll have a more honed sensitivity for recognizing greatness from the books than from the media. This applies to every choice we make. Not just with art, but with the friends we choose, the conversations we have, even the thoughts we reflect on. All of these aspects affect our ability to distinguish good from very good, very good from great. They help us determine what’s worthy of our time and attention. Because there’s an endless amount of data available to us and we have a limited bandwidth to conserve, we might consider carefully curating the quality of what we allow in. The objective is not to learn to mimic greatness, but to calibrate our internal meter for greatness. So we can better make the thousands of choices that might ultimately lead to our own great work. 14:25 We’re affected by our surroundings, and finding the best environment to create a clear channel is personal and to be tested. 27:57 Rules direct us to average behaviors. If we’re aiming to create works that are exceptional, most rules don’t apply. Average is nothing to aspire to.The goal is not to fit in. Communicate your singular perspective. 28:30 It’s a healthy practice to approach our work with as few accepted rules, starting points, and limitations as possible. Often the standards in our chosen medium are so ubiquitous, we take them for granted. They are invisible and unquestioned. 29:00 The world isn’t waiting for more of the same. Often, the most innovative ideas come from those who master the rules to such a degree that they can see past them or from those who never learned them at all. 38:50 Fear of criticism. Attachment to a commercial result. Competing with past work. Time and resource constraints. The aspiration of wanting to change the world. And any story beyond “I want to make the best thing I can make, whatever it is” are all undermining forces in the quest for greatness. 42:32 To hone your craft is to honor creation. By practicing to improve, you are fulfilling your ultimate purpose on this planet.
In 2023 Brad Jacobs wrote the book How to Make a Few Billion Dollars. https://amzn.to/45tPTuK In the book Brad explains how he built 8 separate billion dollar companies and other lessons from his 40+ year career as an elite entrepreneur. In the two years since Brad has made a few MORE billion dollars and so the sequel to his first book is: How to Make a Few MORE Billion Dollars. https://amzn.to/4sjanAa In this episode I share some of Brad's ideas on raising tons of money (Brad has raised over $50 billion), mastering his integration playbook, ideas for organizational integration, org chart design, and how Brad keeps his mind centered and in a positive place to handle the inevitable ups and downs of building great companies. Episode sponsors: Ramp gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud by going to Ramp and learning how they can help your business control your costs and save time and money. https://ramp.com Automate compliance, security, and trust with Vanta. Vanta helps you win trust, close deals, and stay secure—faster and with less effort. Find out how increased security leads to more customers by going to Vanta. Tell them David from Founders sent you and you'll get $1000 off. https://vanta.com/founders Collateral transforms your complex ideas into compelling narratives. Collateral crafts institutional grade marketing collateral for private equity, private credit, real estate, venture capital, family offices, hedge funds, oil & gas companies, and all kinds of corporations. Storytelling is one of the highest forms of leverage and you should invest heavily in it. You can do that by going to https://collateral.com
The Life of Jesus as told in the book Jesus: A Biography of a Believer by Paul Johnson https://amzn.to/49ra0fw
A viciously unhappy childhood causes Bruce Springsteen to retreat into work in an extreme way as he searches for success (and control). He channels his pain into focus and drive and gets everything he thought he wanted. He didn’t yet know he was lying to himself. He will find that out soon. He falls into a deep depression. One that almost leads to s*icide. With the help of his true friend Jon Landau he seeks professional help. This help helps immediately. The lie he was telling himself was that work was the most important thing in his life. What he really wanted, was what he was incapable of doing: forming a lasting and loving relationship with a woman. For that he realizes he can’t run. For that he realizes he has to stay. That thought terrifies him and is what caused him to seek help. He meets a truly singular woman and for the first time in his life he's able to have a healthy relationship with someone he loves. This realization comes almost 400 pages into Bruce’s incredible autobiography (one of the best I’ve ever read) and it is shocking. I originally thought I was making an episode about Bruce Springsteen’s extreme work ethic (one example: He wrote this book out by hand, multiple times, over 7 years. It’s almost 600 pages. He’s like this with everything btw.) But as I read, and reread this book over the last 6 months I realized that is not the most important part of the story. The work Bruce had to do to fix his mind is the heart and soul of the book. The work he did with Dr. Wayne Myers over 25 years is what allowed him to have a life. Not just a job. A life. As Bruce says after coming through the other side of this: “Work is work . . . but life . . . is life . . . and life trumps art . . . always.” This is a very unusual episode of Founders. I hope you enjoy it. If you want to skip to the part where he starts dealing with the struggles going on in his mind that starts 46 minutes in. Episode sponsors: Ramp gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud by going to Ramp and learning how they can help your business control your costs and save time and money. https://ramp.com Automate compliance, security, and trust with Vanta. Vanta helps you win trust, close deals, and stay secure—faster and with less effort. Find out how increased security leads to more customers by going to Vanta. Tell them David from Founders sent you and you'll get $1000 off. https://www.vanta.com/founders Collateral transforms your complex ideas into compelling narratives. Collateral crafts institutional grade marketing collateral for private equity, private credit, real estate, venture capital, family offices, hedge funds, oil & gas companies, and all kinds of corporations. Storytelling is one of the highest forms of leverage and you should invest heavily in it. You can do that by going to https://collateral.com
Christian von Koenigsegg is unapologetically in the pursuit of greatness. He builds some of the fastest and most expensive cars on Earth, has a cult-like following, and relentlessly seeks out challenges he can innovate on. After building his company for more than 30 years, his love and passion for his craft is still as strong as ever. This episode explores some of the most important ideas I found from studying his life and career. It's perfect for anyone that wants to live their dream. Episode sponsors: Ramp gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud by going to Ramp and learning how they can help your business control your costs and save time and money. https://ramp.com Automate compliance, security, and trust with Vanta. Vanta helps you win trust, close deals, and stay secure—faster and with less effort. Find out how increased security leads to more customers by going to Vanta. Tell them David from Founders sent you and you'll get $1000 off. https://www.vanta.com/founders Collateral transforms your complex ideas into compelling narratives. Collateral crafts institutional grade marketing collateral for private equity, private credit, real estate, venture capital, family offices, hedge funds, oil & gas companies, and all kinds of corporations. Storytelling is one of the highest forms of leverage and you should invest heavily in it. You can do that by going to https://collateral.com Sources: Apex: The Story of the Hypercar https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4325400/ Koenigsegg Documentary https://youtu.be/drw9DUoYfBg?si=pasTFEZtGh75Ph9S Ultimate Koenigsegg Factory Tour With Christian Von Koenigsegg https://youtu.be/30TFrquvs9g?si=WCKX1pM8SFLMKhpA BMW Podcast Episode 75 https://youtu.be/eLmTbEkkhSE?si=x8cfEVrIwjLskgJ5 Chronicles of Koenigsegg: The World's Fastest Car Company https://youtu.be/YrsgwHg_2Ow?si=XiLPqAxO46__wwHg How To Build A Koenigsegg - NEW Factory Tour https://youtu.be/9M_J3iWcMbU?si=uVT2nqrbTomQ9jvf How Koenigsegg Sets Hypercar World Records! | Beyond Victory #19 | Nico Rosberg https://youtu.be/HVwMuUboljo?si=eR_0HLHe7JvNI9Nh Inside Sweden’s Innovation Factory https://www.forbesindia.com/article/cross-border/inside-swedens-innovation-factory/43631/1 Christian von Koenigsegg Talks About the Future and His Nerves Leading Up to the Speed Record https://www.motortrend.com/features/christian-von-koenigsegg-talks-future-and-his-nerves-leading-up-to-the-speed-record?utm_source=chatgpt.com Christian von Koenigsegg Interview: The Technical Power of Lateral Thinking https://www.motortrend.com/features/christian-von-koenigsegg-interview-gemera-hypercar-different-thinking Interview with Christian Von Koenigsegg https://www.c-qp.com/interviews/christian-von-koenigsegg-ceo-koenigsegg-automotive-entrepreneur/?utm_source=chatgpt.com Cars and Culture #25 - Koenigsegg Automotive AB CEO & Founder Christian von Koenigsegg https://youtu.be/jNAEvcd5cq4?si=qqRqWb97P7ALTQXu Hypercar Boss Chat! Fixing Jaguar, Horsepower Wars & More https://youtu.be/F6lAhRqHmuw?si=vTqGxZyu5YWZp5F8 Koenigsegg History https://www.koenigsegg.com/history#:~:text=On%20November%204th%2C%202017%2C%20the,RS%20also%20saw%20the%20highest