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David Senra

#8 in Business this week

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

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  • 462 episodes
  • weekly
  • Avg 1 hr 9 min
  • English

Episodes 462

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  • Apr 14, 2025 · 1 hr 48 min

    #385 Michael Dell

    This is one of the most extraordinary founder stories you will ever hear. Michael Dell started his company with $1000 when he was 19 years old. The revenues for the first 16 years of Dell look like this: 1984 $6M 1985 $33M 1986 $67M 1987 $159M 1988 $258M 1989 $388M 1990 $546M 1991 $890M 1992 $2B 1993 $2.9B 1994 $3.5B 1995 $5.3B 1996 $7.8B 1997 $12.3B 1998 $18.2B 1999 $25.3B Dell had been profitable for every quarter of its existence. By 2012 the story had changed. The consensus

  • Apr 1, 2025 · 1 hr 6 min

    #384 Ken Griffin: Founder of Citadel and Citadel Securities

    Because of the podcast I get to meet a lot of super successful people. I'm always asking them "Who is the smartest person you know" and "Who do you think has the best business?". "Ken Griffin" is a very common answer. I've heard Ken described in two ways: "Winner" and "Killer". For years I've come across interesting anecdotes about Ken. Like when he appears as a 19 year old kid in Ed Thorp's excellent autobiography A Man For All Markets. Or when John Arnold describe Ken's intense competitive d

  • Mar 23, 2025 · 50 min

    The Invisible Billionaire: Daniel Ludwig

    Daniel Ludwig was the richest man in the world and no one knew his name. I've read almost 400 biographies of history's greatest founders and this book is one of my all time favorites. Daniel Ludwig started his company at 19 and was working on it well into his 90s. He built a massive conglomerate of over 200 companies operating in more than 50 countries. Spending the time to learn how he did this is a great investment. This episode will tell you what I learned from rereading The Invisible Billion

  • Mar 17, 2025 · 1 hr 8 min

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

    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

  • Mar 7, 2025 · 1 hr 31 min

    #382 Who Is Michael Ovitz?: The Rise and Fall (and Rise) of the Most Powerful Man in Hollywood

    At the core of Michael Ovitz's success is his relentless work ethic and commitment to mastering his craft. 50 years ago he founded Creative Artists Agency. CAA starts out as just five young guys in a run down office and eventually becomes the most powerful agency in the world. Ovitz's autobiography explains how that happened. As the Wall Street Journal wrote: When the history of Hollywood is written, few people will have played a larger role than Michael Ovitz. This episode is what I learned f

  • Feb 25, 2025 · 1 hr 21 min

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

    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 Buffe

  • Feb 18, 2025 · 59 min

    #379 Jerry Jones (Dallas Cowboys)

    Jerry Jones rolled the dice until his knuckles bled. He started working at 7 years old. Jerry could sell, sell, sell. He sold fruit at his father’s grocery store in grade school and sold shoes out of the trunk of his car in college. After failing to sell pizza franchises he tried real estate and insurance. He never met a high risk deal he didn’t like. Jerry got pitched a deal to drill for oil that everyone else had already said no to. Jerry said yes. That well made $4 million. He hit again on th

  • Feb 10, 2025 · 53 min

    #378 The Last Oil Baron: Leon Hess

    Your father goes bankrupt. You work for 50 cents a day to try to help your family survive the Great Depression. At 19 you see an opportunity where others see nothing. You start “a little fuel delivery business” with one used truck. Five years later you have 10 trucks. World War II breaks out and you serve as the fuel supply officer for General Patton. You come back to America and apply what the war taught you about logistics and moving fuel efficiently. You expand from fuel delivery to storage,

  • Jan 27, 2025 · 1 hr 3 min

    #377 Expanding A Family Dynasty: Marcus Wallenberg Jr.

    Marcus Wallenberg Jr's impact on Swedish industry was so substantial that during the 1970s, Wallenberg family businesses employed about 40% of Sweden's industrial workforce and represented 40% of the total worth of the Stockholm stock market. The Wallenberg family is one of the most fascinating family dynasties you could read about. The family has survived — and continues to thrive — for 170 years. In a family full of talented entrepreneurs and investors Marcus Wallenberg Jr. stands out. This e

  • Jan 6, 2025 · 53 min

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

    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,

  • Dec 27, 2024 · 1 hr 15 min

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

    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 Bulldo

  • Dec 15, 2024 · 36 min

    #374 Rare Jeff Bezos Interview

    Jeff Bezos on retirement being lame, AI, the electricity metaphor for AI, the good fortune of being alive during multiple golden ages, long term life long passions, refusing to underestimate opportunity, dancing with curiosity, inventing, wandering, crisp documents and messy meetings, willing to be misunderstood, and why he doesn't do many interviews. This episode is what I learned from reading and watching Jeff Bezos at DealBook Summit and Jeff Bezos: The Electricity Metaphor.

  • Dec 6, 2024 · 1 hr 33 min

    #373 Breakfast with Brad Jacobs + How To Make A Few Billion Dollars

    Brad Jacobs is one of the most talented living entrepreneurs. Brad has started 8 different billion dollar or multi-billion dollar businesses. He has done over 500 acquisitions and has raised over $30 billion. He started his first company at 23, has over 40 years of experience as an entrepreneur, and is the most energetic person I have ever been around. Earlier this year he published his life story: How to Make a Few Billion Dollars. How to Make a Few Billion Dollars was one of my favorite books

  • Nov 29, 2024 · 49 min

    #372: Amancio Ortega: The Genius Behind the Inditex Group

    Amancio Ortega is one of the wealthiest people in the world. Ortega is the founder of Inditex, a pioneer of fast fashion, an entrepreneur with over 60 years of experience, and has created a business model that is studied in universities that he could not access. His life story is inspiring, educational, and full of valuable ideas for future generations of founders. This episode is about what I learned from reading This is Amancio Ortega: The Man Who Created Zara by Covadonga O'Shea.

  • Nov 12, 2024 · 1 hr 5 min

    #370 The Founder of IKEA: Ingvar Kamprad

    What I learned from reading Leading By Design: The Ikea Story by Ingvar Kamprad and Bertil Torekull and The Testament of a Furniture Dealer by Ingvar Kamprad.

  • Oct 20, 2024 · 1 hr 2 min

    Steve Jobs and Edwin Land

    What I learned from rereading Instant: The Story of Polaroid by Christopher Bonanos.

Showing 61–80 of 462 episodes