Podcast profile
By 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
Latest episode
38 min
Topics
Company building, growth, business models, and competitive strategy.
Management, hiring, organizational leadership, and professional growth.
Historical and oral-history lessons about technologies and companies.
Formats
Reported or scripted storytelling assembled into a narrative.
Argument, interpretation, or editorial commentary led by the presenter.
Audience level
Basic familiarity helps because industry context and terminology appear.
Listen from the original source
This directory never re-hosts or republishes podcast audio.
Official sources checked
Episode audio and show facts come from the checked-in refresh of the show’s public sources.
From the feed
Raymond Plank founded Apache Corporation with just $250,000 in 1954. 50 years later his company was worth $50 billion. This episode examines the life and entrepreneurial philosophy of Raymond Plank through his memoir A Small Difference Rather than presenting a conventional history of Apache, this episode focuses on the
Obsession is the engine of Nolan’s career. This episode examines Christopher Nolan’s life, working methods, and philosophy through The Nolan Variations by Tom Shone. Made possible by: Ramp: https://ramp.com Applovin: https://www.applovin.com Vanta: https://vanta.com/founders Add your email here and I wi
This episode discusses Joseph Wechsberg’s 1966 book, The Merchant Bankers. Rather than recounting the histories of families like the Rothschilds, Barings, Hambros, Warburgs, and Lehman Brothers, I wanted to extract the principles they shared. Merchant banking is fascinating. It's a very distinctive form of entrepreneur
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) 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. 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. Made possible by: Ramp: https://ramp.com Applovin: https://www.applovin.com/ Vanta: https://vanta.com/founders
What I learned from reading Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple's Greatest Products by Leander Kahney. 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. Made possible by: Ramp: https://ramp.com Axon by Applovin: https://axon.ai/founders Vanta: https://vanta.com/founders
Kelly Johnson’s “14 Points” read like a SpaceX operations manual — 60 years before SpaceX was founded. Kelly Johnson created Skunk Works, which he defined as: “A concentration of a few good people solving problems far in advance—and at a fraction of the cost—of other groups by applying the simplest, most straightforwar
What I learned from rereading Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike for the 3rd or 4th time. 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. 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. Made possible by: Ramp: https://ramp.com Axon by AppLovin: https://axon.ai/found
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:
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
Running 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 have 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 Lov
What I learned from reading The Master: The Long Run and Beautiful Game of Roger Federer by Chris Clarey. 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 go
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 i
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 Ad
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. Episode sponsors: Ramp gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs,
"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: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin. Episode sponsors: Ramp gives you everything you need to control spend, watch
In 2024 Brad Jacobs wrote the book How to Make a Few Billion Dollars. 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: Ho
The Life of Jesus as told in the book Jesus: A Biography of a Believer by Paul Johnson. This episode was originally published on Christmas Eve 2023.
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 depress
Christian von Koenigsegg is unapologetically in the pursuit of greatness. Koenigsegg 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
I'm reposting one of my favorite founder stories. If you listened to this first time I recommend listening again. If you missed this before, you're about to hear one of the wildest founder stories of all time. A few surprising things I learned from reading about Dietrich Mateschitz, founder of Red Bull: 1. He started t