Great @Fortune piece on @davidsenra today.
Years ago, David kept texting me and @karimatiyeh to back a podcast with fewer than 1,000 listeners. "Trust me on this one." We did. That podcast became @tbpn. It sold to OpenAI this April and along the way did more for @tryramp's profile than any ad money could buy.
What the piece gets right about David and mostly leaves between the lines: he's read 415 biographies of the people who got it right and he turned that discipline into a place the rest of us go to study. @FoundersPodcast isn't a podcast so much as a school for builders. It's why the founders I asked didn't describe it, they revered it. When you've studied the greats that obsessively, you can tell the sublime from the merely great — and you'll bet everything on the difference before the rest of us can see it at all.
David earned that audience one obsessed listener at a time. Summarizing a book a week, alone in a room, scraping by for years before anyone was listening. The fame didn't change him. Neither did the money: he turned down $50M+ buyout offers to keep Founders his, and he takes no equity in the bets he sends others. For David, great work itself is always the point.
The lesson I keep relearning from him: when you find talent like that, don't hedge. Back them completely. The returns aren't linear.
Nothing better than watching a friend succeed. Grateful to be in business with him too — Founders Podcast, the new show, whatever comes next.
