David Senra: Mute the World and Build Your Own

**David Senra** (0:00)
The best founders kind of, they don't really rest on their laurels, and they don't sleep on winds. They essentially do something great, celebrate for a day, and then back to it. So I just did Tony Zhou of DoorDash, who I think you guys were investors in. He's like, we got so much more to do. He's like, okay, we had something good happen. Let's go out to dinner. And by the time the dinner, before the dinner's over, I'm thinking of the 17 things that are not going right. That's why he's great.

**Brian Halligan** (0:39)
Okay, today we have David Senra on the show. I've been a huge fan of his pod for a long time. He basically goes way down the rabbit hole on great founders from Jesus of Nazareth all the way up to Jensen Huang. Very, very, very deep down those rabbit holes. So what I wanted to know is what all the great founders have in common, and how do we apply that to today's founders, how do we apply that to picking the best founders, and how do we apply that to coaching my best CEOs? I hope you like the episode. You have gone very deep on a lot of founders, a lot of CEOs, a lot of successful people, from Jesus of Nazareth to Jensen Huang.
What's the one thing they have in common?

**David Senra** (1:22)
If I had to distill every single thing down to one word, it would just be like focus. They're just unbelievably focused compared to not only the average person, it's almost like they're a different species. But I would even say to today's founders, they are just much more focused and less distracted and not really looking around at what other people are doing. They kind of don't really care how other people are doing what they're doing. The way I put this is there's a maxim for this, is mute the world and then build your own. And so let me give you an example of this. This isn't out on my new show yet, but I just spent several hours with Dana White. I call him the founder of the UFC even though it's like, oh, they bought the company. And Dana, first of all, is one of my favorite conversations I ever had. I had so much fun. But when he tells the story of the UFC, where it's like, you know, he's 19 years old, he's a bellman in a hotel in Boston, and he's self-described loser. He's just like, I'm just a loser, I have nothing going on, but I'm obsessed with fighting. And at that time, boxing, he's a huge boxing fan. And he has this idea, he's like, I should just move to Vegas to fight capital world and try to just work in the industry. Now he's trying to build the world's biggest combat organization, but he's just like, I just need to work in this industry. And he was like, going back and forth, he said, this is stupid. He goes, I'm a bellman, I could be a bellman at 35 This doesn't work out, I could be a bellman at 35 I could be a bellman at 50 So I have nothing, I have no wife, no kids. And he just goes, starts working in the industry, taking a job and get, starts promoting, excuse me, managing fighters, then starts managing this weird thing called MMA, and these fighters for this thing called UFC, which is nothing. They're in front of tiny crowds, there's no money. And so he's on the phone, because he's a rep in Two Fighters, and one of the fighters is owed money by the UFC.
And he's like, dude, like you need to pay him. Like, and the guy screams at him, the owner. He's like, there's no money. There's no money. So Dana hangs up, calls the Fertitta brothers, their father built a casino. It's like, I think we could buy this whole thing. What you realize is he's a missionary founder. I think the best founders are missionary. Like if you go back and look at Jensen, or Steve Jobs, or Bezos, or any of these people, Elon, missionary.
And he's like, I think we could buy this thing. They buy it for 2 million. Takes them like 6 years. He's making no money.
They're losing money. They have to dump another 40 million into it until it's profitable. And he tells this whole story. So I'll get to the end, because he's still been running it for 26 years. And now they just did almost an $8 billion deal for their TV rights. At a time where he's making no money for the first 6 years, the first time he makes money, they write on the board the compensation for the partners. And he can't believe, he's like, oh my God, I'm going to make a million dollars. He thought he was rich.