Steve Jobs and His Heroes

**David Senra** (0:00)
I want to tell you about a one-time only limited event that I don't think you're going to want to miss. I am doing a live show with Patrick O'Shaughnessy from the Invest Like the Best podcast in New York City on October 19th. Patrick has interviewed over 300 of the world's best investors and founders for his podcast. I've read over 300 biographies of history's greatest entrepreneurs for my podcast. We'll be talking about what we learned from seven years of podcasting, sharing our favorite ideas and stories, and doing a live Q&A. There will also be special event-only swag. If you live in New York City, I think it's a no-brainer. But if not, I think it's a great excuse to fly in. I've already heard from a bunch of people that bought tickets, they're flying in from other cities. Some people are flying in from other countries. That's setting the bar really high, so I will have at least four shots of espresso or four energy drinks before or during the show so we can make it a night that you'll never forget. If you're interested in attending this unique live event, I will leave a link down below. I highly recommend you get your tickets today, and I hope I get to see you in New York on October 19th. Apple was founded 45 years ago today, and when I read that, I had the idea to do just a quick little episode for you that highlights the almost 40 different episodes of Founders that I've done on Steve Jobs or the people that he was influenced by or looked up to. And the reason I wanted to do that is because I think Steve Jobs is one of the best illustrations of why Founders podcasts exist. And that's because Steve, like every single other of history's greatest entrepreneurs, all spent an excessive amount of time studying from and learning from the great people that came before them, and then used the ideas that they learned through that practice of study and reading to use those ideas in the company that they wind up building. And that is exactly why Founders exists. If you listen to Founders, you are able to download into your brain the very best ideas of all of history's greatest entrepreneurs and their worst mistakes that you can avoid. And so the fact that you're hearing this, that means you're not currently on the Misfit feed, and that means you're only hearing partial episodes of Founders. You just hear about the first 30 minutes of some of the episodes that I've done. In order to access full episodes, you'll need to sign up by tapping the link that's in the show notes of your podcast player, or by going to founderspodcast.com. And once you do that, you get immediate access to 247 full-length episodes that are available nowhere else. And I add more episodes every week.
Every episode is ad-free, and it takes less than 29 seconds to set up. And so what I'm gonna do right now is I'm gonna go through about, I think there's like 37 episodes on this list that are related to either Steve Jobs himself or people he studied. I will leave all of the episode title and episode numbers in the show notes. So if you sign up, you can start with these episodes. Gives you like a fantastic blueprint or fantastic roadmap to start going through this extensive back catalog of Founders. Because I've spent four years, about 6,000 hours, and I've read over 100,000 pages. So it's just so I can document and search for the very best ideas in the history of entrepreneurship. I've distilled what I learned down to roughly about 400 hours. And by listening to the episodes I'm about to talk to you about, it'd be impossible for you to listen to them, learn the best ideas from these extremely talented, some of the smartest and most productive people to ever live and not get a return on your investment when you apply these ideas to your work. So I'm just gonna start. First, I'm gonna talk about the ones that are specifically on Steve Jobs. And so the very first episode I ever did on Steve Jobs, it was number five. It was based on Steve Jobs' biography. It was written by Walter Isaacson. And this is where it really blew my mind, because as I'm reading this book, and Steve is working with the author, with Walter Isaacson, and he knows he's dying, and in this book, Steve introduced me to so many other founders I didn't even know existed. And he goes through at length about all the people that he admired, the people that he wanted to pick their brain, the one he read books about, what inspired him, and what ideas of theirs that he used to build Apple. So that's number five. Number 19, if you could only read, let's say you only had time to read one biography of Steve Jobs, this is the one I would recommend. And so this is number 19 The book is called Becoming Steve Jobs, The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader, and it was published after Isaacson's biography. So it also builds on some of what Isaacson wrote about. And what I loved about this book is it shows, in the subtitle, it says, the evolution of a reckless upstart into a visionary leader. Steve Jobs was not born as one of the greatest entrepreneurs to ever live. He made himself, he built himself into that person. And so this book spends a lot of time talking about the mistakes he was making in his 20s and 30s and how he corrected. He had the ability to constantly, he was a learning machine, he had the ability to constantly learn and correct his behavior. And without making those mistakes and learning from his struggles, we would have never had things like the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad, the iMac, all of the things that now, the gigantic Apple empire sits upon. And the book also has a fantastic introduction written by Marc Andreessen. If you go and look at the description, I have a quote from Marc Andreessen as the description of why I created Founders.