The best interview I've ever done about Founders

**David Senra** (0:00)
So this is not a typical Founders episode, but it is the best interview that I have ever done on Founders. This episode of Invest Like the Best came out a year ago. It is a great summary of what I've learned from the first six years of making Founders podcasts. Patrick and I recorded a part two, which covers some of the lessons that I've learned in the last year that should be out in a week or two. So make sure that you're following Invest Like the Best in your favorite podcast player so you don't miss that. But I also wanted to post this episode for you so I can tell you about the live show that Patrick and I are doing in New York City on October 19th. Patrick has interviewed over 300 of the world's best investors and founders on his podcast. I've obviously read 300 plus biographies of history's greatest entrepreneurs for mine. So we're going to be talking about what we've learned from seven years of podcasting, sharing our favorite ideas and stories, and then doing a live Q&A. If you live in New York, I think it's a no-brainer.
And if you don't, I think it's a great excuse to fly in and visit New York City. The link to get tickets is down below and available at founderspodcast.com, and I hope to see you in New York.

**Patrick Collison** (1:04)
David, I think you have one of the most interesting hobbies turned professions of anyone I know.
I first stumbled upon your show, I think because like five friends at once told me to listen to the episodes on Edwin Land and Estee Lauder. Those were my gateway drugs. Into your way of looking at history, I'd love to begin to introduce you to the audience by just outlining what you do. It's quite unusual.
You've done a lot of it.
Maybe you could just begin all the way back to when you first remember falling in love with reading. Let's start there.

**David Senra** (1:34)
I've been in love with reading longer than I even have a memory.
A few years ago, unfortunately, my mother died of breast cancer at a young age.
And as she was dying, because my parents had like a tumultuous relationship at the beginning of my life, she's really the only one that has any kind of recollection of how it was as a child. So unfortunately, when she died, all those memories died with her.
She said, the way you are now, you were from the time that you could talk. She's like, you would read anything you could get your hands on. Even if we didn't have books in the house, you'd read the back of CO boxes.
She said something where she's like, we didn't have a lot of money, but what I would do is take you to the bookstore.
And God bless bookstores where, even to this day, you can go in there, and even if you don't buy anything, you just sit on the floor and you can read.
And that's like one of my only memories from childhood, her taking me to the bookstore and just letting me read. And even before I could read, one of my favorite books when I was a real young kid was Where's Waldo? That's like when reading. That's just it. They're trying to find the guy with the striped hat. So it's just the only hobby that I've had my entire life. There's a ton of hobbies that I picked up, ton of interest, ton of sports, all these kinds of things where I'll get really intense, do it for a long time, and then drop it. I have two modes, zero or a hundred.
Reading's not like that.
And I just reread, because the founder of Visa, D. Hawk, just passed away. And what I loved about his book is he was the exact same way. He grew up in a tiny house on the edge of the Rocky Mountains, had no plumbing, no electricity, no money, they barely had food. But he had books.
His neighbors just said, there's something wrong with that D. Hawk boy, he'll read anything. See, when I read a biography, it's like I'm not reading biographies casually. I'm not like, oh, okay. I put myself in the story. To me, a great biography is like a movie for your mind, except instead of being over for two and a half hours, it's going to last like 15, 20 hours. We were just talking before recording that I read a thousand page biography on Enzo Ferrari, one of history's greatest obsessives. You put yourself in that story. You're like, what is it like being a young Enzo Ferrari? His father passes away unexpectedly. You're 18 years old. Your father, who you love more than anything, passes away. Your brother, serving in World War II, gets killed. Your father's business collapses because of your father's death. Now your left is an 18-year-old man trying to support your mother with no skills, no education, no anything. That's where the idea is. And then when you study somebody like Enzo Ferrari, it's like, oh, that is why the guy worked 16 hours a day, 7 days a week for 60 years and did it until he died because of that pressure. One of the greatest stories in that book. He didn't even think he was going to start his own car company. This is amazing. The big car company of the day in Italy was Fiat. He goes to try to get a job, and at the time, there's a huge glut. This is after World War I. And all these veterans are looking for jobs, so they get precedents over him. So he feels deflated. He had traveled from his small Italian town thinking he's going to get a job because he's obsessed with car racing because his dad used to take him to the races at 9 years old. There's just so many things where you can't understand why they make the decisions they do in business unless you understand who they were and what happened to him early on in life. What happened was he goes and gets a job, he gets rejected, he goes to a park bench in the middle of the snow and is crying. It's a very vivid scene in the biography. And what is insane is 40 years later, after Fiat buys half a Ferrari, he goes back to that bench that author ties it together. He's like, there was a missing piece of my life, a problem that I hadn't solved that ate away from me that caused me to have this excessive drive and dedication and obsession to my business. And now that circle is complete. And he goes and sits on that exact same bench.