Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
· David Senra, Patrick O'Shaughnessy
[00:00:00] S1: But this is something I learned from you, this idea of making sure that your source of fuel and energy and ambition is generative and not negative. And I do think the conversations I've had with you, with Sam Hinkie, it's really important. It's like I'm getting to the point where I push myself because I love it. I'm way nicer to myself than I have ever been because I'm like, "Oh, this doesn't serve me anymore." I'm not going like, I will be successful because I love it, and if I love it, I'll do it all the time, and if I do it all the time, I'll get really good at it. And if I get really good at it, money will come as a result because it's an act of service, right? [00:00:00] S0: Yeah. The clean fuel/dirty fuel debate is really interesting. And look, a lot of, most or nearly all of the books that you've read were people that were fueled by dirty fuel. Dirty fuel works really well, but it consumes the person in a way that I would far rather die, you know, nobody knowing who I am with no worldly success. But having people that could count on me, rely on me, I was faithful to, that I was loyal to. That's what I want at the end. So, if you can work backwards from that… that's another cool way to think about it, working backwards from what you hope is true is a simple heuristic for finding what to do well. And yeah, I think I can't wait to read the book.
· David Senra
[00:00:00] S1: This is why I think reading a bunch at the same time, or not the same time, but having a lot to pull from… it’s like, I'm reading the Bruce Springsteen book, but then you realize another person with like superhero work ethic and drive and ambition was LBJ, which Robert Caro brilliantly writes about. And you realize Bruce is generative. It took him a while to figure it out, but he got out on the other side of that, whereas LBJ never did. And even though their source is very similar, there's a great story that Robert Caro tells in one of his books, where LBJ finally gets to Washington. I think he's like an intern. I don't even remember what job he has. He has no money, it's cold, and it'd be like the sun would be coming up at 5:30, and this woman that worked with him would always see him running everywhere. And they just assumed, "Oh, he's got no coat, he got no money. He's running to warm himself up." And then the summer comes, and he's still running. And obviously Robert Caro's a master with words and storytelling, and his whole point was like, of course he was running. He finally made it to the spot, because he was talking about he wanted to be president since he was in third grade or something. He's like, he finally made it to the city, to the spot of where all his dreams are, and he was going to run after his dreams. There's so much in between these two stories. One guy's a rock star, one guy becomes the President of the United States, and it's the same thing. One is generative, one is unbelievably manipulative and probably not a guy that you'd want in your life.
· Patrick O'Shaughnessy, David Senra
[00:00:00] S0: Yeah. [00:00:00] S1: To be around. And so I think also learning from great examples, but almost seeing, like, "Oh, I don't want to be that way." This is something that… one of the best things about our friendship is, I actually want to let people in. [00:00:00] S0: Of course. [00:00:00] S1: I want to have friends, and deep friends. And in the past, that wasn't an important thing to me. [00:00:00] S0: Agreed. [00:00:00] S1: This conversation is now therapy for David. But this is what I... this is my point was, when I wanted to sit down with you, there's a bunch of things I want to talk about, but it's just like, I also want to kind of talk about the stuff that we normally talk about. The reason I think it's important for me and you too is how much of our ideas actually came from the creation of the podcast. You think about all the different ideas, and topics, and things that you've learned as a byproduct of just making this thing. And then the unfair advantage that we have is essentially, we're professional learners. You get to study somebody, you get to have a multi-hour conversation with them, and like, "Oh wait, he said that," or, "She said this." Like, "I'm going to take that idea." Who have you grabbed ideas from, and who do you let influence the way you think? [00:00:00] S0: I mean, how long have you got? I could easily rattle off 50 people. [00:00:00] S1: Let's take one… just some of the most important ideas and where they came from.
· David Senra, Patrick O'Shaughnessy
[00:00:00] S1: Let's take one… just some of the most important ideas and where they came from. [00:00:00] S0: To take the simplest example possible, in the early days of the show, this is a very practical real-world example. If you take the ideas that I got from Daniel, who you mentioned before at Spotify, about how to build software. From Bret Victor, who I mentioned before about this principle for great software and what it looks like, and from a guy named Chetan Puttagunta at Benchmark, one of the partners at a very storied investing firm called Benchmark, who taught me how to sell software. Just those three guys, I basically just stole their ideas and applied it to my situation, and it worked to a spectacular degree. I didn't know anything about software. I had never built software before. I had an amazing team at the time that was able to pull it off. But the direction of the resources and what to do strategically just came from asking – you know those three are three of the greatest in the world at what they do – "How do I do this?" to somebody that could help me, and then not thinking too hard about what they tell me and just doing it and having it work. And so, there's a tiny example, three people and many more. [00:00:00] S1: Did you have all three on your podcast? You had two out of three. [00:00:00] S0: I've never met Bret. [00:00:00] S1: Okay, so you’ve had two out of three. [00:00:00] S0: Yeah. [00:00:00] S1: These ideas came from conversations that you had on the podcast?
· David Senra, Patrick O'Shaughnessy
[00:00:00] S1: These ideas came from conversations that you had on the podcast? [00:00:00] S0: No, I didn't ask them this stuff on the podcast. But in time spent just offline with them. I'll never forget, I was in Benchmark's office in San Francisco showing Chetan the demo, I'd show him the demos. And, it was amazing. He'd give me feedback. They weren't an investor in my business or anything. He was just doing it out of just the goodness of his heart, I guess. And, same thing with the others, just... and there's many more than three people that contributed to that project that influenced me and taught me things. But yeah, mostly just offline asking questions, but I did interview Chetan several times and Daniel several times. [00:00:00] S1: This goes back to the beneficial nature of relationships. You start out as like, okay, I had a conversation with them, and then if there's some kind of mutual respect, you build a relationship. Like right now, we're filming, this is the first podcast ever filmed at the Aman in New York. [00:00:00] S0: Yeah.
· Patrick O'Shaughnessy, David Senra
[00:00:00] S0: Yeah. [00:00:00] S1: You try to email the Aman in New York and ask them if they can set up and film a podcast here for free, that's not going to happen. That happens because of the relationship, a personal relationship that I have with a friend of mine who is involved with Aman. This is why I always say relationships run the world, and our jobs are essentially like learning and then taking what we learned and packaging it for the consumption of somebody else, for an easy way for somebody else to consume and benefit from that learning. Whether it's a conversation, a book review, or whatever the case is. So that's like very practical. That was in the early days when you were doing Canvas, right? [00:00:00] S0: Yeah. [00:00:00] S1: What about larger things in your life? Who do you think had an impact, like, my life would not be the same if not for that one conversation, that one idea with that person.