· Alexander Taubman, David Senra
[00:00:00] S1: Yeah. [00:00:00] S0: And he's like, "Nope, not doing it." He has this great line. He's like, "Oh, we'd sell if it was the maximally ambitious thing to do." [00:00:00] S1: Yeah. [00:00:00] S0: Which is obviously- [00:00:00] S1: Great line. [00:00:00] S0: Yeah, it's a great line, which is obviously his way of saying no. I'm even going to tell you some of the conversations I've had with him on the phone, which I was like, "I can't put this in the podcast," because he's definitely friendly UI, but conqueror spirit underneath that friendly UI. And then I just talked to Zach Dell. And I was like, "Is this the last business?" Because what I love about Karim and Eric from Ramp, I asked them both the question, like, "This is our last business." [00:00:00] S1: Yeah. [00:00:00] S0: It's not like I'm going to fucking sell this and start another company. Like, this is it. This is the last one. And Zach Del had the funniest thing because he wants to build something, like you said, he's relatively young. He's like, "I want to work on this for 50 years and go see how far I can take this thing." And he goes, "And do you think I'm doing this for a paycheck?" He's like, "Think about my background." I was like, "Yeah, good point. You're not doing it for a paycheck." So, what would be the point of selling it again for more money that you're never going to spend anyways? So I just love this idea. But we never closed the loop on your maximum ambition, which is like, you guys could be building a trillion-dollar company.
· Alexander Taubman
[00:00:00] S1: I think we can, yeah. If you just think about the power of compounding, and this is one of the reasons that long-term thinking and not being a seller is so valuable, is that it's amazing if you just kind of can keep getting a little bit better every year, how that can add up to, well, then you're tripling the value of these businesses every five years. And if you just keep doing that for 20 years, you're a trillion-dollar company. I'm not trying to make that sound easy. That's really hard to keep executing that way over a long period of time, over decades, and avoid mistakes and continue to retain the best talent, best technology talent in the world, and deliver the best customer service, customer excellence in the world across these service lines. That's really hard to do. But if you do it for long enough, the pie here is just extraordinarily big. We're talking about the whole economy, basically. This is like the largest TAM imaginable. And so if we can just keep executing and doing what we're doing for a long enough period of time, I think the potential is staggering.
· David Senra, Alexander Taubman
[00:00:00] S0: Well, I have to say, as somebody that's been there, been able to see this from almost the very beginning, I remember when the first time Long Lake got name-dropped on a podcast, and people were like, "Oh, no," because it was something relatively stealth, even though you guys were killing and buying everything and doing everything. I know for a fact and firsthand knowledge that one of the 10 best entrepreneurs in the world, you got their attention when you did the Amex deal. And they were like, "Hey, what's going on with Long Lake, and how do I get involved in this?" So just as a friend and a fan, it's been wonderful to see you, man, and I really appreciate you trusting me with coming out and telling the history of Long Lake today. [00:00:00] S1: Thank you so much. Honored to be here. [00:00:00] S0: Yep. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Please remember to subscribe wherever you're listening and leave a review, and make sure you listen to my other podcast, "Founders." For almost a decade, I've obsessively read over 400 biographies of history's greatest entrepreneurs, searching for ideas that you can use in your work. Most of the guests you hear on this show first found me through "Founders."