David Senra
Appearances
Acquired
Holiday Special 2023
So I wanted to do some that I absolutely loved and where there was actually an acquired founders overlap. And the very first recommendation would be the new Stripe Press edition of Poor Charlie's Almanac that just happened to be published a week after he passed away. There's something on the back.
Acquired
Holiday Special 2023
There's a quote from Charlie Munger, and he says there's an old two-part rule that often works wonders in business science and elsewhere. Number one, take a simple, basic idea, and two, take it very seriously. And so I really feel that you and I are taking Charlie's advice to heart. We're just taking a very simple idea of learning from history, and then we take it very, very seriously.
Acquired
Holiday Special 2023
And then the idea that we got to spend time with him in his very last year, I don't take that lightly. To the degree that I can, and you guys definitely did it with your excellent interview with him. It's like I really think being a steward of his ideas and trying to push it forward to past generations so they're not forgotten is a very important part of my mission.
Acquired
Holiday Special 2023
This book is almost impossible to find. So it's The Dream of Salomeo, My Life, and the Idea of Humanistic Capitalism by Brunello Cuccinelli. And I had to have him on my list out of the 330 entrepreneurs that I've studied for the podcast so far. It's shocking how many of them
Acquired
Holiday Special 2023
made the mistake of over-optimizing for their professional success at the detriment to their personal life, their relationships, and their happiness. And Brunello, along with Sol Price and Ed Thorpe, is really up there with how I want to pattern my own life.
Acquired
Holiday Special 2023
And he says, I've always been firmly convinced that in order to successfully stand out, you need to focus on one single project representing the dream of your life. And then it just speaks to the first class person that he is and the first class organization that he runs. The podcast comes out. It became very popular. Him and his team listened to it. And they send me a handwritten note.
Acquired
Holiday Special 2023
I've never felt paper that's more luxurious than this. And then they do the most Italian thing ever. They send me a bottle of their Cuccinelli olive oil. So again, he's very thoughtful. It's very obvious when you read the book. And you can tell by the way he's running the company that he's paying attention to everything.
Acquired
Holiday Special 2023
Okay. So number three and number four are actually related. You find these weird, hard to find books. And so this is one of them where it's like it blew my mind that the fact that In the 1980s, the richest American was somebody that no one ever heard of. And so there's only one book on him. And it's this book called The Invisible Billionaire, Daniel Ludwig.
Acquired
Holiday Special 2023
It's a biography of Daniel Ludwig written by Jerry Shields. And the book starts off saying that this photographer located the richest man in the world and no photographs have ever been taken of him. I'm like, what are you talking about? And then you learn that Daniel was just excessively focused on just his work. He had no other hobbies besides physical fitness and building his business.
Acquired
Holiday Special 2023
And he did that till, again, till he died. And what I love about it is you just find somebody that is completely focused on doing the best job possible for his customers and for his own sense of satisfaction of building a business. that he is proud of and that is operating. The way I would describe his approach to his business, it's like an artist painting a canvas.
Acquired
Holiday Special 2023
So number four is the taste of luxury. You got to pronounce his name. Bernard Arnault. Can you just pronounce the whole thing? I butchered all the French names in this episode.
Acquired
Holiday Special 2023
Okay, so this is on the list, one, because I highly suspect he might be the best entrepreneur on the planet that's still operating and running his company right now.
Acquired
Holiday Special 2023
And if you think about the fact that he knows everything down from the tiniest details, which there's crazy stories about this, to the big strategy, to the capital allocation decisions, I don't know if there's another more talented entrepreneur than him. His relentless dedication to really pay attention to every aspect of his business is something that I'm trying to do for mine.
Acquired
Holiday Special 2023
But the acquired episode on LVMH is one of the best episodes of any podcast I've ever heard. Not just acquired, any podcast. It's incredible. I can't tell you how many people I sent that to, how many times I listened to it. And then you were kind enough, we were together at your house in San Francisco, and you were kind enough to give me this book, which allowed me to do the podcast.
Acquired
Holiday Special 2023
Because at the time, you had a copy that you spent several hundred dollars on. And then if I wanted to order the book, the book was like, I think $3,000. Yeah, nuts. I think the important thing is identifying an opportunity that no one else sees. There's this great writer, Cedric Chin, that I really like.
Acquired
Holiday Special 2023
And he actually wrote something about Mark Leonard is that the foundation of a great career is based on finding an earned secret and exploiting it for multiple decades. And the reason this book is so amazing was because it ends and Bernard is 42 years old. Yeah, it ends at the beginning.
Acquired
Holiday Special 2023
And he is saying, hey, these luxury brands, they're kind of hard to compete with because if you are to have one, it's usually, you know, 50, 100 years old. And then everybody from the outside is telling him, this is a quote, I remember people telling me, it does not make sense to put together so many of these brands, but it was a success. It was a recognized success.
Acquired
Holiday Special 2023
And for the last 10 years, every competitor is trying to imitate. And so the book ends and he's calling his shot. He's like, hey, these seem to be good assets. I'm just going to keep buying them and then just keep compounding. And then you fast forward 30 years later and he's the richest man in the world.
Acquired
Holiday Special 2023
So this is Soul Price Retail Revolutionary written by his son, Robert Price. This is another acquired founders crossover. And the episode I made on Soul Price, I titled purposely the most influential retailer to ever live.
Acquired
Holiday Special 2023
Because if you look at the people who are on record saying they benefit from ideas from him, Sam Walton, Jim Senegal, Jeff Bezos, Bernie Marcus, it's like it all stems from this guy. So really the reason I picked this is one, It's a perfect crossover for your guys' excellent Costco episode.
Acquired
Holiday Special 2023
But this goes back to finding people that you admire, not just for their business success, but their success in life. Imagine that your son, after you pass away, writes a biography. on your life. And this is one of the last paragraphs. If you don't mind, let me just go ahead and read this whole paragraph. Sol was a poster child for the American dream.
Acquired
Holiday Special 2023
His immigrant parents were born in a small Russian village. Sol was the first in his family to graduate college. He earned a law degree. He became an exceptionally successful businessman and philanthropist, and he celebrated 70 years of marriage. He was a good father. who instilled high values in his sons, and he never walked away from responsibility. It doesn't get much better than that.