David Senra

Learn from history's greatest founders. Every week I read a biography of an entrepreneur and tell you what I learned on Founders podcast
March 2, 2022

The Founders: The Story of Paypal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley

My top 15 highlights from the book: 1. Payne walked into Musk's bedroom. The room was literally filled with books—biographies about business luminaries and how they succeeded. It kind of clicked to me that Elon was prepping himself and studying to be a famous entrepreneur. 2. "I think you may misread me a little. My mind is always on X...
Read more
February 21, 2022

Alexander the Great: The Brief Life and Towering Exploits of History's Greatest Conqueror

My top 10 highlights from the book: 1. No trait of Alexander's was more firmly held or enduring than his admiration for genuine excellence and brilliant achievement. 2. Stand firm, for it is toil and danger that lead to glorious achievements. 3. True men need no reward for their labors aside from those labors themselves, as long as the...
Read more
February 14, 2022

Time to Make the Donuts: The Founder of Dunkin Donuts Shares an American Journey

My top 10 highlights from the book: 1. Find solutions under any circumstances. 2. There's nothing in the world you can do to solve the problems of a liar. 3. Adversity is a great teacher. 4. One of the best lessons I ever learned from my dad is what he didn’'t do properly. Sometimes the best lessons you learn in life are from what you ...
Read more
February 8, 2022

The Autobiography of Lucille Ball

My top 10 highlights from the book: 1. People with happy childhoods never overdo; they don't strive or exert themselves. They're moderate, pleasant, well liked, and good citizens. Society needs them. But the tremendous drive and dedication necessary to succeed in any field-not only show business-often seems to be rooted in a disturbed ...
Read more
February 2, 2022

Mind Your Own Business: A Maverick's Guide to Business, Leadership and Life

My top 10 highlights from the book: 1. I regard myself as guardian of the company’s soul. 2. Reducing business matters to their essence, whittling away that which obscures or is unnecessary, has served me well. I admire greatly those who practice the art. 3. I loved building a business. What could be better? The products were wonderful...
Read more
January 20, 2022

The Essays of Warren Buffett

My top 10 highlights from the book: 1. On a daily basis, the effects of our actions are imperceptible; cumulatively, though, their consequences are enormous. 2. We play offense while others scramble for survival. 3. Games are won by players who focus on the playing field—not by those whose eyes are glued to the scoreboard. 4. Forming m...
Read more
January 9, 2022

Churchill

My top 10 highlights from the book: 1. He read everything of value he could get his hands on, and forgot nothing he read. 2. He thirsted for office, power, and the chance to make history. 3. It is not easy to classify Churchill. 4. Never flinch, never weary, never despair. 5. Churchill was never content to be silent or inactive when th...
Read more
December 30, 2021

Unstoppable: Siggi B. Wilzig's Astonishing Journey from Auschwitz Survivor and Penniless Immigrant to Wall Street Legend

My top 10 highlights from the book: 1. Never give up. Only death is permanent. Everything else can be fixed. 2. I couldn't take such talk about not coming out alive. I didn't want to hear it. Whenever my mind told me I was not going to survive, the Almighty told me to keep going. So I stayed away from the others. 3. Because I could out...
Read more
December 13, 2021

Damn Right: Behind the Scenes with Berkshire Hathaway Billionaire Charlie Munger

My top 10 highlights from the book: 1. The rabbit runs faster than the fox, because the rabbit is running for his life while the fox is only running for his dinner. 2. I had a considerable passion to get rich. Not because I wanted Ferraris—I wanted the independence. I desperately wanted it. 3. He wouldn't accept anything on face value....
Read more
December 9, 2021

Enzo Ferrari: The Man and the Machine

My top 10 highlights from the book: 1. If there was one essential quality about the man it was his ironbound tenacity, his fierce devotion to the single cause of winning automobile races with cars bearing his name. For nearly sixty years, hardly a day passed when this thought was not foremost in his mind. Win or lose, he unfailingly an...
Read more
November 30, 2021

Anthony Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography

My top 10 highlights from the book: 1. He demanded excellence, and he never settled for shit. He just wanted the show to be the greatest thing ever, all the time. 2. It was his life's work, and he never slacked. 3. He gave me really good advice: "Stay public. You gotta promote, promote, promote, or it all dies. You just gotta be out th...
Read more
November 24, 2021

My Turn: A Life of Total Football

My top 10 highlights from the book: 1. I'm not capable of doing something at a low level. 2. It doesn't work without full commitment. 3. I'm definitely cunning. I'm always on the lookout for the best advantage. 4. Winning was the consequence of the process that we had concentrated on. 5. A setback is probably a sign that you need to ma...
Read more
November 18, 2021

The Autobiography of Estée Lauder

My top 10 highlights from the book: 1. Risk taking is the cornerstone of empires. No one ever became a success without taking chances. 2. I was single-minded in the pursuit of my dream. 3. I sometimes wonder if I had set my heart on selling tassels, cars, furniture, or anything else but beauty, would I have risen to the top of a profes...
Read more
November 14, 2021

Authentic: A Memoir by the Founder of Vans

My top 10 highlights from the book: 1. The way we deal with hardship is our legacy. You can accept defeat, or you can overcome it. 2. Quitting Randy's had probably been the biggest stroke of luck in my life. Opportunity is a strange beast. 3. Whenever a situation went sideways and things looked dire, I always called up my one superpowe...
Read more
November 9, 2021

The General and the Genius: Groves and Oppenheimer —The Unlikely Partnership that Built the Atom Bomb

My top 10 highlights from the book: 1. It is clear that nothing short of a full-speed, all-out attempt would be worthwhile. 2. Once Leslie Groves accepted his new assignment, he embraced it completely. From his appointment in September 1942 until the end of the war, he worked at full speed, often fourteen hours a day or more. His remar...
Read more
November 2, 2021

Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography

My top 10 highlights from the book: 1. He had the attitude that he could do anything, and therefore so can you. 2. He refused to accept automatically received truths, and he wanted to examine everything himself. 3. Picasso had a saying—‘good artists copy, great artists steal’—and we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas...
Read more
November 2, 2021

A Man For All Markets: From Las Vegas to Wall Street, How I Beat the Dealer and the Market

My top 10 highlights from the book: 1. The book reveals a thorough, rigorous, methodical person in search of life, knowledge, financial security, and, not least of all, fun. 2. I learned at an early age to teach myself. This paid off later on because there weren’t any courses in how to beat blackjack, build a computer for roulette, or ...
Read more
October 27, 2021

Michael Jordan: Driven From Within

My top 10 highlights from the book: 1. Players who practice hard when no one is paying attention play well when everyone is watching. 2. It's hard, but it's fair. I live by those words. 3. To this day, I don't enjoy working. I enjoy playing, and figuring out how to connect playing with business. To me, that's my niche. People talk abou...
Read more
October 22, 2021

Michael Jordan: The Life

My top 10 highlights from the book: 1. His competence was exceeded only by his confidence. 2. He worked at the game, and if he wasn't good at something, he had the motivation to be the best at it. 3. Whenever I was working out and got tired and figured I ought to stop, I'd close my eyes and see that list in the locker room without my n...
Read more
October 18, 2021

Aristotle Onassis: An Extravagant Life

My top 10 highlights from the book: 1. He became one of the richest men in U.S. history ever to be arrested. 2. The epic life of Aristotle Onassis is as mysterious as a tale from ancient Greek mythology and is a study of paradoxes, altogether gripping because of their seeming inconsistencies. 3. Onassis had long since begun to formulat...
Read more
October 15, 2021

Stephen King on Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

My top 10 highlights from the book: 1. My earliest memory is of imagining I was someone else. 2. By the time I was fourteen the nail in wall would no longer support the weight of the rejection slips impaled upon it. I replaced the nail with a spike and went on writing. 3. I think I was forty before I realized that almost every writer w...
Read more
October 6, 2021

Steven Spielberg: A Biography

My top 10 highlights from the book: 1. Whatever is there, he makes it work. 2. Spielberg once defined his approach to filmmaking by declaring, "I am the audience." 3. "He said, 'I want to be a director.' And I said, 'Well, if you want to be a director, you've gotta start at the bottom, you gotta be a gofer and work your way up.' He sai...
Read more
September 29, 2021

In the Company of Giants: Candid Conversations with the Visionaries of the Digital World

My top 10 highlights from the book: 1. A small team of A+ players can run circles around a giant team of B and C players. —Steve Jobs 2. There are no shortcuts around quality, and quality starts with people. —Steve Jobs 3. Usually people never think that much about what they're doing or why they do it. They just do it because that's th...
Read more
September 24, 2021

Scientific Advertising

My top 10 highlights from the book: 1. Individuals come and go, but they leave their records and ideas behind them. These become a guide to all who follow. 2. Genius is the art of taking pains. 3. The best ads ask no one to buy. That is useless. The best ads are based entirely on service. They offer wanted information. They site advant...
Read more
September 22, 2021

The Man Who Sold America: The Amazing (but True!) Story of Albert D. Lasker and the Creation of the Advertising Century

My top 10 highlights from the book: 1. Advertising is a very simple thing. I can give it to you in three words: Salesmanship in print. 2. Before he arrived on the scene, advertising agencies were mostly brokers of space in newspapers and magazines. With Lasker's prodding, the industry became a creative force and began earning substanti...
Read more
September 17, 2021

Invention: A Life by James Dyson

My highlights from the book: 1. This is a story told through a life of creating and developing things, as well as expressing a call to arms for young people to become engineers, creating solutions to our current and future problems. 2. I have tried to seek out those young people who can make the world a better place. I have seen what m...
Read more
September 15, 2021

Inside Steve Jobs' Brain

My top 10 highlights from the book: 1. It takes a passionate commitment to really thoroughly understand something, chew it up, not just quickly swallow it. Most people don't take the time to do that. 2. He remade Apple in his own image. Apple is Steve Jobs with ten thousand lives. 3. I'm looking for a fixer-upper with a solid foundatio...
Read more
September 15, 2021

Creative Capital: Georges Doriot and the Birth of Venture Capital

My highlights from the book: 1. He was very important because he was the first one to believe there was a future in financing entrepreneurs in an organized way. 2. He brought a unique style to everything he did. 3. He called his course Manufacturing, but it was really his philosophy of life and of business. 4. At Harvard, Doriot became...
Read more
September 11, 2021

The Operator: David Geffen Builds, Buys, and Sells the New Hollywood

My highlights from the book: 1. He told me he had recently read Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist, Buffett was Geffen's hero. 2. Geffen—with searing focus, unyielding drive, and outlandish nerve—had devised and implemented strategies to propel himself to the top of the heap of Hollywood powerbrokers. 3. I used to have phone...
Read more
September 7, 2021

A Few Lessons for Investors and Managers From Warren Buffett

My top highlights from this book: 1. Big opportunities come infrequently. When it’s raining gold, reach for a bucket, not a thimble. 2. Speculation is most dangerous when it looks easiest. 3. Now it is a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best you very often get it. —W. Somerset Maugham 4. "Moats" —a metap...
Read more

See more posts »