Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
· 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.
· Patrick O'Shaughnessy
[00:00:00] S0: Two people came to mind right away. The first is Herb Allen from Allen & Company, who I don't know well. These lessons came from one incredibly interesting conversation about… my sense of him – again, don't know him well – is that he is uncompromising in his values. He's maybe the apex predator of the thing I want to do, which is like picking and supporting people. I think that's what he's done for a really long time with unbelievable success. And that he is so incredibly uncompromising about how he does that and willing, I won't tell the examples, but I think willing famously to throw away huge commercial opportunities just because the person wasn't who he wanted to support. Sometimes it's literally a conversation with a person that just smacks you in the face and makes you feel validated, maybe for what you're trying to do. There's a gentleman named Reece Duca who's very, very private. And there's no content about him or interviews with him. I wish to God he would let me interview him. I know he never will. Who has been incredibly impactful at a philosophical level, he has all these amazing little phrases, but his life kind of boils down to simplicity, the beauty of simplicity. He gave me this line one time, "Simplify your life with rhythm and harmony." And that line is what you're talking about. Fewer deeper relationships, fewer things better, everything aligned with what gives you energy, listening to your own, the feeling of aliveness. He lived that to a degree that's rare, that I've never seen. So, I could keep, I literally could rattle names. A gentleman that I spend a ton of time with now named Jesse Beyroutey, who I am with basically every day, who also I think has no interest in fame or accolades or recognition, but I think is one of the great – will go down, I would predict, as one of the great investors ever. And he's like Reece, he's completely uncompromising and has the most principled way of living I've ever seen. Just like, refuses to get sucked into the game. God, man, I could rattle off names for hours and hours. I mean, there's so many people that have influenced me. And that's what makes this all fun, that's what makes what you and I do so fun, is I'm inspired constantly. And you're doing this new show. I interview people once a week, but really I interview 10 people a day. That's what I do.