David Senra's Biography
David Senra Facts
David Senra is best known for his long-running podcast Founders.
He told Jim O'Shaughnessy on Infinite Loops October 13, 2022 : "I grew up in South Florida, Miami. My dad was born in Cuba and my grandfather, who was not an educated man by any means, he worked as a butcher, and he worked in a factory that made socks or shoes, I can't remember exactly. He saw what was happening in 1959 when he finally leaves, and so he takes the risk, he's like, okay, I'm married, he's in his late thirties, he's married, he's got a baby son, which is my father. He does not speak English, does not have an education, and very little money."
He told another O'Shaughnessy - Patrick: "I'm the first person in my family to graduate high school, the first person to graduate college, the first male in my family not to go to prison in three generations.
David told Frederik Gieschen on Manual with Compound that his family background was difficult. "My own experience in life is just coming from a family on both sides of family trees, full of just all the worst traits you could possibly have in a family, whether it is people abandoning their kids, not necessarily my parents abandoning me, but their family trees, aunts, uncles, grandfathers, great grandparents. All these people were just alcoholics, drug abusers, child molesters, violent people, drug addicts, overdoses, alcoholism. My entire life, I saw examples of exactly what not to do ... my parents got divorced and then were remarried ...my dad's a wild dude. My brother's crazy. I am obviously, too, but we're all completely different. Luckily, me and my siblings get along really well and we're really close and everything else."
David had always enjoyed reading and was also interested in history from a young age. This would eventually lead to him finding his vocation and creating Founders.
Whilst at high school he also worked for three years at a carwash.
And so, he founded Founders on 19 September 2016. The first episode was entitled Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, a Quest for a Fantastic Future. David ends the episode:
"These kind of biographies inspire me when I read them and I want to do more podcasts on different biographies. So that's going to be the plan moving forward ..."
David Senra tends to make one episode a week. His daily routine involves working out then David spends the first three to four hours reading. Then he spends the afternoon reviewing past highlights.
Whilst, David Senra has stated Steve Jobs is his favourite entrepreneur, he has said that his approach to life is more modelled on Ed Thorp:
" ...out of every single person that I've studied, he's the only one that didn't over optimize for his professional life at the detriment to his health and his personal life, right? And so, what I realized is... What did he focus on? He focused on his health, he focused on a business that he thought was intellectually-stimulating, he could build wealth at. So he built wealth. He had fun. He spent time with his kids and his wife. My life is a balance. I focus on my work, spend time with my family, take care of my health to have some fun, because we're alive."
This balance is important to David, he told Manual with Compound:
“It's safe to assume that every single person I have read about is smarter than I am. Yet you see all these smart-driven people make mistakes. They usually over optimize their professional life to the detriment of everything else. They destroy their personal lives. They destroy their health.”
In 2022, Founders joined the Colossus network of podcasts.
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He told Jim O'Shaughnessy on Infinite Loops October 13, 2022 : "I grew up in South Florida, Miami. My dad was born in Cuba and my grandfather, who was not an educated man by any means, he worked as a butcher, and he worked in a factory that made socks or shoes, I can't remember exactly. He saw what was happening in 1959 when he finally leaves, and so he takes the risk, he's like, okay, I'm married, he's in his late thirties, he's married, he's got a baby son, which is my father. He does not speak English, does not have an education, and very little money."
He told another O'Shaughnessy - Patrick: "I'm the first person in my family to graduate high school, the first person to graduate college, the first male in my family not to go to prison in three generations.
David told Frederik Gieschen on Manual with Compound that his family background was difficult. "My own experience in life is just coming from a family on both sides of family trees, full of just all the worst traits you could possibly have in a family, whether it is people abandoning their kids, not necessarily my parents abandoning me, but their family trees, aunts, uncles, grandfathers, great grandparents. All these people were just alcoholics, drug abusers, child molesters, violent people, drug addicts, overdoses, alcoholism. My entire life, I saw examples of exactly what not to do ... my parents got divorced and then were remarried ...my dad's a wild dude. My brother's crazy. I am obviously, too, but we're all completely different. Luckily, me and my siblings get along really well and we're really close and everything else."
David had always enjoyed reading and was also interested in history from a young age. This would eventually lead to him finding his vocation and creating Founders.
Whilst at high school he also worked for three years at a carwash.
He studied at the University of Central Florida. It was whilst at business school that David started regularly reading biographies.
It was in 2012, that he got the idea to focus on entrepreneurs: "... there's this guy named Kevin Rose, he was the founder of this company, Digg, and he was one of the big web2 founders. He was probably 20-years-old. They put them on the cover of a magazine. They're like, “Who the hell gave this guy, they raised 50 million dollars.” This is probably 2002-2003, somewhere in there.
"He had one of the very first high-quality video podcasts that interviewed entrepreneurs. It's called Foundation. It's still available on YouTube to this day. He interviewed Elon Musk in 2012."
As well as being consumed with reading biographies, David was "obsessed with listening to all forms of talk radio. And it could be sports talk radio, news talk radio, political talk radio. I used to listen to this show that it'd be almost like an advice column but in audio format. Howard Stern. It wasn't until 2018, where I can remember the exact moment where I was like, "You should follow your energy, David, because you're completely obsessed with this thing and you think it's just a hobby or something fun to do. But why don't you try to do it full time?" I couldn't sleep one night. I was in bed. My entire family's asleep and I reread Paul Graham's essay, How To Do What You Love. And it was like a lightning strike. I was like, okay, I want to do this for the rest of my life. I love doing it. I want to turn it into not just a hobby, I want to think about it every waking hour. So I just made a commitment right there. I was like, I'm willing to spend every last dollar I have to be able to be a podcaster."And so, he founded Founders on 19 September 2016. The first episode was entitled Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, a Quest for a Fantastic Future. David ends the episode:
"These kind of biographies inspire me when I read them and I want to do more podcasts on different biographies. So that's going to be the plan moving forward ..."
David Senra tends to make one episode a week. His daily routine involves working out then David spends the first three to four hours reading. Then he spends the afternoon reviewing past highlights.
Whilst, David Senra has stated Steve Jobs is his favourite entrepreneur, he has said that his approach to life is more modelled on Ed Thorp:
" ...out of every single person that I've studied, he's the only one that didn't over optimize for his professional life at the detriment to his health and his personal life, right? And so, what I realized is... What did he focus on? He focused on his health, he focused on a business that he thought was intellectually-stimulating, he could build wealth at. So he built wealth. He had fun. He spent time with his kids and his wife. My life is a balance. I focus on my work, spend time with my family, take care of my health to have some fun, because we're alive."
This balance is important to David, he told Manual with Compound:
“It's safe to assume that every single person I have read about is smarter than I am. Yet you see all these smart-driven people make mistakes. They usually over optimize their professional life to the detriment of everything else. They destroy their personal lives. They destroy their health.”
In 2022, Founders joined the Colossus network of podcasts.
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