David Baszucki, Roblox

Ivanka Trump on Building an Authentic Life

Ivanka Trump grew up on construction sites and in boardrooms, learning what it takes to be a builder. At just 22 years old, she started doing real estate for a Brooklyn developer. She notched small wins with construction crews and learned the trade.  Then came the launch of her own fashion brand — which reached over $800 million in annual sales — run simultaneously with the Trump Organization's real estate acquisitions. The centerpiece was the Old Post Office in Washington, D.C., a dilapidated 1890s building she personally shepherded into a thriving urban hotel.  In 2016, she went to Washington, D.C. to provide support to her father in his first term as President of the United States. During the four years in Washington, D.C., she helped in doubling the child tax credit for 40 million families, standing up the first national paid family leave plan for federal employees, passing nine pieces of legislation against human trafficking, and getting the Great American Outdoors Act signed — the largest environmental legislation since Teddy Roosevelt created the national parks. When it ended, she started over, and built again. She co-founded Planet Harvest [https://www.planet-harvest.com/], creating a market for the 40% of American fruits and vegetables discarded each year because they don't meet cosmetic specifications. She's building Sazan, a 1,400-hectare private island in the Mediterranean with five miles of beachfront. She's investing in founders at the frontier of AI, biotech, robotics, and space. And she's working with Elad Gil to create Alexandria AI [https://www.alexlib.org/], a project that will translate the world's great public-domain literature into every major language and give it away for free. She describes herself as mission-driven now, not achievement-driven. The difference, she says, took her decades to find. Show notes: https://www.davidsenra.com/episode/ivanka-trump [https://www.davidsenra.com/episode/ivanka-trump] Made possible by Ramp: ⁠https://ramp.com [https://ramp.com]⁠ AppLovin: https://axon.ai/senra [https://axon.ai/senra] Deel: https://deel.com/senra [https://deel.com/senra] Chapters (00:00:00) Knowing What Excites You (00:02:02) The Sazan Island Project (00:07:18) Knowing Who You Are (00:13:06) Creating Stillness (00:16:30) Finding Mentors In Books (00:17:04) Avoid Competition Through Authenticity (00:21:05) Reading As An X-Ray Of The Soul (00:21:29) Phil Knight's Shoe Dog (00:24:55) Meaning Redeemed By Hardship (00:29:39) The Call To Government (00:31:16) Handing Back The Keys (00:41:42) The Reset In Miami (00:46:25) Less And Better (00:50:13) Finding The One Thread (00:55:54) Turning Waste Into An Asset (01:03:38) Democratizing The World's Great Books (01:12:07) Marry The Right Person (01:12:47) Deciding What To Build (01:16:23) No Contract Protects A Bad Partner (01:19:08) Opportunity Where Others See Nothing (01:21:34) Backing Fragile New Ideas Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]

The Simple Genius of Rick Rubin

Rick Rubin grew up on Long Island obsessed with music — arena rock at 13, punk by high school, then hip-hop when it was still a street movement you could only hear at one club in New York City. The records coming out didn't sound like the club. They were made by professionals who didn't go to the club. So at 18, while a freshman at NYU, he made one himself — "It's Yours" with T La Rock. It sold 100,000 copies in 18 months. He put his dorm room address on the sleeve. This launched Def Jam Recordings. LL Cool J's first record came next. The Beastie Boys after that. His credit on those records didn't say "produced by." It said "reduced by" — a theological statement as much as a job title. His method has never changed: strip everything down until what remains has no place to hide, then protect whatever magic appears. He's applied it to Jay-Z, Johnny Cash, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Eminem, The Strokes, Metallica, Kanye West, Tom Petty, and many other top artists.  He describes himself as a lazy workaholic. The Zen exterior is real. So is the guy who spent the first 25 years of his career in a dark room 16 hours a day, seven days a week, waiting for a miracle to show up. Show notes: https://www.davidsenra.com/episode/rick-rubin [https://www.davidsenra.com/episode/rick-rubin] Made possible by Ramp: ⁠https://ramp.com⁠ [https://%E2%81%A0https://ramp.com%E2%81%A0] Deel: https://deel.com/senra [https://deel.com/senra] HubSpot: https://hubspot.com [https://hubspot.com] AppLovin: https://axon.ai/senra [https://axon.ai/senra] Rick Rubin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rickrubin [https://www.instagram.com/rickrubin] X: https://x.com/RickRubin [https://x.com/RickRubin] Tetragrammaton: https://www.tetragrammaton.com [https://www.tetragrammaton.com] The Creative Act: https://a.co/d/05FKl59a [https://a.co/d/05FKl59a] Substack: https://rickrubin.substack.com [https://rickrubin.substack.com] Chapters (00:00:00) Less Is More But Harder (00:02:00) Def Jam From The Dorm Room (00:04:00) Capturing Club Energy On Record (00:06:00) Going Deep On Influences (00:12:30) Why Reduced By Rick Rubin (00:14:00) Beatles Structure Meets Rap (00:16:00) The Ruthless Edit (00:19:30) Eminem: The Most Obsessive Artist (00:22:00) Lazy Workaholic (00:25:30) Protecting The Moment Of Magic (00:29:00) Dana White And Becoming A Podcaster (00:32:30) Professional Listener (00:44:00) Fishing And Showing Up (00:47:00) Johnny Cash And Constraints (00:55:30) Church Business vs. Banking Business (00:58:50) Run On Intuition Alone (01:01:00) Jay-Z vs. Eminem Process (01:04:30) In Service Of The Artist (01:09:00) Work As Diary Entries (01:13:30) Four Ways Success Destroys You (01:16:00) How To Sustain Success (01:21:00) The House On The Mountain Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]

Strauss Zelnick, Take-Two Interactive

Strauss Zelnick has spent 40 years doing the same thing: finding where new technology is about to supercharge an old business, and getting there first. He started at Columbia Pictures in 1983 running international TV distribution. When the company needed a "new media" person, they looked for the least valuable executive they could spare. That was Zelnick. New media in 1983 meant VHS cassettes. He took the assignment anyway. By 2001, when he started ZMC, he had one thesis: technology would supercharge media and destroy it simultaneously, and the only companies worth owning sat at that intersection. In 2007, he used it to take over Take-Two Interactive with no money. The company had a chairman under indictment, four government investigations, and six months of cash left. Zelnick had written memos for Carl Icahn twice saying stay away. Then Icahn told him to read the bylaws. A plain vanilla Delaware charter allowed a board replacement if a majority of shares physically present at the annual meeting voted for it. Zelnick met the 10 hedge funds holding 70% of the stock, got commitments, walked in thinking he had 48%, discovered most had loaned their shares to short sellers, and won with 88%. The only asset worth keeping was GTA. His pitch to creative talent: we will fund your vision, stay out of your way, and run a company where nobody gets indicted. Market cap when he arrived: $700 million. Today: roughly $35 billion. Show notes: https://www.davidsenra.com/episode/strauss-zelnick [https://www.davidsenra.com/episode/strauss-zelnick] Made possible by Ramp: ⁠https://ramp.com⁠ [https://ramp.com%E2%81%A0] Deel: https://deel.com/senra [https://deel.com/senra] Chapters (00:00:00) Hostile Takeover With No Money (00:01:29) Becoming the New Media Guy (00:03:58) Lessons From Entertainment History (00:09:44) Why Hollywood Feared Games (00:11:52) Fox Turnaround and Barry Diller (00:20:54) Rupert Murdoch and High Stakes Calm (00:26:20) Taking the Leap to Crystal Dynamics (00:38:04) Bootstrapping Without Capital (00:43:57) Carl Icahn Connection (00:47:01) Take Two Proxy Coup (00:56:36) Turnaround Cost Cutting Playbook (01:01:37) Leading Creative Geniuses (01:06:24) Rationality Beats Magic (01:07:54) Borderlands Bet (01:09:28) GTA Timelines Pressure (01:11:22) Specific Goals Visualization (01:21:34) Service Leadership Mindset (01:31:52) Media Versus Entertainment (01:34:22) AI Productivity Reality (01:36:08) Why Hits Surprise Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]

Dana White, UFC

Dana White grew up watching CEOs read canned statements written by lawyers. He decided early he would never do that. When Lorenzo Fertitta and his brother bought the UFC in 2001 for $2M and handed White a small equity stake and the presidency, the company had five events a year, eight or nine fighter contracts, and no television deal. Previous owners had sold off the merchandise rights, the video library, and the video game licenses just to survive. The company nearly died. Events cost $2M to produce. Revenue covered half the spending. Four years in, Fertitta called White and told him to find a buyer. Fertitta slept on it, called back the next morning, and said: "Fuck it. Let's keep going." What saved the UFC was a reality show. White had watched The Contender and identified its fatal mistake: it edited the fights. You let the fans decide whether a fight is good or bad. Spike TV passed on The Ultimate Fighter. White came back with a new offer: the UFC would pay for everything; Spike would provide airtime. The season finale — Bonner vs. Griffin — ended with the crowd chanting for one more round. Spike executives pulled White into an alley and shook hands on a renewal written on a napkin. Because the UFC had funded the show, it owned it outright. The television deals tell the story: Spike at $35 million, Fox at $100 million, ESPN at $3 billion, Paramount at $7.7 billion. Each time, critics said the UFC had peaked. Each time, they were wrong. Show notes: https://www.davidsenra.com/episode/dana-white [https://www.davidsenra.com/episode/dana-white] Made possible by Ramp: ⁠https://ramp.com⁠ [https://ramp.com%E2%81%A0] Axon by AppLovin: https://axon.ai/senra [https://axon.ai/senra] Deel: https://deel.com/senra [https://deel.com/senra] HubSpot: https://hubspot.com [https://hubspot.com] Chapters (00:00:00) Founders Are the Best Storytellers (00:01:04) Buying the UFC for $2M (00:02:51) Excellence Is the Capacity to Take Pain (00:07:58) One Good Night's Sleep and "Fuck It, Let's Keep Going" (00:10:53) The Ultimate Fighter: A $10M Bet-It-All Moment (00:13:12) The Napkin Deal With Spike TV (00:22:00) Leaving Spike TV and the Phil Duman Story (00:28:24) First Event Profitable: What He Does Differently Now (00:32:30) Why Dana Sits Ringside Watching a Screen (00:34:07) Building a Team That Can Read His Mind (00:45:10) "Who the Fuck Are You and What Have You Done?" (00:51:55) Selling the UFC for $4+ Billion (00:57:32) Not Cutting a Single Employee During COVID (01:03:30) Firing a Sponsor Who Told Him How to Vote (01:07:45) There Is No Plan B (01:09:00) Joe Rogan: Doing the First 12 Fights for Free (01:12:37) Loyalty Is the Most Important Thing Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]

Adam Foroughi, AppLovin

https://www.davidsenra.com/episode/adam-foroughi https://ramp.com%E2%81%A0 https://axon.ai/senra https://deel.com/senra Chapters (00:00:00) The $6B Buyback That Made $60B (00:02:15) Borrowing Money To Buy Back Stock At A Discount (00:05:02) Why VCs Passed On AppLovin In 2012 (00:09:00) From App Discovery To Ad Platform (00:14:45) Beating Google's AdMob With Performance Marketing (00:19:30) No Board For Six Years (00:30:12) The China Deal That Almost Blew Up (00:37:45) The Convertible Note Pivot And KKR (00:46:30) Buying Gaming Studios To Get Data (00:51:45) Losing Trust With Game Developers (00:58:20) The 2022 Crash And How He Kept His Team (01:02:00) Building An Hyper Competent & Efficient Company (01:07:25) Why Every New Hire Needs His Approval (01:19:06) The Axon 2 Inflection Point (01:21:15) One Great Engineer Now Beats A Hundred Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]