David Senra told me he’s unmanageable. Despite that, he’s managed to build a wildly profitable podcast business and has turned down every offer to buy it.
Founders, Senra’s original podcast, launched in September 2016. He’s always run it alone—no full-time employees, two subcontractors handling clips and thumbnails—and turned it into a business generating millions of dollars a year in profit. He laughed dryly when he recalled turning down acquisition offers valuing the show upward of $50 million. “Who knows what people would offer today?” he mused.
He’s not selling regardless. “If someone gives you money, they want influence,” Senra told me. “I’m not interested in doing my life’s work any way other than the way I want to do it. I couldn’t have investors or a corporate parent. I’m just not suited for that.” He called the show “part of my soul.”
The audience Senra has built is, by any measure, abnormal. Jeff Bezos listens. So do Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, Michael Dell, and Spotify CEO Daniel Ek. Serial acquirer Brad Jacobs—who has built eight billion-dollar companies—credited a single Founders episode with $750 million in capital raised from listeners.
Ramp, now valued at $44 billion, is Senra’s largest advertiser. The company came to him. Senra didn’t pitch them.
An interesting kicker: earlier this year, OpenAI acquired breakout podcast TBPBN for hundreds of millions of dollars. But Senra had advocated for TBPN when it had fewer than 1,000 listeners, vouched for it to Ramp, and helped put it on the map. Senra took zero equity. He received 50 texts the day the deal closed.
“I’d rather build wealth from the products I make, not from writing a check into someone else’s company and getting lucky with a 250x,” he said. “That’s deeply unsatisfying.”
Read my full profile on David Senra here.
See you tomorrow,
Lily Mae Lazarus
X: @LilyMaeLazarus
Email: lily.lazarus@fortune.com
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