David Senra (@davidsenra)

.@danawhite says the UFC was almost dead when Spike TV executives pulled him into an alley and made a deal on a napkin: “At the time it was the last $10 million investment we we're going to make in the UFC.” “If The Ultimate Fighter didn't work it's over.” “When we were at the finale, when Stephan Bonnar and Forrest Griffin fought, when the fight was over and everybody in the place was stomping their feet saying, ‘One more round,’ we give them both contracts.” “I was like ‘I don't give a shit what happens. This is going to end up somewhere.’” “Spike TV execs took us out in the alley of the arena and we did a deal on a napkin.”

A recurring theme from the history of entrepreneurship: Seeing opportunity where others only see waste. Ivanka (@IvankaTrump) on (1) expanding the secondary market to offset the 40% of produce grown that never makes it off the field, (2) supporting small and medium-size farmers, and (3) connecting their fresh produce with partners like Chobani instead of letting it go to waste: “There was no secondary market for any fruit or vegetable that didn't meet an exact specification in terms of size and color, even though the taste and the quality were in no way compromised.” “Well that makes no sense at all. Let's stimulate the demand side so that we could support these small and medium-sized farmers.” “Why isn't there a secondary market? Why aren't these great strawberries going to a juicer if they can't be displayed at stores because they don't meet cosmetic specification that's really exact?” “We stimulate demand by working with companies and getting offtake for these small and medium-sized farmers that's meaningful. Companies like Chobani. Now all of the fruit that we find in their beautiful yogurt products and smoothies is all sourced by Planet Harvest from small and medium farmers. That would've been 100% waste.”

Ivanka (@IvankaTrump) on escaping competition through authenticity: "@Naval always says escape competition through authenticity. If you're competing it's because you're copying. Build something that fully comes from you and that will feel most right. It’s also the thing that's least replicable. I love the idea of just escaping competition through authenticity but you have to do the hard work of knowing who you are."

Ivanka @IvankaTrump and @eladgil are working on a project that uses Al to translate the world's great public-domain books into every major language, making them accessible for free to anyone: “What are some of the positive use cases for AI? And we started talking about how so much of history's great works of information and literature are not accessible to so many people due to lack of access. AI has gotten so good that we could create high-fidelity translations of these incredible literary works. So you think about Dostoevsky, you think about Bronte, you think about Marcus Aurelius, or Epictetus. All of these works are available in the public domain. We can use AI to translate them into all the world's commonly spoken languages and make them accessible and available for free if you have internet access. So we're democratizing access to this incredible knowledge. We're calling it Alexandria Library”

My conversation with @IvankaTrump 0:00 Knowing What Excites You 2:00 The Sazan Island Project 6:00 Knowing Who You Are 9:00 Avoid Competition Through Authenticity 11:00 Creating Stillness 14:30 Finding Mentors In Books 17:00 Reading As An X-Ray Of The Soul 21:00 Phil Knight’s Shoe Dog 25:00 Meaning Redeemed By Hardship 28:00 The Call To Government 33:00 Handing Back The Keys 38:00 The Reset In Miami 42:00 Less And Better 46:00 Finding The One Thread 55:00 Turning Waste Into An Asset 1:02:00 Democratizing The World's Great Books 1:12:00 Marry The Right Person 1:18:00 Deciding What To Build 1:22:00 No Contract Protects A Bad Partner 1:24:00 Opportunity Where Others See Nothing 1:27:00 Backing Fragile New Ideas Includes paid partnerships.

Rick Rubin’s House on the Mountain test: Create according to your own taste, not for applause, critics, algorithms, or market demand. “Imagine going to live on a mountaintop by yourself, forever. You build a home that no one will ever visit. Still, you invest the time and effort to shape the space in which you’ll spend your days. The wood, the plates, the pillows—all magnificent. Curated to your taste.” “This is the essence of great art. We create our art so we may inhabit it ourselves.” “I'm willing to go to extremes to make the thing that I want to inhabit and it's not for anyone else. it's just for me.”

.@EricJorgenson on why Elon risks everything: "How many entrepreneurs that you know have risked going back to zero and public humiliation once they reach a nine-figure net worth? He's the only one I can name. He was all in before he asked anybody else to put in any money. $200 million into these own companies. That ability to not give up and not even think about giving up and just burn the boats and keep pushing and keep pushing comes from this maniacal devotion to the mission. Getting us to a new planet could mean the difference between consciousness continuing or not continuing. If you are truly in on that mission, of course it's worth risking public humiliation, of course it's worth risking $200 million, of course it's worth working 100 hour weeks and living in the factory. It's a really incredible test to give yourself: if you can imagine giving up on what you're doing, should you even start?"

.@EricJorgenson on why Elon calls engineering magic: "He's been thinking about these problems since he was in college. As a kid, he was very influenced by sci-fi and thinking about things that are possible. He talks about engineering as magic. 'If you build something that couldn't previously exist, that's like being a magician and who wouldn't want to be a magician?'"

Marc Andreessen (@pmarca) on what it’s like to work at SpaceX: “It’s like being dropped into a zone of shocking competence.” “Everybody is ultra competent, and the reason everybody’s ultra competent is because if they’re not, Elon sniffs it out and fires them. He knows, ‘cause he’s talking to the people actually doing the work.” “The best engineers in the world want to work for him, ‘cause he’s the one CEO like this who’s able to work with them as a peer on whatever the technology is.” “What would be better as an engineer than being able to design a rocket engine with Elon Musk as your engineering partner?”

Elon didn’t start SpaceX to build a rocket company: “The original vision for SpaceX was not to start a launch company. Elon’s original goal was to increase NASA’s budget, and he was willing to just burn 100 million dollars on a philanthropic mission to display a greenhouse on Mars. Shooting a greenhouse to Mars with existing rocket technology, get this photo on the front page of every paper. A little plant on the red planet, the first time life had transferred to another planet. That’ll probably increase NASA’s budget and spur this wave of exploration and interest in space. When he tried to do that, he discovered that the space launch market was so expensive and un-innovative and hadn’t been moving forward. That’s actually how he discovered the opportunity to start SpaceX. That’s what’s actually going to move this market forward.”