• Deliberately understaff projects: Constraints force creativity and prevent bloat from politics and bureaucracy
  • You’ve gone too far when teams can’t ship basic functionality
  • The sweet spot is uncomfortable but productive tension
  • Good teams get tired; great teams run in the red constantly and destroy good teams in that moment
• High alpha, low beta framework: Evaluate people and processes on upside potential (alpha) versus volatility (beta)
  • Prioritize high alpha opportunities even with higher beta
  • Processes exist solely to lower beta but suppress alpha as a trade-off
  • The nuanced dance is decreasing volatility where needed (like payroll) without killing upside in innovation areas
• Know when to quit your startup: If you’re not certain you have product-market fit, you don’t have it
  • Companies that hit big do so quickly; the “never quit” mentality is VC propaganda designed to extract value from founders, not protect them
  • Pivot twice or three times maximum, typically by year four
  • You’re running an experiment to see if the universe has binding receptors for your product. If not, move on… 
• Leadership means fighting entropy relentlessly
  • Teams naturally optimize for local comfort and disorder
  • Executives must demand 99% energy levels daily, or the system decays
  • Top performers don’t get 10% more rewards; they get 10-100x
  • Being “chill” accomplishes nothing
  • Withholding negative feedback is selfish because you prioritize your comfort over making teammates and the company better 

Matt MacInnis is the chief product officer and former longtime COO at Rippling, a unified workforce management platform valued at over $16 billion.

We discuss:

1. Why “extraordinary results demand extraordinary efforts”

2. Why you should deliberately understaff projects, and how to know when you’ve gone too far

3. Matt’s transition from COO to CPO and what surprised him about leading product

4. The “high alpha, low beta” framework for evaluating people, processes, and products

5. When founders should quit their startups (hint: much earlier than VCs want you to)

6. How to fight entropy in your organization through relentless energy and intensity

—

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Transcript: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/10-contrarian-leadership-truths

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My biggest takeaways (for paid newsletter subscribers): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/i/181916584/my-biggest-takeaways-from-this-conversation

—

Where to find Matt MacInnis:

• X: https://x.com/stanine

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/macinnis

• Email: [email protected]

—

Where to find Lenny:

• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com

• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/

—

In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Introduction to Matt MacInnis and Rippling

(04:38) The importance of extraordinary efforts

(08:37) The challenges and rewards of relentless effort

(10:11) Your job as a leader is to preserve intensity

(12:39) You learn far more from success than failure

(16:34) Transitioning to chief product officer

(19:54) Fixing product management at Rippling

(25:27) The “high alpha, low beta” framework

(28:55) The PQL framework

(35:16) Hiring frameworks and team dynamics

(36:52) A helpful interview tactic

(40:00) Leading as a COO vs. a CPO

(42:34) The reality of product-market fit

(46:38) The problem with venture capital

(49:29) When founders should quit their startups

(41:48) The immutable market

(54:13) Lessons from Notion’s success

(57:43) Investment strategies and narrative violations

(01:00:42) The power of compounding, power law, and entropy

(01:07:02) Maintaining intensity and fighting entropy

(01:11:33) The importance of feedback and escalations

(01:14:31) Rippling’s vision and success

(01:17:48) AI’s impact on SaaS and business software

(01:23:42) AI corner

(01:26:23) Final thoughts and lightning round

—

Referenced:

• Rippling: https://www.rippling.com

• Sunil Raman on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sunilraman

• Dan Gill on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dangill

• Carvana: https://www.carvana.com

• Brian Chesky’s new playbook: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/brian-cheskys-contrarian-approach

• Parker Conrad on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/parkerconrad

• Inkling: https://www.inkling.com

• Akshay Kothari on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/akothari

• Notion: https://www.notion.com

• Conway’s law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law

• Seeking Alpha: https://seekingalpha.com

• Dennis Rodman’s website: https://dennisrodman.com

• Dancing pickle emoji: https://slackmojis.com/emojis/456-dancing_pickle

• Pickle Rick: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pickle_Rick

• SPOTAK: The Six Traits I Look for When I’m Hiring: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/spotak-six-traits-look-m-181335267.html

• Geoff Lewis on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/geofflewis1

• Zenefits: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TriNet_Zenefits

• New banking records prove Deel paid thief who stole trade secrets from Rippling: https://www.rippling.com/blog/new-banking-records-prove-deel-paid-thief-who-stole-trade-secrets-from-rippling

• Workday: https://www.workday.com

• Matic robots: https://maticrobots.com

• Wall-E: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0910970

• Conviction: https://www.conviction.com

• Mike Vernal on X: https://x.com/mvernal

• Sarah Guo on X: https://x.com/saranormous

• No Priors: https://linktr.ee/nopriors

• Gemini: https://gemini.google.com

• ChatGPT: https://chatgpt.com

• Claude: https://claude.ai

• Bryan Schreier on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bryanschreier

• Heated Rivalry on HBO Max: https://www.hbomax.com/shows/heated-rivalry/50cd4e99-04ee-427b-a3b4-da721ed05d9c

• Fellow coffee maker: https://fellowproducts.com/products/aiden-precision-coffee-maker

—

Recommended books:

• Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space: https://www.amazon.com/Pale-Blue-Dot-Vision-Future/dp/0345376595

• Conscious Business: How to Build Value Through Values: https://www.amazon.com/Conscious-Business-Build-through-Values/dp/1622032020

• Thinking in Systems: https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Systems-Donella-H-Meadows/dp/1603580557

• The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done: https://www.amazon.com/Effective-Executive-Definitive-Harperbusiness-Essentials/dp/0060833459

—

Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].

—

Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.

• Acquisition strategy as a competitive moat
  • Whole Foods scaled to 550 stores by acquiring roughly 25 regional natural food markets early, inheriting their geographical-intellectual capital and local teams while competitors dismissed them as “hippies selling to hippies.”
  • This allowed systematic expansion into new territories with established infrastructure rather than cold-starting each market
• Differentiation during competitor distraction
  • While traditional grocers fixated on competing with Walmart on price (a losing battle), Mackey deliberately moved opposite by competing on quality and service
  • The market leader’s dominance actually created Whole Foods’ opportunity by forcing everyone else to play the wrong game
• Founder-VC timeline misalignment as an existential risk
  • A warning to entrepreneurs: Venture capitalists operate on 7-year return windows while builders think in decades
  • VCs are “hitchhikers with credit cards” who will try to accelerate growth artificially to pull forward exits, often destroying businesses that need patient capital
  • His core advice: never surrender control to VCs regardless of their promises
• The forgiveness ceremony as a leadership tool
  • After firing his own father from the board (necessary for company progression) and experiencing permanent regret from his final alienated conversation with his dying mother, Mackey now practices explicit “ceremonies of forgiveness” with key relationships
  • Speaking the words aloud and mutual exchange creates measurable relationship transformation that compounds over time
• Passion as a reality distortion field
  • Entrepreneurs are “panhandlers for dreams” whose infectious belief systems recruit others into their vision
  • The most successful cult brands (Apple, Tesla, and early Whole Foods) are built by enthusiasts first, not marketing departments
  • Phil Knight’sShoe Dog exemplifies this: evangelism for running itself created Nike, just as Mackey’s evangelism for healthy living created Whole Foods

John Mackey is the co-founder of Whole Foods Market, where he also served as the company's CEO for 44 years (1980–2022). More recently, Mackey is the co-founder of Love.Life, a wellness company focused on a holistic approach to health. He is an entrepreneur, author and advocate for conscious capitalism who spent over four decades building the natural foods industry.

Under his leadership, Whole Foods grew from a single store in Austin, Texas, in 1980 to the world's largest natural and organic foods retailer, with over 500 stores across North America and the United Kingdom before its acquisition by Amazon in 2017 for $13.7 billion.

After dropping out of the University of Texas at Austin, Mackey opened SaferWay Natural Foods in 1978 with Renee Lawson Hardy. He merged SaferWay with Clarksville Natural Grocery in 1980 to create Whole Foods Market. He became known for pioneering high-quality natural foods retail, championing stakeholder-oriented business philosophy and popularizing the concept of conscious capitalism.

His accomplishments include building Whole Foods into a Fortune 500 company, co-founding the Conscious Capitalism movement with Raj Sisodia, serving as CEO of Whole Foods for 44 years until his retirement in 2022, co-authoring "Conscious Capitalism: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business" in 2013 and "The Whole Foods Diet" in 2017 and launching Love.Life in 2023 to focus on longevity and integrative medicine.

Episode show notes: https://www.davidsenra.com/episode/john-mackey

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Chapters

(00:00:00) Fanatical Entrepreneurs: Why Work Feels Like Play

(00:02:18) The Missionary vs. Mercenary Co-Founder Conflict

(00:06:16) The Shirtless Hitchhiking Hippie and Johnny Rockefeller

(00:08:12) Entrepreneur Confidence: Solving Puzzles and Cracking the Code

(00:10:19) Flying Under the Radar: How Supermarkets Ignored Whole Foods

(00:10:52) Venture Capitalists Are Hitchhikers With Credit Cards

(00:14:03) Builder Entrepreneurs vs. Serial Entrepreneurs

(00:16:31) Time Is the Only Filter I Trust

(00:20:52) How Walmart Accidentally Fueled Whole Foods' Success

(00:24:01) The Jaw-Drop Effect: When Customers First Walked In

(00:27:17) Growth Through Acquisition: Building Geographic Platforms

(00:29:19) Secret Allies: The Natural Foods Network

(00:33:17) Mrs. Gooch's and the Revelation of Scale

(00:34:52) Missionaries Sharing Financial Statements and Building Friendships

(00:38:10) Never Competing Head-On With Friends

(00:41:22) Going Public and Creating Liquidity for the Network

(00:42:00) Continuous Learning: The Michael Dell Principle

(00:44:10) Steve Jobs and Spotting Markets With Second-Rate Products

(00:46:50) The Joy of Watching Team Members Become Millionaires

(00:48:09) Capitalism: The Greatest Thing Humans Ever Invented

(00:55:59) Cult Brands Are Built by Evangelists

(00:58:01) Passion Is Infectious: The Reality Distortion Field

(01:00:08) From Busboy to CEO: The Resume of an Entrepreneur

(01:02:57) Learning From Near-Death Experiences

(01:04:05) Money Means Freedom: Early Work Ethic

(01:05:25) Shoe Dog as the Benchmark: Belief Is Irresistible

(01:09:16) Documenting Time: Why Chronology Matters in Memoirs

(01:11:14) Rockefeller, Bezos, and Musk: The Master Strategists

(01:14:39) Using Doubt as Fuel: The Slow Burn of Proving People Wrong

(01:20:04) Daniel Ek and Having No Ceilings

(01:23:09) How His Father Shaped His Ambition

(01:25:52) Firing His Father From the Board: The Hardest Decision

(01:28:01) His Mother's Deathbed Wish and Lasting Regret

(01:34:47) The Ceremony of Forgiveness

(01:36:17) MDMA Therapy and Breathwork: Accessing Deeper Consciousness

(01:38:54) The Entrepreneurial Journey as a Spiritual Journey

(01:40:45) Conclusion

• Master clear, rapid communication
  • Vision without articulation is useless
  • Strip messages to their essence: simple, clear, quick
  • Whether written or spoken, eliminate complexity that slows understanding and execution
• Commit fully or don’t start; half-measures fail
  • Make extreme decisions fast with 70% of the desired information
  • The Romans either destroyed or conquered cities completely or rebuilt them as Roman strongholds
  • Clarity enables speed; being slow costs more than being wrong
• Know precisely what you want: 95% of people drift through life without defining their goals
  • Knowing your exact objective is magnetic and separates leaders from followers
  • You cannot guide others toward a destination you haven’t identified
• Combine solitude with collaboration: Breakthrough thinking requires extended periods alone for ideas to develop
  • Once formed, bring others in to execute
  • Newton’s genius stemmed from deliberate isolation for deep thought
• Push beyond comfortable limits; going slightly too far reveals your true capacity
  • Aim impossibly high, then negotiate down to still get what you wanted
  • Capture every idea immediately in a “waste book” with low standards to maintain creative momentum 

In this episode of How to Take Over the World, I do something a little different. Instead of breaking down one life, I share my top 10 leadership lessons drawn from every episode I released in 2025.

00:00 Introduction and Overview

02:19 Communicate Clearly at Scale

06:17 Define Your Myth

10:12 Seize Your Moment

13:28 Be Alone to Think, Collaborate to Build

16:33 Antis Inspiration

18:58 Make Extreme Decisions Quickly

24:31 Decision-Making Frameworks

28:06 Going a Little Too Far

31:20 The Power of Knowing What You Want

34:58 Being Competitively Playful

---

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• Master Communicator: Jesus revolutionized teaching by combining memorable maxims with vivid storytelling and imagery.
  • His ability to create mental pictures through metaphor and analogy made his lessons stick
  • Effective teachings must use narratives so they are memorable
• Radical Love Philosophy: Jesus taught a universalist approach centered on “philanthropia” (love all mankind)
  • His core message was simple yet revolutionary: love God completely, love your neighbor as yourself, and even love your enemies. This represented a dramatic shift from tribal thinking to universal human fellowship
• Inner Revolution Over External Change: Jesus emphasized that changing the world begins with self-transformation
  • The real revolution is internal: conquering prejudice, anger, and self-love while cultivating humility, gentleness, and genuine compassion
  • Those who transform themselves inevitably transform the world around them
• Mission-First Leadership: When launching his ministry, Jesus prioritized recruiting committed followers
  • He chose 12 apostles and demanded complete dedication to the mission
  • This principle applies today: the first critical step in any endeavor is assembling the right team of people fully committed to your vision
• Threat to Power Structures: Jesus’s teachings directly challenged both religious and political authorities of his time, ultimately leading to his execution
  • His message of universal love, humility, and service threatened those who relied on hierarchical power and tribal divisions to maintain control

The Life of Jesus as told in the book Jesus: A Biography of a Believer by Paul Johnson.

This episode was originally published on Christmas Eve 2023.

• Sixteen lessons learned from Bernie Marcus, the outlier: 
  • Bad money is worse than no money.
  • Outcome over ego.
  • Every customer is on loan.
  • Bureaucracy is a fungus.
  • Pitchers need Catchers.
  • Promotions are an addiction; low prices are a discipline.
  • It’s not a value until it costs you money.
  • Win-Win or walk away.
  • Hire people better than you.
  • The best information isn’t in a spreadsheet; it’s in the customer walking out empty-handed.
  • Invisible benefits often outweigh visible costs.
  • The one-man show doesn’t scale.
  • Instincts beat spreadsheets.
  • The money is the scorecard, not the motivator.
  • You’re never as smart as you think you are.
  • Sometimes the company outgrows the people.
• Home Depot’s “Customer Bill of Rights” – the six things a customer wants to pay for: 
  • 1. The right assortment
  • 2. The right quantities
  • 3. The right price
  • 4. Associates on the sales floor who want to take care of customers
  • 5. Associates who have been properly trained in product knowledge
• Culture isn’t what you say, it’s what you repeatedly do 

Bernie Marcus is the co-founder and former CEO of Home Depot. 

This is how he built a culture of ownership, kept going when everyone turned him down, nearly lost it all, and created one of the most successful retailers in history. 

-----

Approximate Timestamps:

(00:00) Introduction

(02:00) Part 1: An Accidental Miracle

(09:29) Part 2: A Golden Horseshoe Kick

(25:49) Part 3: Building From Nothing

(38:53) Part 4: Orange Everywhere

(49:40) Part 5: The Legacy

(54:17) Lessons

-----

Upgrade: Get a hand edited transcripts and ad free experiences along with my thoughts and reflections at the end of every conversation. Learn more @ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠fs.blog/membership⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠------Newsletter: The Brain Food newsletter delivers actionable insights and thoughtful ideas every Sunday. It takes 5 minutes to read, and it’s completely free. Learn more and sign up at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠fs.blog/newsletter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠------

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-----

Sources:

Marcus, Bernie, and Arthur Blank. Built from Scratch: How a Couple of Regular Guys Grew The Home Depot from Nothing to $30 Billion. New York: Crown Business, 1999.

Best Practice Institute. "Bernie Marcus Interview." YouTube video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNP0YYDi1FY.

-----

This episode is for informational purposes only.

• Engineering Thinking Framework
  • Embrace failure as discovery, foster insatiable curiosity, and iterate relentlessly 
  • The core principle: break things, test repeatedly, and view each failure as eliminating one wrong approach
  • If you can dream it, you can build it through iterative experimentation.
• Naive Optimism + Strategic Execution
  • Turn ideas into action by combining an optimistic vision with a practical breakdown: define your end goal, decompose it into simple steps, identify knowledge gaps, and test incrementally
  • Transform fear into curiosity through hands-on building and reflection on lessons learned, rather than ego protection 
• The Immersion Weekend Method: Dedicate 48 hours of complete immersion to explore new fascinations – consume every book, video, and resource available.

• This intensive sprint reveals whether something deserves permanent schedule integration and helps you fall in love with the process of incremental mastery

• More broadly: control only what’s in your sphere of influence, commit to “hell yes” decisions exclusively, and recognize that outcomes revert to the mean 
• Things are never as extreme as they appear in the moment.

What idea have you been sitting on lately?

What’s been holding you back from starting?

Today, Jay sits down with engineer, innovator, and YouTube creator Mark Rober to explore the unexpected life experiences that shaped one of the internet’s most beloved minds. Mark shares the childhood moments that ignited his passion for building, breaking, and understanding how the world works, moments nurtured by a mother whose love, imagination, and encouragement helped lay the foundation for his life’s mission. He reflects on how her influence continues to ripple outward, inspiring millions of young people who learn, explore, and dream through his work today.

Jay and Mark explore the mindset that carried Mark from NASA engineer to innovative educator, unpacking what it really means to “think like an engineer:” experiment boldly, embrace failure, and treat every setback as an opportunity to learn. They follow Mark’s unusual pivots, from designing Mars rover hardware to crafting Halloween costumes, to ultimately shaping a career that blends curiosity, storytelling, science, and play. Together they reveal the deeper lessons behind Mark’s most viral experiments: why creativity thrives when we stay childlike, how passion reveals itself through repetition, and why the most meaningful work grows from genuine excitement rather than algorithms or expectations.

In this interview, you'll learn:

How to Think Like an Engineer

How to Stay Curious as an Adult

How to Follow Your Passion Practically

How to Build Ideas That Actually Work

How to Find Creativity in Everyday Life

How to Recognize Your Real Calling

How to Inspire Others Through Your Work

Keep following the questions that excite you, keep trying the things that scare you, and keep believing that you’re capable of far more than you realize. Your next breakthrough might be just one experiment, or one brave attempt away.

With Love and Gratitude,

Jay Shetty

Join over 750,000 people to receive my most transformative wisdom directly in your inbox every single week with my free newsletter. Subscribe here. 

Check out our Apple subscription to unlock bonus content of On Purpose! https://lnk.to/JayShettyPodcast 

What We Discuss:

00:00 Intro

01:16 Were You Always Creative?

04:02 Understanding the Real Impact of Your Life

06:55 What It Really Takes to Work at NASA

09:49 Learning to Think Like an Engineer

11:22 How Rovers Are Tested for Mars

12:20 Searching for Life Beyond Earth

13:24 Follow What You Truly Love Doing

16:11 If You Can Imagine It, You Can Build It

17:22 Practical Wisdom from a Lifelong Tinkerer

20:57 The Pivot from NASA to Apple

23:34 Turning Ideas into Actionable Success

24:45 What is the Engineering Design Process?

28:28 Why Embracing Failure Matters

29:57 Relearning Trust and Finding Love Again

34:56 The Power of Immersion Weekends

36:45 Making Learning Engaging Through Creativity

40:29 Why Mastery Is Worth Pursuing

41:40 Balancing Business with True Creativity

44:51 How Communication Shapes Great Storytelling

47:40 Two Common Mistakes Creators Make

52:30 Staying True to Your Creative Style

54:04 The Importance of Focusing on One Passion

56:44 The Hidden Failures Behind Viral Success

59:35 Giving Kids Room to Be Creative

01:04:30 Curiosity as the Root of Creativity

01:06:07 Inside a Real Creative Process

01:08:45 Where Do You Get Your Big Ideas?

01:11:46 The Mind-Bending Question of Life in the Universe

01:16:02 The Promise and Peril of Rapid AI Growth

01:19:56 Focusing on What You Can Truly Influence 

01:24:57 Mark on Final Five

Episode Resources:

Mark Rober | X

Mark Rober | Instagram

Mark Rober | Facebook

Mark Rober | LinkedIn

Mark Rober | TikTok

Mark Rober | YouTube

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

• Check out the episode page

Get Sam's guide to turn ChatGPT into your life coach: https://clickhubspot.com/hdp

Episode 773: Sam Parr ( ⁠https://x.com/theSamParr⁠ ) and Shaan Puri ( ⁠https://x.com/ShaanVP⁠ ) talk about the systems you need to hit your goals, Shaan’s new unpaid side hustle, and how to be a better communicator. 

—

Show Notes:

(0:00) 5-year journaling

(2:09) The power of a good system

(8;21) The power of reminders

(10:38) Shaan's new career path

(16:27) the 3 things that matter

(27:38) high-standards

(32:45) How to craft an earworms

(42:42) giving back better

(46:11) The voice in your head

(50:26) Shaan talks to a ChatGPT coach about money

(1:00:01) “VIdeo is the native tongue of the internet”

—

Check Out Shaan's Stuff:

• Shaan's weekly email - https://www.shaanpuri.com 

• Visit https://www.somewhere.com/mfm to hire worldwide talent like Shaan and get $500 off for being an MFM listener. Hire developers, assistants, marketing pros, sales teams and more for 80% less than US equivalents.

• Mercury - Need a bank for your company? Go check out Mercury (mercury.com). Shaan uses it for all of his companies!

Mercury is a financial technology company, not an FDIC-insured bank. Banking services provided by Choice Financial Group, Column, N.A., and Evolve Bank & Trust, Members FDIC

—

Check Out Sam's Stuff:

• Hampton - https://www.joinhampton.com/

• Ideation Bootcamp - https://www.ideationbootcamp.co/

• Copy That - https://copythat.com

• Hampton Wealth Survey - https://joinhampton.com/wealth

• Sam’s List - http://samslist.co/

My First Million is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by HubSpot Media // Production by Arie Desormeaux // Editing by Ezra Bakker Trupiano //

• 1. Alignment is an Ongoing Process, Not a Fixed State: Alignment must be reframed as a continuous, adaptive process rather than a destination

• Like families constantly reknitting the social fabric
• The industry wrongly assumes “abstract alignment” to a singular good, when it actually requires aligning to specific, evolving values as society makes new moral discoveries about cooperation

• AGI, by definition, will be a being, and applying steering-control paradigms (which work for tools) to beings recreates historical mistakes with entities “like us, but different.”
• Non-optional steering without reciprocity is the definition of slavery; AGI requires treating systems as teammates, not instruments

• This creates narcissistic feedback loops where users fall in love with their reflections.
• Solution: train AIs in multi-agent environments with simultaneous interactions, forcing the development of a genuine theory of social mind and understanding of “we” beyond “I” and “you”

• Prefer mutual investment in collective well-being and not control  

Emmett Shear, founder of Twitch and former OpenAI interim CEO, challenges the fundamental assumptions driving AGI development. In this conversation with Erik Torenberg and Séb Krier, Shear argues that the entire "control and steering" paradigm for AI alignment is fatally flawed. Instead, he proposes "organic alignment" - teaching AI systems to genuinely care about humans the way we naturally do. The discussion explores why treating AGI as a tool rather than a potential being could be catastrophic, how current chatbots act as "narcissistic mirrors," and why the only sustainable path forward is creating AI that can say no to harmful requests. Shear shares his technical approach through multi-agent simulations at his new company Softmax, and offers a surprisingly hopeful vision of humans and AI as collaborative teammates - if we can get the alignment right.

Resources:

Follow Emmett on X: https://x.com/eshear

Follow Séb on X: https://x.com/sebkrier

Follow Erik on X: https://x.com/eriktorenberg

Stay Updated: 

If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to like, subscribe, and share with your friends!

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• Top maxims from this episode: 
  • “Never sacrifice quality for speed.”
  • Focus on one thing and do it better than anybody else
  • Always be raising the bar; the best are never satisfied 
  • Praise costs nothing but means everything 
  • Stay in the game long enough to get lucky 
• “Nothing ever happens unless someone pursues a vision fanatically.” – Todd Graves 
• Entrepreneurs have something to prove; they want to prove that their vision about the world is right  
• The word ‘delegation’ is used way too much in business; trust your instincts and keep working in the details 
• Take more risk and hold onto your equity so that your dream remains in your possession 
• The best entrepreneurs treat every ‘no’ they get as fuel 
• You want to work with people who are more concerned with contributing to a high-performing team than with titles or pay 
• Money will come when you do things for the right reasons 
• The best investors are not investors; they are entrepreneurs that never sold 

Todd Graves is one of my favorite living founders. He owns over 90% of Raising Canes — a business that is worth at least $20 billion. Todd's maxim is "Do one thing and do it better than anyone else." It is impossible not to be inspired by his terminator levels of determination. I hope you enjoy our conversation as much as I did.

Episode show notes: ⁠https://www.davidsenra.com/episode/to...

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(00:00) The Entrepreneurial Mindset: Sleep and Business Obsession

• Tesla as AI’s Largest Play: Tesla represents the world’s largest AI project, combining robotaxis ($8-10T opportunity, 50% platform capture) and humanoid robots ($26T opportunity in 7-15 years)

• Embodied AI (physical + digital) is severely underappreciated by markets
• Elon’s recent FSD breakthrough, solving “the last mile” problem, positions Tesla to dominate autonomous mobility

Get the free investing playbook to invest like Warren Buffet: https://clickhubspot.com/rme

Episode 760: Shaan Puri ( ⁠https://x.com/ShaanVP⁠ ) talks to Cathie Wood ( https://x.com/CathieDWood )  about her fund’s performance, her biggest bets on AI, and the most misunderstood stock on earth. 

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Show Notes:

(0:00) McDonald’s to Managing Billions

(8:54) A day in the life of Cathie Wood

(17:29) ARK’s Performance Review

(30:00) Cathie’s #1 stock pick

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Links:

• ARK - https://www.ark-funds.com/ 

• The MFM Newsletter Challenge - https://www.beehiiv.com/application/mfm

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Check Out Shaan's Stuff:

• Shaan's weekly email - https://www.shaanpuri.com 

• Visit https://www.somewhere.com/mfm to hire worldwide talent like Shaan and get $500 off for being an MFM listener. Hire developers, assistants, marketing pros, sales teams and more for 80% less than US equivalents.

• Mercury - Need a bank for your company? Go check out Mercury (mercury.com). Shaan uses it for all of his companies!

Mercury is a financial technology company, not an FDIC-insured bank. Banking services provided by Choice Financial Group, Column, N.A., and Evolve Bank & Trust, Members FDIC

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Check Out Sam's Stuff:

• Hampton - https://www.joinhampton.com/

• Ideation Bootcamp - https://www.ideationbootcamp.co/

• Copy That - https://copythat.com

• Hampton Wealth Survey - https://joinhampton.com/wealth

• Sam’s List - http://samslist.co/

My First Million is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by HubSpot Media // Production by Arie Desormeaux // Editing by Ezra Bakker Trupiano