Travis Kalanick keeps grinding on harder problems even though he's already wealthy, suggesting purpose drives entrepreneurs more than money. The conversation contrasts his relentless pace with Bill Gates, who later reduced his grind as wealth gave him leverage to work differently.
Excellence is the capacity to take pain, right? And that's why Travis Kalanick is like everything that you go through. Like you think about a marathon runner, for example, right? If they're smiling at mile 21, that they're not a true killer, right? They need to be grinding through it. Because if you start to let up at that point, someone else is going to come and eat your lunch, right? That's crazy to me because to your point on like Travis Kalanick is post-economic, but he's still grinding so hard, right? He wants to work on harder and harder problems over time. And, you know, people, some people are built differently. I don't think there's any right or wrong way to entrepreneur, but, you know, suffering is built into it.
Yes. When I look at excellence, I didn't really think too much about suffering. I look at it as you're never really excellent. To me, excellence is continually trying to improve and get better and never really being satisfied with what I've achieved.
Isn't improving a lot of pain?
That's true. To go through it, you are suffering because you're always trying to achieve more and more. You almost have to enjoy it. That's why we've become a little numb to it over time. And I can't speak specifically for Travis because I don't know him, but what I found, and he's much more successful than I am, once entrepreneurs have made enough money, a lot of them still do more because it's not about the money, it's about purpose in life. But the grind that they have later on usually isn't as nearly as much of a grind as they had before they really started making money. I mean, look at Bill Gates.
Do you think he grinds anymore?
Even Travis, like, I do think he works hard. I'm not doubting that, People say I work hard. I don't think— and again, I'm just taking a guess here, I don't know him— I don't think he works as hard as he did when he first founded Uber. Probably not.
Also, you have a lot more leverage when you're
