Eric Jorgenson

In a September 2021 episode of the Millennial Investing podcast he said that he grew up in the Midwest in an entrepreneurial small-business family, and that at school he was always the one selling candy out of his locker and getting paid to give other students rides to school.⁠[1]

On the same show in November 2023 he said that he is at least a third-generation entrepreneur, or a fourth-generation one if farming is counted.⁠[2]

He said that as a child he read basically every strip of Calvin and Hobbes several times.⁠[1]

In the post “What I Learned From JK Rowling” he wrote: “I loved Harry Potter since I was a kid.”⁠[3]

The partners page of Rolling Fun says of him: “Writing, recording, publishing, and connecting since he was 17.” In a post of 2023 he wrote that at 17 he read Tucker Max’s blog and laughed.⁠[4][5]

He has more than once described picking up Poor Charlie’s Almanack from his father’s bookshelf, and the two accounts give different ages: on Jay Clouse’s podcast in September 2020 he said he was 21 at the time, and on Millennial Investing in September 2021 he said he was 19 and that the book changed his life.⁠[6][1]

A report in The State News on February 18, 2010, called him a “business and economics junior” who carried pen and pad wherever he went to note business ideas, and said that he was starting a bamboo clothing line called GoBoo Clothing and would co-direct The Hatch, an entrepreneurial incubator for students. The State News describes itself on its About page as “the official independent student voice of MSU”.⁠[7][8]

The report quotes him: “I’ve always wanted to own my own business and college is the best time to start.”⁠[7]

On Millennial Investing in November 2023 he said that his plan in college had been to complete three degrees in five years, among them business and economics, and that the plan did not come to fruition; after taking an internship at a tech startup he never went back to school for his last year, though he technically did graduate, and he did not go to his graduation ceremony.⁠[2]

In the same episode he said that he had helped start a student business incubator at Michigan State, The Hatch, and that it was still going.⁠[2][7]

In a post for college freshmen published on September 4, 2013, he recalled that he had been an athlete in high school and that in college he ate almost nothing but pizza and fries for a year and did not exercise, and that it took him until junior year to find the group of people he came to love most in college. He wrote that he did not have amazing grades or scores, only a lucky moment and hard work that led to a great connection. The post was written as a graduation gift for a friend, the daughter of a business owner he worked with at Zaarly.⁠[9]

The author’s note of The Almanack of Naval Ravikant states that he joined the founding team of Zaarly in 2011; it describes Zaarly as a company dedicated to helping homeowners find accountable service providers they can trust, and calls him a product strategist and writer.⁠[10]

His course page says that Zaarly was a home services marketplace where he worked on partnerships and product management. An article from Due republished by Entrepreneur in 2024 states that he oversaw growth and product development at the online marketplace before its multi-million-dollar acquisition.⁠[11][12]

The partners page of Rolling Fun lists Bo Fishback as the founder of Zaarly and notes that Zaarly was “acquired by ASX:ART”; the same page credits him with “10 years of growth and strategy experience in startups.”⁠[4]

In the September 2021 episode he said that he had worked in tech for a long time and had found his way to Silicon Valley.⁠[1]

In September 2020 Jay Clouse introduced him at the start of his show as a product strategist at Zaarly; in the episode he said that he loved his job and loved his company. The show notes of The Nathan Barry Show of June 2021 describe him as on the founding team of Zaarly, which they call an online marketplace for hiring home service providers.⁠[6][13]

In a post of June 2017 he wrote that he had personally experienced, a few times, the strains of a startup growing from about 10 people to more than 20, and had seen dozens of friends go through them.⁠[14]

The websites of his books state that his business blog, Evergreen, has had more than one million readers since 2014; the show notes of The Nathan Barry Show say that he has been publishing online since 2014.⁠[15][13]

On January 7, 2014, he published “Make the Internet your Personal Library,” on how he uses Pocket to save, tag and organize what he reads online; he mentioned an email from Pocket telling him that he was in the top 1 percent of its readers, and wrote that most of what he saves comes from Twitter and that he rereads his starred pieces every month.⁠[16]

In a post of December 15, 2014, he wrote that for years he had been nursing the idea that there is a better way to discover, read and learn online; inspired by the story of Product HuntProduct HuntProduct Hunt is a product-discovery and launch community founded by Ryan Hoover in 2013 and operated by Product Hunt, Inc. Makers present new products, while users vote, comment and review them and discover tools through categories, forums and AI search. AngelList announced its acquisition in 2016; as of November 2026, its official website lists Rajiv Ayyangar as CEO.Open the full entry, he first used Linkydink to gather a community for sharing timeless learning material, and when that prototype lost momentum, its criteria unclear and its daily emails overwhelming, he redesigned it as a weekly synthesized email, Evergreen.⁠[17]

In an interview of September 2020 he said that with Evergreen he made himself publish every Sunday night.⁠[6]

In a post of July 6, 2015, he wrote that for his first job he made flash cards of the 30 people he would be working with.⁠[18]

He wrote that when he was 25 Tucker Max read his blog, and that the two stayed in touch afterward.⁠[5]

In a post of November 2021 he wrote: “In 2017, I wrote my first-ever check investing in a startup.” The investment was $5,000 in the Series B round of Density in April 2017, at a valuation of $50 million.⁠[19]

He wrote that it took him more than six months to save the $5,000, that the sum still did not meet the minimum investment, and that he therefore pitched Bo, then the chief executive of the startup where he worked, to invest as well; Bo met Density’s chief executive, liked the idea and invested, and he invested alongside him. He wrote that he had been friends with Density’s founders before investing, and that at the time he had a job he loved at a company that had just recapitalized.⁠[19]

The post put Density’s value at $1 billion at the time of writing. Rolling Fun’s website lists Density among the partners’ earlier personal investments, noting that the investment was made in 2017, that the valuation reached $1 billion by 2021 and that Kleiner Perkins made a follow-on investment.⁠[19][20]

In a post of February 6, 2024, he wrote that it takes 15 years to build the kind of track record that really gets an early-stage investor into the game, and that he was glad to have started young, at about 30.⁠[21]

He said that the idea came from listening to Naval Ravikant on the podcast The Knowledge Project, and that he had never intended to do it.⁠[1]

On The Nathan Barry Show in June 2021 he said that he had been following Naval Ravikant’s writing since about 2009; he put up a Twitter poll, and 5,000 people answered that they wanted such a book. In the November 2023 episode he added that Naval Ravikant had retweeted it. In a post of November 2024 he wrote that he curated the book after a decade of learning from Naval Ravikant passively.⁠[13][6][2][22]

In March 2019 he wrote at the end of a post that he was working on a book about wealth and happiness, The Almanack of Naval Ravikant.⁠[23]

He said that the book took three years to finish and publish, during which he lumped what Naval Ravikant had shared in public into ideas and categories; on some days he could spend only 20 minutes on it. In September 2020 he said that side projects of this kind had also benefited him in his day job, and that early drafts had been read by a few dozen readers and friends, ranging from his parents to friends from college.⁠[13][2][6]

He wrote that in 2020 he tweeted that he had completed a manuscript for the “Navalmanack” but had no idea whether it could be published; Tucker Max gave him a pep talk in his own way, and Scribe Media then helped him publish the book.⁠[5][24]

Tucker Max wrote that he published a book with Scribe in 2020. The book, in full The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness, was created and edited by him from Naval Ravikant’s interviews, tweets and podcasts, with a foreword by Tim Ferriss and illustrations by Jack Butcher; the book’s website offers the text for reading online and as free PDF, MOBI and ePub downloads, the audio version is free through his podcast feed, and the site states that Naval Ravikant earns no money from the project.⁠[25][15][26][27]

In a post dated September 15, 2020, he wrote that the book was created entirely from public sources — about 80 sources, about 20,000 tweets and well over 1,000,000 words of raw material — and that he himself wrote nothing beyond the author’s note; the full text is free online, where it can be searched and copied, and the printed book carries QR codes.⁠[28]

He said that Naval Ravikant asked for a free version to be available and for it to be clear that Naval Ravikant himself was not earning money from the book, and that he regards the book as a public service. He said that he had no idea whether he would even break even on what he had invested, but that he did and then some; he also said that by going through Scribe he kept all of the rights and all of the royalties to the book.⁠[13][1][2]

He wrote that the book “changed my life creatively, financially, and gave me some very nerdy street cred.”⁠[5]

In June 2021 he said that page views of the book’s website were well into the millions and that digital downloads were somewhere in the mid six figures; in November 2023 he said that the book had been translated into 40 languages and had sold hundreds of thousands of copies, and that millions of people had read the free version online.⁠[13][2]

In a post of February 17, 2022, he wrote that in May 2020 he invested through a SAFE in the newly founded TripleBlind, with the largest angel check he had written up to then. He wrote that his job then had a highly uncertain future, that there had been a death in his close family that May, and that he did not know whether he would need the cash to pay rent.⁠[29]

He wrote that he met TripleBlind’s founder, Riddhiman Das, at a small entrepreneur-themed dinner that he had organized, through a close and trusted mutual friend, Zach Pettet, and that from his entry point the investment was up 10 times at the time of writing.⁠[29]

On The Nathan Barry Show of June 7, 2021, he said that his main project at the time was a course on leverage that would launch soon; the show notes give its name as Building a Mountain of Levers.⁠[13]

The course page names him and Justin Mikolay as the course’s creators and says that Justin Mikolay brings structure, clarity and community to it; the course consists of text, graphics and videos in twelve parts, with about 12 hours of core material, and its community runs on MightyNetworks; lifetime access to the material costs $297, a price that the page says is likely to rise to more than $600. Those featured in lessons and case studies are Jim O’Shaughnessy, Tom Osman, Jack Butcher and Andrew Wilkinson.⁠[11]

In the progress notes of a quarterly planning post on his personal website he wrote that the first episode of his podcast, Jorgenson’s Soundbox, was published on August 3, that it had kept a weekly cadence since, and that downloads had grown to 30,000 a month in the second month; he also wrote that he had hired an assistant through AthenaGo, with whose help he moved his email newsletter to ConvertKit in mid-August.⁠[30]

In his quarterly planning post of October 7, 2021, he wrote that he was producing the podcast on his own cash; in a note added in December he wrote that the show was only in its third or fourth month and that he had yet to receive an acceptable sponsorship offer.⁠[31]

On November 3, 2021, he published a post titled “A Letter from the Hospital,” written about his own stay in a hospital. In it he wrote: “Chest pains are scary.” He went on: “I’ll live, and make a full recovery.”⁠[32]

He wrote: “I spent a few minutes staring into the abyss this week.” He asked himself what he would wish he had done if that day were his last, and what he was proud of. He proposed something like the Stockdale Paradox, but for death: “Unwavering faith you will die, accepting that truth while keeping the discipline to live as though you’ll live forever.”⁠[32]

In a quarterly note of December 2021 he wrote that he had had great conversations with potential investors in a fund and planned to launch it in the first quarter; on February 17, 2022, he announced in a post that he had opened an early-stage fund so that others could invest alongside him.⁠[31][29]

In his review of the first quarter of 2022 he wrote that the fund had dozens of investors and had raised nearly $1 million a year to invest in its first six weeks.⁠[33]

In “Creator Capitalists,” a post of March 31, 2022, he wrote that he had been shocked that investors from all over the world had committed meaningful capital to the fund; he attributed their trust to his years of writing, tweeting and sharing online, and named the Logos Fund of Shane Mac and Chris Herd as one of his inspirations for starting Rolling Fun.⁠[34]

Rolling Fun’s website names three partners: Al Doan, Bo Fishback and him. The page presents Al Doan as the founder and former chief executive of Missouri Star Quilt Co. and lists “VP Entrepreneurship Kauffman Foundation” among Bo Fishback’s roles.⁠[4]

The fund’s list of investments begins with the first quarter of 2022. The two investments of that quarter were Terran and Gently.com: the page describes the former as building adobe houses with flying drones and the latter as the Amazon of secondhand shopping, and notes that the second was made alongside Jason Calacanis.⁠[20]

In a post of April 7, 2022, he wrote that Rolling Fun had invested $26,000 from its first-quarter fund in the pre-seed round of Terran Robotics, at a valuation of $5 million; the deal had come in an email from Bo’s brother, and he was then at work on a book about Balaji Srinivasan.⁠[35]

Scribe Media, the publishing-services company that produced his book, was co-founded by Tucker Max and Zach Obront. In a post of October 2024, Tucker Max wrote that the company hired JeVon McCormick, whom the post calls the CEO, in August 2016, and that gross sales reached $21 million at the end of 2021, the company’s peak.⁠[25]

Both Tucker Max’s post and “The Revival of Scribe Media,” a post on Scribe Media’s website that carries Eric Jorgenson’s byline, state that the company could not make payroll on April 12, 2023, and that JeVon McCormick resigned as president and chief executive on May 18.⁠[25][36]

Publishers Lunch wrote on May 25, 2023, that the ghostwriting and publishing-services firm had abruptly shut down the day before and laid off its staff; an email sent that evening to employees’ personal addresses attributed the shutdown to unforeseen business circumstances and the unavailability of additional capital and referred to laying off employees at its Austin location. An employee quoted in the piece estimated that 85 to 100 people had been laid off; the piece says that no severance was offered.⁠[37]

The sources give different figures for the layoffs: Publishers Lunch’s article of June 8 says 87 employees; Tucker Max’s post says 86 in its timeline and more than a hundred full-time employees in its opening; and the Due article republished by Entrepreneur says 86. The Publishers Lunch article states that JeVon McCormick apologized in a LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry post and named himself the company’s main shareholder.⁠[38][25][12]

In his post of September 2023 he wrote that in May of that year his author friend Jimmy Soni passed on rumors of turbulence at Scribe and word that it had shut down; he did not believe it and called the company’s chief executive, whose answer was that the company had not shut down but had financial troubles and was open to new ownership.⁠[5]

“The Revival of Scribe Media” states that on May 26 he, by then a Scribe author, heard the rumors and started contacting firms that might step in. He wrote that he introduced Sieva Kozinsky and Xavier Helgesen of Enduring Ventures, whom he had met on Twitter and had spent time with at Berkshire and at Capital Camp.⁠[36][5]

He wrote that the two called lawyers, flew to Austin and started digging in, and found that the team, the services and the business model were strong but that the company had no real financial infrastructure, that spending was out of control and that its leadership had made bad decisions. He wrote that Enduring Ventures fronted salaries and expenses so that the team could keep looking after authors, and then bought Scribe.⁠[5]

“The Revival of Scribe Media” states that in early June 2023 the bank that had lent Scribe money, which it does not name and refers to by a placeholder, foreclosed on Scribe Media, LLC (“Old Scribe”). Tucker Max wrote that shortly after the layoffs the company defaulted on two loans from that bank (his post likewise uses the placeholder), which took possession of Scribe’s assets. Jane Friedman wrote on June 7 that Scribe’s assets were apparently in the process of being sold, with a buyer not yet determined.⁠[36][25][39]

Both posts state that in mid-June Sieva Kozinsky and Xavier Helgesen started a new company, Bond Financial, and hired the majority of the remaining Scribe team. Publishers Lunch wrote on June 27 that Enduring Ventures said it had signed a letter of intent to acquire Scribe’s assets, pending financing and due diligence; in a LinkedIn post Sieva Kozinsky wrote that he would become interim chief executive of the new business and that the company had laid off 10 more people from its skeleton staff.⁠[36][25][40]

“The Revival of Scribe Media” states that on July 7 Sieva Kozinsky broke the news to authors that they would not be getting the work they had paid the old company for.⁠[36]

Publishers Lunch wrote on August 31 that Scribe Media had resumed at least some operations amid multiple lawsuits; the article says that the prospective buyer, Enduring Ventures, wrote in mid-July that during due diligence it had found the situation to be a lot worse than it first understood, and that for the time being a consulting agreement was in place.⁠[41]

“The Revival of Scribe Media” states that in early August Bond Financial finalized the purchase of certain assets of Old Scribe. Tucker Max’s post specifies that the buyer was the new company owned by Enduring Ventures and that the assets were the Scribe logo and website, and says of the new Scribe that “it is a whole new legal entity, with entirely new owners, and a new CEO.” Both posts state that the new company also assumed the liability for the bank’s loan.⁠[36][25]

“The Revival of Scribe Media” states that as of November 2023 the bankruptcy proceedings of Scribe Media, LLC were still under way, and describes Enduring Ventures as the majority owner of the present Scribe.⁠[36]

“The Revival of Scribe Media” states that in late August 2023 Bond Financial hired him as chief executive. Tucker Max wrote that in late August he invested in the new Scribe and joined as CEO. The former post refers to Sieva, Xavier and Eric as the new owners of Scribe, who have put their money at risk. The Due article republished by Entrepreneur states that Sieva Kozinsky had served as interim executive and that by August 2023 Eric Jorgenson was formally appointed as the new CEO.⁠[36][25][12]

In “I Accepted a Job: CEO of Scribe,” published on September 19, 2023, he wrote that he received a very surprising phone call asking him to join the team as CEO; his original hope had been to be a small investor and to go on publishing books there. He wrote that he had spent the previous three years writing, investing and podcasting, that his calendar was empty, and that he accepted after talking it over with his wife. He added: “Secretly, I started two weeks ago.”⁠[5]

In the same post he wrote that Scribe then had more than 150 authors’ work in progress.⁠[5]

In his post of October 2024 Tucker Max wrote that Eric was among those who went looking for investors to save the company, and observed: “Like me, Eric was an author before he started at Scribe.”⁠[25]

In a post of October 3, 2023, he wrote that he was about four weeks into the role, that it was an additional job and that he was still running his books, his fund and his podcast; on some workdays he looked up at 6 p.m. and realized that he had forgotten to eat.⁠[42]

In the same post he set down advice given to a new chief executive: there is a lot to learn, very fast; the board may have hired you, but you still have to campaign for president of your own company; someone will ask for a raise immediately; sweat the details without micromanaging; and big decisions come in the first few days, so that decisions he had expected to make in six months had to be made in the first week.⁠[42]

In December 2021 he wrote that the next book was approved and outlined, and that he hoped to publish this second Almanack in 2022. In his review of the first quarter of 2022 he said that the first draft was about 80 percent done and that the working title was “Almanack of Balaji Srinivasan: Truth, Technology, and Building the Future.”⁠[31][33]

In his post of September 19, 2023, he wrote that he had hired Scribe again for The Anthology of Balaji, which was coming on October 24.⁠[5][24]

The book carries the subtitle “A Guide to Technology, Truth, and Building the Future” and gathers ideas that Balaji Srinivasan published over the previous decade in podcasts, posts and tweets, with illustrations by Jack Butcher. The book’s website sells paperback, hardcover and Kindle editions and offers free PDF and EPUB downloads; its footer reads “Copyright: Magrathea, Inc. 2022.”⁠[43][26]

The book’s website quotes Marc AndreessenMarc AndreessenMarc Andreessen is an American entrepreneur and venture capitalist, a co-founder and general partner of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). While in college he helped develop the graphical web browser Mosaic, then co-founded Netscape and Loudcloud (later renamed Opsware), and has long served as a director of Meta; he has also published essays such as “Why Software Is Eating the World.”Open the full entry to the effect that Balaji Srinivasan has the highest output rate of good ideas of anyone he knows.⁠[43]

In the November 2023 episode he said that he had been following Balaji Srinivasan for a long time as well.⁠[2]

On November 1, 2024, he published “The Revival of Scribe Media” on Scribe Media’s website, writing that since the transition of August 2023 Scribe had published 95 new books, had more than 150 in progress, had hired or rehired 7 staff and had signed more than 100 authors; the body of the post says that over the past decade Scribe had served more than 1,000 authors and published more than 3,000 books, while its footer speaks of more than 1,600 authors helped. The Due article republished by Entrepreneur on November 25, 2024, states that more than one hundred books had been released since August 2023. His personal website lists coverage of the rebuilding by Entrepreneur, Forbes and USA TodayUSA TODAYUSA TODAY is a national general-interest daily newspaper and news brand in the United States. Founded under the leadership of Allen Neuharth and first published on September 15, 1982, it is known for its color pages, short stories, and abundant graphics. It is now published by USA TODAY Co. (formerly Gannett) and is the national flagship brand of the USA TODAY Network, and its brands also include the sports brand USA TODAY Sports.Open the full entry.⁠[36][12][24]

On December 17, 2024, he published his first annual letter as chief executive, “First Annual Letter as CEO of Scribe Media: The Year of Surviving.” The letter looks back at where the company stood in July 2023: “20 people,” “Zero revenue,” “Reputation worse than zero.” It groups the year’s work under four heads — stabilizing the business and operations, supporting authors in transition, improving services and rebuilding the team — and gives the internal mantra as being flawless on the fundamentals.⁠[44]

The letter states that the company had published more than 110 books over the past 16 months and had nearly 200 more in progress, with a full-time team of 26 and dozens of freelancers; authors affected by the collapse of the old company were offered at-cost publishing, and more than 100 such projects had been completed or were in progress.⁠[44]

Other measures listed in the letter are a single Publishing Manager who guides each author throughout, a reduction of the price of Scribe Publishing that the previous leadership had raised, a rebuilt Guided Author service and audiobooks included in the services by default. The letter states that the Scribe Media veteran Rikki Jump rejoined in January 2024, that Travis Stoliker became vice president of marketing in March, and that four Publishing Managers were added during the year.⁠[44]

The letter states that the company’s reputation had already taken a big hit under the different leadership of January 2022 to May 2023, and that the two founders, Tucker Max and Zach Obront, have no official role or financial stake in the new Scribe but have supported the rebuilding publicly and privately. It mentions that names such as David Goggins, Tiffany Haddish, Nassim TalebNassim Nicholas TalebNassim Nicholas Taleb (born 1960) is a Lebanese-born essayist, researcher in probability and risk, and former derivatives trader. He is the author of the multivolume essay the Incerto, including The Black Swan and Antifragile, and is known for his work on tail risk, model error and “antifragility.”Open the full entry and The Nobel Committee had chosen to self-publish through Scribe; his personal website states that Scribe published David Goggins’s Can’t Hurt Me and Never Finished. Tucker Max wrote in his own post: “I own no part of that company.”⁠[44][24][25]

The letter acknowledges that some past authors, employees and members of the community still feel confused, conflicted or angry about 2023; it says that competitors have misrepresented Scribe’s recovery, and it mentions a legal issue whose description is redacted. It sums up the plans for 2025 as improving the existing services, gradually expanding them, and deepening alignment within the team and with partners.⁠[44]

In a post of January 23, 2024, he wrote that, to keep improving as an investor and as an operator, he had been privately meeting exemplars of both crafts, and that he had spent time that week with two of them.⁠[45]

On September 23, 2025, he announced on his podcast page the first update to the book’s core material in the five years since its publication: he spent a day with Naval Ravikant expanding on key ideas from the book, and the conversation yielded nearly 4 hours of new material, released on Audible; he noted that the physical and ebook formats had not yet been updated with the new material.⁠[46]

NetGalley’s catalog page gives March 24, 2026, as the publication date of The Book of Elon: A Guide to Purpose and Success and lists the publisher as Scribe Media | Magrathea Publishing.⁠[47]

His personal website states that the book was created and edited by him, with illustrations by Jack Butcher and a foreword by Naval Ravikant, from what Elon Musk said over two decades on Twitter and in podcasts, videos and essays. The book’s website carries the line “Elon Musk’s Most Useful Ideas In His Own Words” under the title and presents the book in four parts; it sells paperback, hardcover, Kindle and audiobook editions, offers a free ebook and a free online edition, and prints endorsements from Naval Ravikant and MrBeastMrBeastMrBeast, born James Stephen Donaldson and commonly known as Jimmy Donaldson, is an American video creator, television producer and entrepreneur. He began running a YouTube channel in 2012, later founded Beast Industries and the snack brand Feastables, and launched several charitable fundraising campaigns. In June 2026, his main channel became the first individual creator’s YouTube channel to reach 500 million subscribers.Open the full entry.⁠[26][48]

The book had earlier gone by other titles: Scribe Media’s profile page announced it as The Book of Elon Musk: A Guide to Purpose and Success, and the speaking page of his personal website refers to the upcoming book as The Best of Elon Musk. He wrote that with it he partnered with Scribe for a third time and that all three of his books are published by Scribe.⁠[27][49][24]

On July 1, 2025, in a post on books recommended by Elon Musk, he wrote that he was hard at work on his third book, collecting Elon Musk’s most useful ideas, and that a publishing timeline would be shared in the coming weeks.⁠[50]

In the interview with David SenraDavid SenraDavid Senra is the founder and host of the Founders podcast, on which he reads biographies of entrepreneurs to discuss starting and running businesses and making personal decisions. He began producing the show in 2016, partnered with Colossus in 2022, and in 2025 launched David Senra, a long-form interview show under his own name.Open the full entry released on the day of publication, David Senra began by noting that only four advance copies of the book then existed; Eric Jorgenson answered that they were held by Naval Ravikant, MrBeast, Ivanka TrumpIvanka TrumpIvanka Trump is an American businesswoman. She served as executive vice president of development and acquisitions at the Trump Organization and founded an eponymous fashion brand, and during Donald Trump’s first presidential term she was an unpaid White House adviser to the president, focusing on issues such as women’s economic empowerment, job training, paid parental leave, and combating human trafficking. After the first term ended, she turned to entrepreneurship and investing.Open the full entry and David Senra. David Senra said on the program that Eric Jorgenson had spent five years and thousands of hours studying Elon Musk.⁠[51][52]

He said that what convinced him that he must write the book was a clip of Elon Musk, from the Joe RoganJoe RoganJoe Rogan is an American podcaster, stand-up comedian and UFC commentator whose long-form interview podcast The Joe Rogan Experience, launched in 2009, is among the most listened-to podcasts in the world; he hosted the NBC reality show Fear Factor, and his show’s content and political statements have repeatedly drawn controversy.Open the full entry podcast as he recalled, talking about manufacturing and about the fact that someone has to make things: it showed him how clear a communicator Elon Musk is and how important the idea was.⁠[51][52]

He said that in selecting material he began with a list of 107 maxims of entrepreneurship, checked the roughly 75 of which Elon Musk was a good example, and then picked out the 15 or 16 of which he could be an iconic exemplar. He said that the book is set up as a dialogue and that he wanted it to feel like being out to dinner with Elon Musk; one of its chapters is called “internalized responsibility.”⁠[51][51][51]

Of his hopes for the book he said: “I hope that this book can generate like 1 million Musks”; he explained that he did not mean following Elon Musk’s life blueprint or starting an electric car company.⁠[51]

In a post of October 2026 he wrote that he and Dylan Kurt had for years been working on this book and on another about MrBeast in parallel, and that Dylan Kurt had worked closely with him on The Book of Elon behind the scenes. The book’s website lists two video interviews that he gave about the book, one with David Senra and one on Chris Williamson’s Modern Wisdom.⁠[53][48]

On March 24, 2026, David Senra published a conversation with him on his YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is Google’s video-sharing and creator platform, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and acquired by Google in 2006. Built around video uploading, viewing, and creator earnings, the platform has developed Shorts, YouTube Music, Premium, YouTube TV, and products for children, and is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.Open the full entry channel under the title “How Elon Thinks.” The episode page on David Senra’s website introduces him as an investor, author and the CEO of Scribe Media, whose work is to distill the ideas of the world’s most consequential thinkers into books that anyone can read.⁠[51][52]

The conversation centered on The Book of Elon and covered, in order: why Elon Musk chooses problems that nobody else is working on; how he finds and uses excellent engineers; taking pain, the sense of mission and burning the boats; fear; what Eric Jorgenson hopes readers will take from the book; Elon Musk’s childhood and first companies; the maxims of entrepreneurship used in the book and knowing a business from A to Z; deliberately small failures and deadlines with a 50 percent chance of being met; testing ideas against reality; the five steps known as “the algorithm,” namely questioning requirements, deleting, simplifying and optimizing, accelerating and automating; control of his companies and vertical integration; cost-plus contracts and driving costs down; the original plan for SpaceXSpaceXSpaceX is a company founded by Elon Musk in 2002 whose businesses include space transportation, Starlink satellite communications and artificial intelligence. It went public in 2026 under the ticker SPCX.Open the full entry and the origin of its satellite business; time and speed; how Elon Musk thinks about money; doing things in parallel instead of in series; a single metric for the whole team; why manufacturing matters; the feasibility study that preceded SpaceX; the all-or-nothing pay package and the years of sleeping on the factory floor; drilling down to the limiting factor; attention to detail and design; product ahead of sales; and thinking from the limits of physics.⁠[51][51][51][51][51][51][51][51][51][51][51][51][51][51][51][51][51][51][51][51][51][51][51][51][51][51][51][51][51][51][51][51]

The two repeatedly cited an essay on SpaceX by Max Olson, whom David Senra introduced as a friend of theirs who is writing a book on SpaceX that has not yet been released. Eric Jorgenson called the essay excellent and said that it examines why SpaceX is so special and why nobody has been able to replicate what it has done.⁠[51][51][52]

In the conversation he said that he had never met Elon Musk’s father and knew of him from Walter IsaacsonWalter IsaacsonWalter Isaacson is an American biographer and journalist, born in New Orleans in 1952, and a history professor at Tulane University. He formerly led TIME magazine, CNN and the Aspen Institute. His biographies cover figures including Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci, Jennifer Doudna and Elon Musk. He received the National Humanities Medal in 2023.Open the full entry’s biography and from the accounts of Elon Musk and others; he also said that he had talked to TeslaTeslaTesla is an American electric vehicle and energy company whose businesses span automobiles, solar energy, and battery energy storage. Founded in 2003 and headquartered in Austin, Texas, its shares are listed on Nasdaq under the ticker TSLA.Open the full entry employees about the period when Elon Musk slept at the factory.⁠[51][51][52]

He summed up Elon Musk as a combination of three traits: intensity at the level of David Goggins, unconventional technical brilliance at the level of Richard FeynmanRichard FeynmanRichard Feynman (Richard Phillips Feynman, 1918–1988) was an American theoretical physicist who rebuilt quantum electrodynamics with the path-integral formulation and Feynman diagrams, for which he shared the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics with Julian Schwinger and Sin-Itiro Tomonaga. He took part in the Manhattan Project during World War II and then taught for decades at the California Institute of Technology, where his introductory physics course became The Feynman Lectures on Physics; in 1986, as a member of the presidential commission investigating the space shuttle Challenger accident, he used ice water to demonstrate that the O-ring lost its resilience at low temperature.Open the full entry, and the strategic genius and extreme bias to action of Napoleon BonaparteNapoleon BonaparteNapoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821), known as Napoleon I, was a French military leader and statesman who was first consul of the French Republic from 1799 to 1804 and emperor of the French from 1804 to 1814 and again in 1815. In 1803 he sold the Louisiana territory to the United States, and in 1804 he promulgated the French Civil Code.Open the full entry. He said of Elon Musk: “He’s special, but he’s not superhuman.” He also said that he would not want to live through what Elon Musk has lived through, and that seeing this is an antidote to envy.⁠[51][51][51][52]

At the end of the program David Senra said that he would buy a thousand copies of The Book of Elon for the first listeners to click the link in the show notes.⁠[51]

In “Notes from a Secret Meeting,” published on October 23, 2026, he wrote that he was invited to Dialog (Private Forum)Dialog (Private Forum)Dialog is an invitation-only private community co-founded by Peter Thiel and Auren Hoffman, built around closed-door, off-the-record gatherings of executives, founders, investors, government officials, academics, artists, and media figures. It long kept its membership private; after its website directory and internal rating files leaked in June 2026, it drew wide attention, and its annual retreat planned for Ireland was cancelled by the hotel, leading to litigation.Open the full entry, a gathering held once a year, and that it is one of his favorite weeks of the year. By his description it is the opposite of a conference, with no speakers, panels or sponsors and no agenda, designed for candid conversation in small groups, and everything said there is off the record and not for attribution; those attending included scientists, magicians, hackers and political appointees as well as founders and investors.⁠[54]

He wrote: “The press took some awkward potshots at it this year over tenuous ties to Peter ThielPeter ThielPeter Thiel is an American entrepreneur and investor, a co-founder of PayPal and Palantir Technologies, and the first outside investor in Facebook. He is a partner at the venture capital firm Founders Fund and founded the Thiel Fellowship, which funds young people to leave college and build new things; his public skepticism of higher education, his support for Trump in 2016, and his funding of litigation against Gawker Media have drawn controversy.Open the full entry.” He defended it as having an exceptional culture and as an important institution. The post summarizes, without attribution, some of what he heard there and warns readers that such accounts are often hard to verify independently.⁠[54]

On October 29, 2026, he published “My New Book: MrBeast,” announcing: “The Book of MrBeast is coming, Q2 2027.”⁠[53]

He wrote that the book has the same style and format as his earlier books on Naval, Balaji and Elon, gathering MrBeast’s most useful ideas in his own words from interviews, tweets and transcripts; to the question whether he had MrBeast’s permission to publish it, his answer in the post is yes.⁠[53]

He wrote that his co-author, Dylan Kurt, is a talented young writer and editor who has been pushing the project forward since 2022, and added: “We are full partners and co-authors on this book.”⁠[53]

When the post appeared the book could be pre-ordered from Bookshop.org, Barnes & Noble, Target and Amazon. The homepage of his personal website lists the book as coming soon and gives the address bookofmrbeast.com.⁠[53][55]

The book’s website, bookofmrbeast.com, gives the title as The Book of MrBeast: How to Grow Faster, Accomplish More, and Do Good, names Eric Jorgenson and Dylan Kurt as the authors and Jack Butcher as the illustrator, and describes Dylan Kurt as a ghostwriter and editor who edited The Book of Elon.⁠[56]

As of November 2026, the team page of Scribe Media’s website lists him as “Author In Residence” and lists Travis Stoliker as CEO; his biography on that page says that he published two books with Scribe before becoming CEO. The profile page on the same website states: “Eric is an owner of Scribe Media, the largest Professional Publisher.”⁠[57][27]

His LinkedIn profile gives his current role at Scribe Media as “Author in Residence & Executive Board Member,” marked part-time, starting in April 2026; Travis Stoliker’s LinkedIn profile lists him as chief executive officer of Scribe Media since April 2026 and as vice president of marketing from March 2024 until then.⁠[58][59]

His own websites give different titles: the speaking page of his personal website describes him as CEO of Scribe Media, which it calls a publisher for entrepreneurs, executives and experts; the website of The Book of Elon calls him a GP at Rolling Fun and CEO at Scribe Media; and the website of The Book of MrBeast calls him a GP at Rolling Fun and Author-in-Residence at Scribe Media.⁠[49][48][56]

The heading of the homepage of his personal website reads “Hi I’m Eric, and I collect good ideas.” The page sorts what he does under three heads: writing books, investing and learning.⁠[55]

The website of Founders SchoolFounders SchoolFounders School is an entrepreneurship high school program opened by the Alpha School network in Manhattan, New York, covering grades 9 through 12, which welcomed its first students in September 2026. Students complete their academics in the morning with AI learning software and spend the rest of the day running their own companies under the guidance of entrepreneurs; the school has drawn attention for its promise to refund tuition if a student’s business does not reach $1 million in profit and for its $150,000 annual tuition.Open the full entry lists him, with the label “Naval Almanack,” among the founders who provide weekly mentorship to its students, under the heading “Work Directly With The Best in the World.”⁠[60]

The author’s note of The Almanack of Naval Ravikant reads: “He lives in Kansas City with Jeannine, the most wonderful woman in the world.”⁠[10]

In a post of November 2021 he wrote, as a disclosure, that his fiancée then worked at Density, leading HR; in his post of September 2023 he refers to Jeannine as his wife.⁠[19][5]

The author page of Simon & Schuster UK reads: “Eric lives in Kansas City with his wife and their son in a house that’s slowly becoming a library.” The page adds that he is perfecting homemade pasta.⁠[61]

The author’s notes of his books carry the line: “Eric is on a quest to create—and eat—the perfect sandwich.”⁠[10][48]

In September 2021 he mentioned on a podcast that he was in Kansas City; in February 2026 he wrote on the page of a book list he compiles that the list is the work of one man in Kansas City.⁠[1][62]

In a post of October 2026, speaking of people over 35, he wrote: “I’m one of you now.”⁠[53]

On a podcast in June 2021 he said that he is a normal person who wants to represent himself as one online, and that he spends far too much time on Twitter.⁠[13]

In September 2020 he said that his interests included crypto, education, managing startups and angel investing.⁠[6]

In a post of March 28, 2019, he wrote that he had got into the habit of weightlifting over the previous two years and that it had been transformative for him in several ways: he was more productive at work and had more willpower.⁠[23]

He wrote that his favorite novel, Shantaram, was given to him as a birthday present and that he has recommended it more than any other novel; in a post of March 2020 he mentioned that he was reading Becoming by Michelle Obama.⁠[63][64]

In a post of February 2022 he wrote that he enjoys organizing small get-togethers with delicious food.⁠[29]

The sources give different figures for circulation: his personal website says that more than one million copies of The Almanack of Naval Ravikant have been sold worldwide; Scribe Media’s profile page says that his books have sold over 1 million copies and been translated into 40 languages, while his biography on its team page says that the book has sold over 1,000,000 copies, has been translated into more than 30 languages and has had over 4,000,000 digital copies given away free; NetGalley’s catalog page calls the book a word-of-mouth phenomenon with millions of readers in more than 40 languages; and the Due article republished by Entrepreneur in November 2024 says that more than five million copies have been distributed since publication.⁠[26][27][57][47][12]

On February 19, 2026, he published the “ENJ Bestseller List” on his personal website, marked as the inaugural edition for January 2026 and to be updated monthly; it ranks ten books by his own choice, not by sales, surveys or algorithms, and the page notes that it is not affiliated with The New York TimesThe New York TimesThe New York Times is an American morning daily newspaper published in New York City. Founded in 1851, it is published by The New York Times Company.Open the full entry.⁠[62]

The first list ran, in order: Atomic Habits by James Clear, The Next Renaissance by Zack Kass, The Art of Spending Money by Morgan Housel, his own The Almanack of Naval Ravikant, Western Colossus by Albert Heiner, Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman, The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch, The Sovereign Child by Aaron Stupple, Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card and Leading to Thrive by Klaus Kleinfeld; the page notes that The Sovereign Child and Leading to Thrive are published by Scribe Media, and he wrote that he had not technically finished reading the book in fifth place.⁠[62]

On January 16, 2025, he published his notes on Klaus Kleinfeld’s Leading to Thrive, writing that he had about 90 highlights from the book and that one great thing about being CEO at Scribe is working with thinkers.⁠[65]

Rolling Fun’s website describes it as a rolling fund administered by AngelListAngelListAngelList is a startup investment platform company based in San Francisco, United States. Founded in 2010 by Naval Ravikant and Babak Nivi, it began as a mailing list recommending startups to angel investors, went on to launch online fundraising, Syndicates (co-investing), rolling funds, and other products, and later shifted into a fund administration and back-office services platform for venture capital funds and private markets.Open the full entry: investors commit capital quarterly for a fixed term, typically one to five years, and the fund allocates every quarter. It invests at the pre-seed and seed stages in technology startups in the United StatesUnited StatesThe United States is a federal country in North America made up of 50 states, the District of Columbia as the seat of government, and territories such as Puerto Rico and Guam; its capital is Washington, D.C. The Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted a resident population of 331,449,281, and the 435 seats of the House of Representatives are apportioned among the states on the basis of the census.Open the full entry, putting $30,000 to $250,000 into companies valued under $200 million that could grow 100 times, in fields including ecommerce, SaaS, hardware, robotics, energy, drones, space, biotech and genetics.⁠[66]

The terms listed are a 2 percent management fee, a 0.15 percent AngelList administration fee, 20 percent carry and a term of 10 years; the annual target is $3 million to $5 million, while the homepage says the fund is capped at $3 million a year, with a minimum commitment of $4,000 a quarter for four quarters. Legal, fund administration, tax and banking services are provided by Varnum Law, AngelList, Baldridge Financial and Blue Ridge Bank respectively, and the entity named in the site’s copyright line is Rolling Fun Was Already Taken, LLC.⁠[66][67]

The site also describes a “Carry Share Program”: an investor in the fund who introduces a startup that the fund then backs earns a share of the carry, and the page says that three investments had already been found, vetted and executed with investors’ help. The page also lists eight podcast episodes about the fund, covering the partners’ life stories and why they started a fund, its theses, a review of five investments of the third quarter of 2022, and subjects such as nuclear reactors, nuclear fusion, robotic arms, batteries and space cargo; the description of the sixth begins “Al meets MrBeast.” The partners page says that from Kansas City the partners see deals in the Midwest that others may not, while investing globally through their networks.⁠[66][4]

The investments page states: “As of September 2026, we have invested… $2,766,227 in 48 Companies.”⁠[20]

The investments listed for the second to fourth quarters of 2022 are Chapters, Lumo and Positive Foods; Ome, Omella, Drivly and Glyph; and Weavechain, Stell Engineering, Tonic Audio and NSION. The entry for Drivly names Quicken Loans among its co-investors.⁠[20]

The investments listed for the quarters of 2023 are FasterBetter, Aalo and Solve; altHQ, Occam, Zencastr and Ouros Energy; Atom Limbs and GenFab Co; and Marathon Fusion, Atomic Industries and Portola. The page describes Aalo as a maker of nuclear fission microreactors and Marathon Fusion as producing fuel for fusion reactors.⁠[20]

The investments listed for the quarters of 2024 are Longshot, Reactiv and Dirac; a follow-on in Omella, a further investment in Ouros Energy, and Tripleblind; Terraform Industries and Airship; and Astroforge. The page describes Longshot as a railgun for launching cargo into space, Terraform Industries as producing cheap natural gas from sunlight and air, and Astroforge as mining asteroids for platinum group metals.⁠[20]

The investments listed for the quarters of 2025 are Los Angeles Project and Tideway Logistics; Watoga Technologies and Cascade Space; OBSIDIA and Green Abundance; and LUMINA, Dynamo Air and Blitzpanel. Those for the first three quarters of 2026 are The Impossible Computer Co and an investment in Ouros Energy through a special-purpose vehicle; Intalus, Flying Wire and Precigenetics; and Tobe Energy, Furno Materials and, once more, OBSIDIA.⁠[20]

The investments page also has a section headed “Prior Investments,” introduced with the words: “A sample of our personal investments prior to Rolling Fun as examples of our access, values, and judgement.” Besides Density, it lists Modern Energy (which subsequently raised over $140 million), Seis (pre-seed, with follow-on from Goodwater and F-Prime Capital), IncludedHealth (seed round, with follow-on from Venrock, General AtlanticGeneral AtlanticGeneral Atlantic is a global investment firm founded in 1980 that grew out of Chuck Feeney’s family investment business. Growth equity is at its core, and through GA Credit, BeyondNetZero and Actis it also invests in credit, the energy transition and infrastructure. As of June 30, 2026, its assets under management across all strategies were about $130 billion.Open the full entry and Carlyle), BloomTechBloomTechBloomTech (Bloom Institute of Technology, formerly Lambda School) is a for-profit online coding school headquartered in San Francisco, founded in 2017 by Austen Allred and Ben Nelson; it came out of Y Combinator. It became known for income share agreements (ISAs), under which students study first and pay a share of their income once employed; it was later fined by a California regulator for operating in the state without approval, sued by students over its job placement claims and other issues, and in 2024 subjected to enforcement action by the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) over the loan nature of its ISAs and its job placement claims.Open the full entry (printed as Bloomtech, with the note LambdaSchool; pre-seed, with follow-on from GoogleGoogleGoogle is an American technology company founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin and incorporated in 1998. It became an Alphabet subsidiary in 2015. Its businesses include internet search, advertising, software platforms, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence.Open the full entry Ventures, YC, Stripe and Gigafund), Tripleblind (pre-seed, followed 17 months later by a $24 million Series A, after which the page adds the name Mayo Clinic), SoloFunds (seed, with a subsequent Series A from ACME, Techstars and Endeavor) and Pura (pre-seed, valued, the page says, at $1.5 billion, with follow-on from Kickstarter).⁠[20]

The partners page of Rolling Fun describes him as an angel investor in 5 companies; Scribe Media’s profile page says that he is an investor in dozens of deep-tech startups through Rolling Fun.⁠[4][27]

At the end of a post of October 2026 he wrote that Rolling Fun writes small checks to 10 to 15 startups each year and that its previous investments include Aalo Atomics and Terraform Industries; the post puts the 2023 fund at a 3.5x MOIC and an IRR of roughly 30 percent, with the caveat that the figures are illiquid and not a full net calculation. His contact page says that the fund accepts investments from accredited investors only.⁠[54][68]

His posts of different dates give different figures: on January 29, 2025, he wrote that the fund writes small checks to 15 to 20 startups each year; his post of May 21, 2025, announcing an investment in the pre-seed round of Watoga Technologies, gives the minimum investment as $5,000 a quarter.⁠[69][70]

In a post of January 20, 2022, explaining SquidDAO, he disclosed that he owned a small amount of the $SQUID token and stated that he was not a representative or affiliate of SquidDAO.⁠[71]

He hosts the podcast Smart Friends. Its page describes the show as founders, scientists, engineers, investors and artists building a brighter future together. Recent episodes listed there include a conversation with Brad FeldBrad FeldBrad Feld is a General Partner at Foundry, a co-founder of Techstars, and an author.Open the full entry about founding Techstars on October 21, 2025, one with Danielle Strachman, co-founder of the Thiel FellowshipThiel FellowshipThe Thiel Fellowship is a two-year grant program started by investor Peter Thiel and run by the Thiel Foundation that funds young people who skip or stop out of college to build new things instead. The program has been criticized by figures in education for encouraging young people to leave college.Open the full entry, on November 4, 2025, one with Nat EliasonNat EliasonNat Eliason (Nathaniel Eliason) is a writer and entrepreneur who founded the content marketing agency Growth Machine and wrote Crypto Confidential, Husk, and The Birth of Paradise. His work spans content marketing, crypto industry writing, science fiction, and AI-assisted software development, and in 2026 he took part in building Founders School, an entrepreneurship high school program under Alpha School in New York.Open the full entry on June 2, 2026 (the episode title places him at “Founder School (via Alpha)”), and one with Rajat Bhageria of Chef Robotics on September 1, 2026.⁠[72]

David Senra has appeared on the podcast several times. The episode on his personal website in which David Senra appears alone is titled “Devouring Founder’s Biographies, Self-Belief, and the Power of Podcasting with David Senra of Founders Podcast” and is labeled “Jorgenson’s Soundbox Episode 41”; it is mentioned in the episode that David Senra had sponsored the podcast for the previous few months, that the two had not yet met in person, and that Mitchell Baldridge was a mutual friend. The later episodes in which David Senra appears together with Mitchell Baldridge are numbered in sequence: the fourth was published on January 17, 2024, and is labeled “Smart Friends Episode 69,” and its show notes say that David Senra had announced Founders Only, his first multi-day, in-person event; the sixth was published on June 24, 2025.⁠[73][74][72]

On December 24, 2024, he published “David Senra’s Ideas from the Greatest Founders in History,” a list of 104 maxims that he had collected from David Senra, and wrote that David Senra frequently comes on his podcast and that the two had done several episodes together, usually with Mitchell Baldridge.⁠[75]

The partners page of Rolling Fun credits the podcast with 4,000 listeners an episode, his Smart Friends newsletter with more than 20,000 subscribers, his blog with one million readers and his Twitter account with 62,000 followers; the sign-up box on the homepage of his personal website speaks of more than 40,000 people having joined.⁠[4][55]

The newsletter page says that he sends a newsletter every week with “One Good Idea,” free of charge, on topics including leverage, Web3, investing, startups and building wealth. The show notes of The Nathan Barry Show of June 2021 describe him as operating a monthly newsletter.⁠[76][13]

The interviews page of his personal website lists dozens of podcasts on which he has appeared, among them Chris Williamson’s Modern Wisdom, The Pomp Podcast, Jim O’Shaughnessy’s Infinite Loops, David Perell’s North Star Podcast and The Ranveer Show.⁠[77]

The speaking page says that he has been invited to speak at the YPO Global Marketing Summit, Tiger21, Capital Camp, the Main Street Summit, Lifestyle Investors and the Leveling Up Mastermind, on topics such as Collecting Powerful Ideas, The Subtle Power of Books and Funding Utopia; it adds that, with family and other obligations, he limits speaking engagements to about 10 a year.⁠[49]

On May 24, 2022, he wrote that he had spoken in April at the Leveling Up Live conference in Austin, TexasTexasTexas is a U.S. state in the south-central United States, with its capital at Austin and its largest city Houston. It was admitted to the Union on December 29, 1845, as the 28th state, and the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted 29,145,505 residents.Open the full entry, on “Building Personal Leverage,” giving that talk for the first time, and mentioned that he had been uploading videos of his podcast episodes to his YouTube channel; on October 26, 2022, he wrote that he was giving a 12-minute talk that week at the Money 20/20 conference in Las Vegas on evolving creator economics.⁠[78][79]

On December 9, 2021, he wrote that he had appeared on episode 5 of his friend Sky King’s podcast, which he described as the first long-form podcast minted as NFTs, and that he was its second “NFT’d” guest.⁠[80]

In “Argentina Under Milei,” published on August 6, 2026, he stated that he had had Claude do the research and writing for the piece.⁠[81]

His contact page states that he does not accept guest blog posts, podcast guest pitches from third parties or backlink trades, and does not take affiliate arrangements for products he does not use or companies he does not know.⁠[68]

Find a problem that nobody else is working on: he said that what he hopes readers will do is figure out a unique problem that no one else is working on and dedicate their lives to solving it, building something that adds a new capability to humanity (video at 14:44).⁠[51]

Do the right work at the right time: he said that the gain in productivity from doing so is measured in orders of magnitude, not in percentages (video at 5:25).⁠[51]

Make books that are handbooks to be reread: he said that he designs all his books to be read and reread, as handbooks and reference guides, and that one has to work to install ideas in one’s head so that they are there when they are needed (video at 40:53).⁠[51]

Work backward from the ideal: he said not to start from how to be 10 percent better than what exists but to ask what perfection looks like and how close one can get to it, and to start asking why whenever someone gives a reason it cannot be done (video at 48:28).⁠[51]

Aspire to be useful: he said that people advance by producing and building things, and that one should aspire to do something that benefits everyone else (video at 1:21:56).⁠[51]

Fix on a mission and become the person it requires: taking the example of Elon Musk, who had never studied rocket science and picked it up along the way, he said that once one identifies a meaningful mission one becomes whoever one needs to be to accomplish it (video at 1:30:14).⁠[51]

People are capable of far more than they think: he said that what people take for their best effort may be only 30 percent effort, while adding that he does not advocate this path for everybody (video at 1:36:14).⁠[51]

Drill down to the limiting factor of the limiting factor: he said to keep asking what limits the thing that limits, all the way down, until it is clear where to attack (video at 1:39:29).⁠[51]

Scribe Media: Official website: https://scribemedia.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[27]

Rolling Fun: Official website: https://www.rolling.fun/ (opens in a new window).⁠[67]

Personal website: https://www.ejorgenson.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[55]

X: Public account: https://x.com/EricJorgenson (opens in a new window).⁠[55][52]

LinkedIn: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erjorgenson/ (opens in a new window).⁠[52]

Instagram: Public account: https://www.instagram.com/erjorgenson/ (opens in a new window).⁠[52]

YouTube: Public channel: https://www.youtube.com/@EricJorgenson (opens in a new window).⁠[72]

Smart Friends: Podcast page: https://www.ejorgenson.com/podcast (opens in a new window).⁠[72]

Smart Friends Newsletter: Sign-up page: https://www.ejorgenson.com/newsletter (opens in a new window).⁠[76]

Building a Mountain of Levers: Course page: https://www.ejorgenson.com/leverage (opens in a new window).⁠[11]

The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: Book website: https://www.navalmanack.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[15]

The Anthology of Balaji: Book website: https://balajianthology.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[43]

The Book of Elon: Book website: https://www.elonmuskbook.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[48]

The Book of MrBeast: Book website: https://www.bookofmrbeast.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[56][55]