FOMO Sapiens with Patrick J. McGinnis

In this episode of FOMO Sapiens, Patrick McGinnis sits down with Eric Ries, creator of the Lean Startup method and author of the New York Times bestseller The Lean Startup, to discuss his bold and urgently needed new book, Incorruptible: Why Good Companies Go Bad and How Great Companies Stay Great. Eric's core argument is as simple as it is unsettling: the corruption that destroys great companies is not primarily a problem of bad actors or weak ethics; it is structural. The systems governing organizations, ownership, incentives, accountability, board composition, and decision-making quietly reshape behavior over time until even principled leaders are producing outcomes they never intended. Drawing on two decades of work with founders, CEOs, and investors, and on vivid case studies from Costco, Patagonia, and H-E-B, Eric makes the case that incorruptibility is not a fantasy — it is a design problem, and builders have more agency than they think.
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In this episode of FOMO Sapiens, Patrick McGinnis sits down with Laura L. Rubin, founder of AllSwell Creative and author of The Big Unlock: Liberate Your Creativity Through Mindful Journaling, published by Simon & Schuster. Laura spent over a decade as a marketing and communications executive before building AllSwell into one of the leading voices on mindful writing, hosting hundreds of workshops for tens of thousands of participants and bringing journaling to some genuinely surprising places — from pro surfers to venture capital firms. The conversation gets into the science of what actually happens when you put pen to paper, why the inner critic exists and how to work around it, and why journaling may be the most cost-effective longevity and creativity tool available to anyone. Laura also introduces her four by four by four method — a gentle on-ramp for people who think they don't have time — and walks Patrick through a live coaching session that makes the whole thing feel very doable.
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In this episode of FOMO Sapiens, Patrick McGinnis sits down with Claude Silver, the world's first Chief Heart Officer and #2 executive at VaynerX, to explore what it actually means to show up as yourself at work — and why most people don't. Claude is the author of Be Yourself at Work, an instant USA Today bestseller that reframes authenticity not as a soft ideal but as a genuine strategic advantage, and the conversation lives up to that premise. They dig into the three pillars at the heart of her framework — emotional optimism, emotional bravery, and emotional efficiency — and what it takes to move through all three without skipping steps. Claude explains why the armor people wear to work is rooted in fear, why bravery without optimism goes nowhere, and why the people who seem most stoic are often the most emotional underneath. Patrick brings in the concept of pronoia — the belief that the world is conspiring to help you — and the two find a lot of common ground on what it means to lead from a place of genuine openness rather than performance.
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In this episode of FOMO Sapiens, Patrick McGinnis sits down with Charlie O'Donnell, founder of Brooklyn Bridge Ventures and author of Founder Unfriendly: What Investors Won't Tell You About Getting Funded, for one of the most practical and honest conversations about venture capital you're likely to hear. Charlie has spent more than two decades inside the New York startup ecosystem, starting as the first analyst at Union Square Ventures, helping open First Round Capital's NYC office, and going on to invest in over 100 companies through Brooklyn Bridge Ventures, the first venture fund based in Brooklyn. In this conversation, he dismantles some of the most persistent myths about fundraising: what "interested" actually means from a VC, why rejection is data and not a verdict, how to time-bind a process to create real urgency, and how to shape the conversations investors have after you leave the room. If you've ever wondered why a seemingly weaker startup got funded while yours didn't, this episode has the answer.
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In this episode of FOMO Sapiens, Patrick sits down with Jon McNeill, former President of Tesla, former COO of Lyft, and CEO of DVx Ventures, to unpack the operating system behind one of the most extraordinary growth stories in business history. During McNeill's tenure at Tesla, revenue grew from $2 billion to $20 billion in just 30 months. That kind of growth doesn't happen by accident — it follows a system. In his new book, The Algorithm: The Hypergrowth Formula That Transformed Tesla, Lululemon, General Motors, and SpaceX, McNeill lays out the five-step framework Elon Musk built at Tesla: question every requirement, delete every unnecessary step, simplify and optimize, accelerate cycle time, and only then automate. The conversation gets into how established companies like GM used these same principles to build the Hummer EV in roughly half the expected time, why speed is an advantage that shows up most powerfully on the balance sheet, and how the one-way/two-way door framework can help any leader make faster, smarter decisions without second-guessing themselves into paralysis.
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