David Perell
Founder, Write of Passage. On 3 shows, 3 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderhostauthoracademic@david_perell ↗perell.com ↗
David Perell is an educator and writer who created Write of Passage, a cohort-based school that teaches students to publish online. He also hosts the How I Write podcast, interviewing prominent authors and thinkers about their creative processes.
Everything David Perell said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
David Perell: AI will generate all utility writing by 2027
“But what I do believe is that basically any form of writing that is driven on pure utility. So we're talking business memos. We're talking emails that your lawyer sends you that are fairly standard, pure utility, not about the art of writing. And not about bas…”
David Perell: Modern education ignores 70 to 80 years of learning science
“None of the learning science that has come out in the last 70 to 80 years has actually been implemented.”
David Perell: AI tools will spark a historical renaissance in writing
“From that we got the renaissance, a renaissance in painting, and the same thing's gonna happen with writing.”
David Perell: LLMs will solve humor and become hilarious via niche comedy
“So I think that the humor thing is going to be a problem to be solved. The LLMs are going to be hilarious and they're going to be hilarious in two ways. So the first way is niche humor.”
Perell: Corporate jobs in your twenties drain ambition and agency
“One of the issues with people in their twenties is they end up doing these stupid jobs where they go work in the soulless corporate environments where they, you know, quotes get paid to learn. And sometimes that's true. Don't get me wrong. Sometimes that is ve…”
Perell: Similarity and role overlap trigger destructive rivalry in teams
“You want people to be differentiated, own their territory, not have other people stomping on those territories, because that creates this competition and envy, and this leads into the philosophy of Rene Girard, who basically says that violence happens not beca…”
David Perell: Humans must develop distinct writing voices to outcompete AI
“We're going to have to learn to write with voice and really show off our distinctiveness in writing as almost a Adaptive way to say, hey, this isn't written by LLMs.”
David Perell: AI interaction mirrors management workflows, accelerating manager adoption
“My working theory is that the way that you work with AI is basically like a manager. So if you think of what do you do as a manager, you set a vision, you delegate the task, you say, hey, do this, you expect it's not gonna be good enough, you're giving feedbac…”
David Perell: Reading pre-1970 bestsellers offers substantial intellectual alpha
“I think there's a lot of alpha in just going back at the bestsellers before 1970 and just go, go read those books and see what people are saying.”
David Perell: Internet culture will soon flip toward authenticity and forgiveness
“And then we're going to get a big flip into realness, into authenticity. And here's the other one. Into forgiveness.”
Perell: Writers should address one individual reader rather than a crowd
“People consume your content alone. And when you're writing, you are writing to one person in one place at one moment in time. And you have to remember that.”
Perell: People hate writing because they suppress genuine curiosity
“So many people are like, oh, I hate writing. And most of the time, it's that they associate writing with doing things that they don't want to do. And then when they think about, well, it's time to write, they Subconsciously don't allow them to write about the …”
Perell: The internet fundamentally transforms education economics and class sizes
“And I saw how the internet was going to change the, had changed the economics of education forever. We were going to go from teachers teaching at minimum, at most, 40 students at a time to now teaching thousands, hundreds of thousands, and that the internet wa…”
Perell: 20-somethings underestimate how willing people are to help the young
“The other thing that people in their young twenties don't know is that everyone is willing to help you when you're young.”
Perell: Write of Passage charges a minimum of $4,000
“You know, you can't get into the course for less than 4000 dollars though. We do offer scholarships because of that.”
Perell: AI writing makes differentiation and unique voices more essential
“It's gonna become more important to be differentiated as artificial intelligence and GPT-III, GPT-IV, as they begin to do a lot of writing for people. You're gonna need to have a unique voice”
Perell: Culture is built by elevating exemplar members, not enforcing rules
“You don't do it through rules. You don't do it through laws. You don't do it through guidelines. You do it by taking people who represent that culture and sort of promoting them, showing them off through shout outs, showing them off through leadership position…”
David Perell shut down his Write of Passage program in November
“And I shut down, write a passage, November 11th, and then I went to Argentina in December.”
Perell: Write of Passage launched with a $20,000 Emergent Ventures grant
“And right around then I got a 20,000 dollar grant from Tyler Cowen's Merchant Ventures program, took that 20,000 dollars, hired a Hollywood film crew, flew them down to Mexico City.”
Perell: Write of Passage cohort has 438 students across 41 countries
“So right now we have five week program, 438 students from 41 countries. I have 38 people who are helping me run this in some capacity.”
Perell: Peter Thiel mandated PayPal employees focus on one single task
“At PayPal, he had this rule. Where every single person had to work on one thing and one thing only, and he would only talk to people about one thing.”
Perell: Write of Passage aims to build physical hubs like Disneyland
“I basically want Rite of Passage to be like Disneyland for writing. I eventually want to have houses around the world where people can come in and have conversations that embody the Rite of Passage spirit, test them out to greatness.”
The other half of the tape: David Perell's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 34 times in 12 episodes across the shows. 1 statement on the record names them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Jordi Hays 12Shaan Puri 8Jack Butcher 4Sam Parr 2Ryd (Rid) 2John Coogan 2Erik Torenberg 2Isaac French 1
Statements about David Perell, by other people (1)
Puri: Building a 'binge bank' of content beats a resume or portfolio
“This idea of create a binge bank, I think is so much more valuable than a resume or a portfolio. It's like, people will come knocking, they will get curious about you, and like, give them a way to just binge your content like it's a Netflix show. And by, after…”
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
TBPN 14
My First Million 12
the Startup Ideas Podcast 8
2026 1 mention in 1 episode
2025 1 mention in 1 episode
2024 19 mentions in 6 episodes 3 per episode
- How BILLIONAIRES dress for XMAS (ep17)
- CHRISTIANITY: Why it's making a comeback (ep23)
- Figma UI Design Tutorial: Design your app in 40 Minutes!
- How To Build A Million-Dollar Media Empire | Erik Torenberg
- Zuck Just Killed the Apple Vision Pro (ep2)
- How I Went From Broke to $7 Million With An Airbnb Business
- every mention in 2024, scene by scene →
2023 7 mentions in 1 episode
2022 5 mentions in 2 episodes 3 per episode
2021 1 mention in 1 episode
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens David's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| STARTUP IDEASLEDGER | Founder, Write of Passage | 1 | 12 | — | full record on the Startup Ideas Podcast → |
| TBPNLEDGER | Founder, Write of Passage | 1 | 8 | — | full record on TBPN → |
| MY FIRST MILLIONLEDGER | Founder, Write of Passage | 1 | 2 | — | full record on My First Million → |