# David Rubenstein: We took $5M and turned it into $500B Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/my-first-million-438184/david-rubenstein-we-took-5m-and-turned-it-into-500b Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/my-first-million-438184/david-rubenstein-we-took-5m-and-turned-it-into-500b.md Podcast: [My First Million](https://stenobird.com/podcast/my-first-million-438184) Published: 2026-09-14T10:53:00+00:00 Episode link: https://pdst.fm/e/traffic.megaphone.fm/HS1582032765.mp3 Audio file: https://pdst.fm/e/traffic.megaphone.fm/HS1582032765.mp3 Processing state: not_requested JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/my-first-million-438184/episodes/david-rubenstein-we-took-5m-and-turned-it-into-500b Duration seconds: 2813 ## Resource Sam's database on how long it takes to become a millionaire: https://clickhubspot.com/pnlv Episode 861: Sam Parr ( https://x.com/theSamParr ) sits down with David Rubenstein ( https://x.com/DM_Rubenstein ) to talk about turning Carlyle into $500B, his $14B miss, and the greatest business lessons in history.  — Show Notes: (0:00) Turning $5M into $500B (5:13) Scrappy private equity (11:58) Don’t fool yourself (14:14) Turning down 20% of Amazon (16:23) Recruiting big shots (20:40) Finding the right partner (22:02) Trade-offs (27:39) Witnessing ascents to power (31:40) The Greatest Sentence Ever Written (33:37) History that repeats itself (35:49) Recommended Reading — Links: • Carlyl - https://www.carlyle.com/  • David’s books - https://www.davidrubenstein.com/books/  — Check Out Sam's Stuff: • Hampton (joinhampton.com): My community for founders. Average member does $25m/year. Many of the guests are members. Get after it...apply: http://joinhampton.com/mfm — 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 - Shaan uses Mercury across all of his companies. you can too: http://mercury.com/  Mercury is a fintech company, not an FDIC-insured bank. Banking services provided by Choice Financial Group, Column, N.A., Members FDIC • I run all my newsletters on Beehiiv and you should too + we're giving away $10k to our favorite newsletter, check it out: beehiiv.com/mfm-challenge My First Million is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by HubSpot Media // Production by Arie Desormeaux // Editing by… ## Actions - request_transcript: `POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/my-first-million-438184/episodes/david-rubenstein-we-took-5m-and-turned-it-into-500b/transcription-requests` — Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode. - read_markdown: `GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/my-first-million-438184/david-rubenstein-we-took-5m-and-turned-it-into-500b.md` — Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource. A page view does not enqueue transcription. Agents should invoke `request_transcript` explicitly when they need this episode processed. ## Transcript Full transcripts are not published on public pages unless there is a clear rights basis.