Founder of AngelList, author of the How to Get Rich series
Naval Ravikant started Venture Hacks, wrote $50K and $100K checks into Silicon Valley deals, and turned Venture Hacks into AngelList. He calls investing a side job. Technology destroys jobs, he says, but replaces them with better ones, and AI leaves a worker more creative work. He thinks job is the wrong word, since it implies someone else has to give it to you.
Career
Specific Knowledge Identification
Specific knowledge is knowledge that you cannot be trained for. If society can train you, it can train someone else and replace you. Specific knowledge is found by…
How to Get Rich (Without Getting Lucky) Tweetstorm / The Almanack of Naval Ravikant
You will not get rich renting out your time. You must own equity, a piece of a business, to gain your financial freedom.
Hourly or salaried work has a linear ceiling. Ownership provides exponential upside through leverage and compounding.
How to Get Rich (Without Getting Lucky) Tweetstorm
Focus
Judgment as the Master Skill
In an age of infinite leverage, judgment is the most important skill. The direction you are heading matters far more than how fast you move. The first part of your…
The Almanack of Naval Ravikant / Naval Podcast
Play long-term games with long-term people. All returns in life, whether in wealth, relationships, or knowledge, come from compound interest.
Short-term optimization destroys compounding. The biggest returns come from decades-long relationships and consistent effort in a single direction.
How to Get Rich (Without Getting Lucky) Tweetstorm
Moats
Escape Competition Through Authenticity
Competition means you are copying others. Authenticity means you are building from your unique combination of skills, experiences, and personality. The internet allows…
The Almanack of Naval Ravikant
Escape competition through authenticity. When you are competing with people, it is because you are copying them. No one can compete with you on being you.
Authenticity is a strategic moat. The more you lean into your unique combination of skills and interests, the less competition you face.
The Almanack of Naval Ravikant
Scaling
Strategy
Labor, capital, code and media. The first two need someone's permission. The last two are why the newly rich got rich.
to get rich you know you're gonna need leverage and leverage comes in labor it comes in capital or it can come through code or media but most of these like labor and capital people have to give to you
The Principal-Agent Problem
A principal is an owner. An agent works for the owner. Their incentives are fundamentally different: the principal wants what is best for the business, while the agent…
Naval Podcast - Principal-Agent Problem: Act Like an Owner
The more closely you can tie someone's compensation to the exact value they are creating, the more you turn them into a principal and the less you turn them into an agent.
Incentive alignment is the master key to productive partnerships. Misaligned incentives corrupt even talented people.
Naval Podcast - Principal-Agent Problem
Credibility
Compound Yourself
All returns in life come from compound interest: wealth, relationships, knowledge, and reputation. Compounding requires consistency, patience, and long time horizons. A…
The Almanack of Naval Ravikant
Mindset
Ethical wealth creation is possible. If you secretly despise wealth, it will elude you.
Wealth creation through voluntary exchange and innovation is positive-sum. Internal resistance to wealth blocks the behaviors needed to create it.
How to Get Rich (Without Getting Lucky) Tweetstorm
Positioning
If you are competing with someone, you are copying them. If you are being authentic, you have no competition.
Strategic positioning and differentiation. Feeling competitive pressure is a signal that you are on someone else's path.
The Almanack of Naval Ravikant
Sales
Knowing how to be persuasive when speaking is far more important than being an expert digital marketer or click optimizer.
Persuasion is a foundational leverage skill that compounds across every domain. Tactical marketing skills have shorter half-lives.
The Almanack of Naval Ravikant
Naval Ravikant
says you will not get rich renting out your time, and to reach for the permissionless forms, code and media, first. Labor ranks last.
holds that revenue plateaus around seven to ten million the moment the entrepreneur becomes the bottleneck, and that the escape is delegation and systems, which is labor leverage.
