23 Tweets from Naval Ravikant on Business, Money and Financial Freedom

Naval Ravikant is the founder of various internet business, the most famous is AngelList. His Net Worth is between $20 Million and $40 Million. He serves on the board of Zcash (the untraceable crypto currency). And I just found out that he was also a student at Dartmouth College when I was there as well!!!

All I can gather about his humble beginnings is that he was an immigrant from India, and was raised by his single mother in the bad part of town in New York City.

My brother Ghen-ki is in town from Japan, and he suggested I blog about Naval as he likes reading his tweets.

So, here are 23 Tweets from Naval Ravikant on Business, Money and Financial Freedom:

1. There is no skill called business. Avoid business magazines and business classes.

2. You will get rich by giving society what it wants but does not yet know how to get. At scale.

3. There’s no Get-Rich-Quick Schemes, that’s just someone getting rich off of you.

4. Your trauma creates you.

5. The larger the herd the lower your returns.

6. Optimize for control over money and you’ll make more money.

7. Bitcoin is a tool for freeing humanity from oligarchs and tyrants, dressed up as a get rich quick scheme.

8. Understand that ethical wealth creation is possible. If you secretly despise wealth, it will elude you.

9. No one yet has sold Bitcoin at the top.

10. The smarter you get the slower you read.

11. Zero sum gains tend toward conflict. Positive sum gains tend toward cooperation.

12. University degrees are the next taxi medallions.

13. Local environmentalism is to personal spirituality as global environmentalism is to organized religion.

14. To maximize distribution minimize the message.

15. Founder mentality means not caring about who gets the credit.

16. Creativity begins with an empty calendar and ends with a full one.

17. The more it matters who said it, the less it actually matters.

18. Money does buy you happiness if you earned it.

19. There are two kinds of people, those who want money and those who want status.

20. Choose the non-emotional response to any given situation and see how much easier your life becomes.

21. The Lindy Effect for Start-Ups – The longer you go without shipping product, the more likely you will never ship product.

22. Spirituality is a luxury good. In olden times, you had to lower your wants first. In modern times, you can raise your means instead.

23. Unnecessary meetings (and most are) are a mutually assured distruction of time. Learning how to avoid them is a pre-requisite of doing anything great.

I got some other great quotes from Naval in an article from The Start Up by Moses Sam Paul.

Arm yourself with specific knowledge, accountability, and leverage.

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 pursuing your genuine curiosity and passion rather than whatever is hot right now. Building specific knowledge will feel like play to you but will look like work to others.

When specific knowledge is taught, it’s through apprenticeships, not schools. Specific knowledge is often highly technical or creative. It cannot be outsourced or automated.

Embrace accountability, and take business risks under your own name. Society will reward you with responsibility, equity, and leverage.

The most accountable people have singular, public, and risky brands: Oprah, Trump, Kanye, Elon.

Leverage :
“Give me a lever long enough, and a place to stand, and I will move the earth.” — Archimedes

Fortunes require leverage. Business leverage comes from capital, people, and products with no marginal cost of replication (code and media).
8.1 Capital: Capital means money. To raise money, apply your specific knowledge, with accountability, and show resulting good judgment.
8.2 People: Labor means people working for you. It’s the oldest and most fought-over form of leverage. Labor leverage will impress your parents, but don’t waste your life chasing it.
8.3 Products: Code & Media. The Internet has massively broadened the possible space of careers. Most people haven’t figured this out yet.