Co-founder of AngelList. Writes and podcasts at nav.al in short, aphoristic pieces on startups, wealth and judgement rather than long essays.
We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.
Six ideas Naval Ravikant's claims keep coming back to. The grouping and the labels are ours; every quote under them is in Naval Ravikant's own words.
Mental modelLeverage
Their wordsWe are now living in an age of nearly infinite leverage, and all the great fortunes are created through leverage.
Their wordsPeople seem to think that you can create wealth, and make money through work. And it’s probably not going to work. There are many reasons for that. But the most basic is just that your inputs are very closely tied to your outputs.
Mental modelLeverage
Their wordsCoding, writing books, recording podcasts, tweeting, YouTubing, these kinds of things, these are permissionless. You don’t need anyone’s permission to do them, and that’s why they are very egalitarian.
Their wordsThe first thing to notice about specific knowledge is that you can’t be trained for it. If you can be trained for it, if you can go to a class and learn specific knowledge, then somebody else can be trained for it too
Their wordsSo, specific knowledge is found much more by pursuing your innate talents, your genuine curiosity, and your passion. It’s not by going to school for whatever is the hottest job
Their wordsIf you have high accountability, that makes you less replaceable. Then they have to give you equity, which is a piece of the upside.
Mental modelSkin in the game
Their wordsEssentially, taking accountability for your actions is the same as taking an equity position in all of your work. You’re taking greater downside risk for greater upside.
Mental modelLeverage
Their wordsObviously, hard work is not the solution. Good decision making and high leverage is the solution.
Their wordsA lot of people think making money is about luck. It’s not. It’s about becoming the kind of person that makes money.
Their wordsEverybody can be wealthy. Everybody can be retired. Everybody can be successful. It is merely a question of education and desire.
Their wordsWealth is not a zero-sum game. Everybody in the world can have a house. Because you have a house doesn’t take away from my ability to have a house.
Their wordsSo, happiness is a skill like nutrition and fitness. Happiness is a skill you identify and develop that slowly gives you results as you get better at it. It is not God-given.
Their wordsDesire’s a contract you make to be unhappy until you get what you want.
Their wordsSo happiness is returning to the state where nothing is missing in this moment.
Their wordsThe ultimate goal is not happiness, even though we use that term a lot. The goal is peace.
Their wordsWhen I say you want to be happy, what I’m actually saying is you want to find peace. We say peace of mind, but what we really want is peace from mind.
Their wordsI’m not making the mind out to be an enemy. It’s a very useful tool. But somewhere along the way, it became uncontrollable. The mind became the master rather than a servant.
Their wordsIn mental terms, stress is an inability to decide what’s important. You want two incompatible things at once.
Their wordsGenetics is important. It goes a long way in determining strength, athletic performance and intelligence. But your genetic set point is only about half of it. And happiness, or general contentment, is much more malleable than the other things.
Their wordsBut don’t get it backwards: You’re not smart because you’re unhappy; you’re unhappy because you’re smart. You can be happy and smart—it’s just going to take more work.
Their wordsI realized a while ago that it’s a problem to look forward to weekends and holidays. First, it takes the joy out of the everyday, because you’re living in the future and suffering the rest of time. Second, you have accepted a way of life in which most of your time is spent suffering.
Mental modelLeverage
Their wordsThe quality of our decisions is paramount in the modern age, because we’re all leveraged.
Their wordsMy definition of wisdom is knowing the long term consequences of your actions, so they’re not all that different. Wisdom is just judgment on a personal domain.
Mental modelTaste is trained
Their wordsYou start with reasoning and then you build up your judgment. And then when your judgment is sufficiently refined, it just becomes taste or intuition or gut feel, and that’s what you operate on. But you have to start from the specific.
Mental modelCognitive biases
Their wordsThe more outraged somebody is, I guarantee you, the worse their judgment is.
Mental modelPower laws
Their wordsIntelligence is not normally distributed. Leverage is not normally distributed. Programmability is not normally distributed. Judgment is not normally distributed, so the outcomes are going to be supernormal.
Mental modelMany models, not one
Their wordsYou go to Farnam Street, you go to Poor Charlie’s Almanack, and you can learn all the different mental models. But which ones matter more? Which ones do you apply more often? Which ones matter in which circumstances? That’s actually the hard part.
Mental modelMany models, not one
Their wordsI think mental models are interesting, but I don’t think explicitly in terms of mental-model checklists. I know Charlie Munger does, but that’s just not how I think. Instead, I tend to focus on the few lessons I’ve learned over and over in life that I think are incredibly important and seem to apply almost universally.
Their wordsSo I would argue, and I think it’s one of my more popular tweets: the only true test of intelligence is if you get what you want out of life.
Mental modelLearning machine
Their wordsLife is lived in the arena. You only learn by doing. And if you’re not doing, then all the learning you’re picking up is too general and too abstract.
Mental modelFeedback loops
Their wordsAnd iterate does not mean repetition. Iterate is not mechanical. It’s not 10,000 hours, it’s 10,000 iterations. It’s not time spent. It’s learning loops.
Mental modelLearning machine
Their wordsSo I think doing leads to the desire to learn and therefore to learning. And of course there’s the learning from the doing itself. Whereas I think if you’re purely learning for learning’s sake, it gets empty after a little while.
Mental modelValue moves to what stays scarce
Their wordsSo these are incredible tools for self-directed learning. The means of learning are abundant. It’s the desire to learn that’s scarce.
Their wordsAnd it’s not true that everything can be taught. In fact, the most interesting things cannot be taught. But everything can be learned.
Mental modelLearning machine
Their words
Their wordsYou are not going to know your own specific knowledge until you act and until you act in a variety of difficult situations.
Their wordsTo the extent that specific knowledge is taught, it’s on the job. It’s through apprenticeships. And that’s why the best businesses, the best careers are the apprenticeship or self-taught careers, because those are things society still has not figured out how to train and automate yet.
Mental modelSkin in the game
Their wordsIntellect without any experience is often worse than useless because you get the confidence that the intellect gives you, and you get some of the credibility, but because you had no skin in the game, and you had no real experience, and no real accountability, you’re just throwing darts.
Mental modelFeedback loops
Their wordsFeedback from other people is usually fake. Awards are fake. Critics are fake. Kudos from your friends and family are fake.
Their wordsIf you’re optimizing your company to end up on the cover of a magazine, or to win an industry award, you’re failing.
Mental modelFeedback loops
Their wordsIt’s very easy to fool yourself. It’s very easy to be fooled by others. It is impossible to fool Mother Nature.
Mental modelSignalling
Their wordsThe overt pursuit of status signals low status, it’s a low status behavior to chase status because it reveals you as being lower in the status hierarchy in the first place.
Their wordsStatus, on the other hand, is a zero-sum game. It’s a very old game. We’ve been playing it since monkey tribes.
Their wordsIndividuals search for truth but groups search for consensus—and society is the largest group. So the biggest problem we run into is this: What society wants for you is not always what’s good for you.
Their wordsSo, you can escape competition through authenticity when you realize that no one can compete with you on being you.
Their wordsAnd so now maybe we have a motorcycle for the mind, to stretch the analogy, but you still need someone to ride it, to drive it, to direct it, to hit the accelerator, and to hit the brake.
Their wordsSo I don’t really worry about unaligned AI. I worry about unaligned humans with AI.
Their wordsIf AI is risky like fire is risky, then you want everyone to have it. If AI is risky like a nuclear weapon is risky, then you want no one to have it.
Their wordsThe best way to pace the frontier is to hold the labs fully liable for the behavior of their models.
Their wordsWell, AIs can’t create a new genre of painting. AI can’t move humans with emotion in a way that is truly novel. So in that sense, I don’t think AI is creative.
Their wordsRight now the AIs are not embodied. They don’t have agency. They don’t have their own desires. They don’t have their own survival instinct. They don’t have their own replication. Therefore, they don’t have their own agency.
Their wordsSo no entrepreneur is worried about an AI taking their job because entrepreneurs are trying to do impossible things. They’re trying to do very difficult things. Any AI that shows up is their ally and can help them tackle this really hard problem.
Their wordsDoes this mean that traditional software engineering is dead? Absolutely not. Software engineers—even the ones who are not necessarily tuning or training AI models—these are now among the most leveraged people on earth.