October 28, 2021

Naval Explains Why You Don’t Need to be CEO | Naval Ravikant on the Mochary Method Videocast

Watch the full video interview on YouTube

Key Takeaways

• You do not have to be a CEO to be an effective founder
  • Naval at AngelList reallocated the CEO responsibilities in people management so he could focus on the company from a creative and innovative perspective
  • To be a founder, you have to be world-class in something. Make sure you’re spending the majority of your time doing that thing; this is your ‘zone of genius’. Not compromising will allow you to be a valuable contributor for a much more extended period of time and avoid burnout.
    • Believe it or not, there are passionate people that are world-class in the work you don’t enjoy doing. Outsource this work to the right people.
• Free time is an incredibly valuable asset – a full calendar can be good for productivity but not creativity
  • Creativity starts with an empty calendar, but eventually, your calendar gets filled up with execution and a busy calendar is the death of creativity
  • “Having control of your time in a creative job, assuming you’re self-motivated, is the ultimate hack” – Naval Ravikant
  • “Be free of mind and free of time. Boredom leads to creativity.” – Naval Ravikant
    • You never know when being free will allow you to execute on your ‘zone of genius’
• The companies that succeed are always reinventing themselves and their products
  • Regardless of positional title, creative people within a company need to have the opportunity to control their time in a way that optimizes and maximizes their creative potential
  • If you let operations bog down the subconscious mind of a creator, their creations will never come to fruition

Intro

• Naval Ravikant (@naval) is an entrepreneur, investor, and the co-founder/former CEO of AngelList; he is also a prominent voice on Twitter with over 1.4 million followers who come for his takes on technology, life, and the future. Naval discusses how stepping down as a CEO helped prioritize his skills over the title which led to continued and greater company and personal success.
• Check out more Podcast Notes with Naval Ravikant
• Host: Matt Mochary (@mattmochary)

Being a CEO

• Traditional CEO: raise money, communicate the strategy, recruit and retain the team
  • Product CEOs: provide product vision
  • Sales CEOs: provide sales leadership
• Discussing burdens as a CEO is hard as our board could lose faith in you and your employees could stop following you
  • Incredible pressure, because many times the investors are investing in the founder just as much as the product
  • “It’s an incredibly lonely job” – Naval Ravikant
• CEO is the job you take because there is no other choice, you don’t trust anyone but yourself to make the venture successful
  • CEO is a high-stress, people management role. Naval realized that he wasn’t maximumly effective in this role; it wasn’t his passion.
    • “You’re the company psychiatrist, you’re always dealing with people issues” – Naval Ravikant
  • If you don’t want to do it, you’re never going to be great at it
• The Great CEO Within: The Tactical Guide to Company Building by Matt Mochary
  • It offers a methodical approach to being a CEO

Outsourcing the Subjective Unpleasant

• If you’re the founder of a company, you’re probably world-class in something
  • “You want to spend all your time on that thing. And everything else is a necessary evil that should be outsourced” – Naval Ravikant
  • There is someone out there that is world-class in the things you don’t want to do
    • Don’t just hire off of skill though, you will only truly hand over the reins if you believe they have a like-minded ‘founder mentality’
• Naval recruits founders who have failed through no fault of their own
  • An example could be a founder who had the best product in a category that just didn’t have a market fit
  • These people have a ‘founder mentality’ and haven’t been burnt out yet

Zone of Genius

• ‘Zone of genius’ is the time you commit to the tasks you enjoy most
  • Creativity starts with an empty calendar, but eventually, your calendar gets filled up with execution and a busy calendar is the death of creativity
  • Free time is an incredibly valuable asset – a full calendar can be good for productivity but not creativity
    • “Be free of mind and free of time. Boredom leads to creativity.” – Naval Ravikant
      • Your subconscious mind is almost always distracted, give it time to breathe and create
    • Be an engaged opportunist with your skills and time – you never know when being free will allow you to execute on your ‘zone of genius’
      • You can stay engaged for decades by focusing on the things you love doing
• The companies that succeed are always reinventing themselves and their products
  • “Picking the right direction to go in is way more important than how hard you work” – Naval Ravikant

Let It Go

• Naval had a ton of fear that the company would fall apart as a result of him stepping down from CEO
  • Founders sometimes feel like the company survives on their ‘force of will’ alone before they find product-market fit
• Naval’s personal life went from a 2/10 as CEO to a 10/10 after giving up the CEO role
  • “If I had to articulate how happy I am today, you’d have to lock me up, you can’t have people this happy running around in society” – Naval Ravikant
  • He has engineered his life exactly the way he wants it with no compromises
• Naval no longer keeps a calendar but is busy all day long. But, he prioritizes whatever feels most important to him at that moment.
  • Even when you have to do unpleasant things, at least you do them without them being forced upon you
  • You can only live this lifestyle if you’re willing to disappoint people’s initial expectations of you
• “Having control of your time in a creative job, assuming you’re self-motivated, is the ultimate hack”– Naval Ravikant

Naval's Podcast and Periscope Sessions : CEO, creativity, entrepreneurship, life, naval, naval ravikant, startup, time management
Notes By Drew Waterstreet