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
- CEO is a high-stress, people management role. Naval realized that he wasn’t maximumly effective in this role; it wasn’t his passion.
- 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
- “Be free of mind and free of time. Boredom leads to creativity.” – Naval Ravikant
- 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
