May 7, 2019
A Fireside Chat with Naval Ravikant – New Frontiers March 2019 Summit
Key Takeaways
- Computers are the most powerful tool ever created by humanity
- Think of computers as a creative instrument
- Silicon Valley isn’t a place that creates entrepreneurs, wealth, and technology. It’s a place that attracts entrepreneurs who create wealth and technology.
- It’s the nature of technology that the destructive power arrives before the creative power
- Blockchains solve the problem of getting a bunch of people who don’t know and don’t trust each other to still be able to agree on something
- Blockchains bring the ability to utilize markets into any digital domain
- They use mathematics, cryptography, and peer-to-peer networking to create digital consensus and allow for truly leaderless digital networks
- Crypto is a REALLY hard problem and is still very much in development
- “Crypto is not simple computer science, it’s bleeding edge computer science”
- “Most entrepreneurs walking around know they don’t have product-market fit and live in great terror of it. They’re not allowed to talk about it and everyone has to pretend they’re crushing it all the time.”
- This is STRESSFUL
Intro
- Naval (@Naval) is the co-founder of AngelList
- He hosts The Naval Podcast – check out the Podcast Notes
- If this is your first introduction to Naval, gives these Podcast Notes a read from his appearance on The Knowledge Project, thought by many to be the best podcast of all time
Naval’s Background
- “Technology is the business of applied science”
- Naval has founded/co-founded quite a few companies:
- Naval is an angel investor in quite a few companies (most notably Twitter, Uber, and Postmates)
- He co-authored the Venture Hacks blog
Digital Literacy
- “Computers are the most powerful tool ever created by humanity”
- They allow for infinite leverage without permission
- Being good with computers is like modern literacy
- “Just the fact that you can use this creative tool to its maximum output gives you a leg up in every possible way”
- You can make better podcasts, you’ll be better at coding up your ideas, etc.
- A society made up of a large majority of people who really understand computers would do wonders for innovation and employment
- This might also raise all the wages across the board in other professions – how?
- Due to Baumol’s cost disease – you have to pay someone the opportunity cost based on what else they could be doing, not necessarily what they are doing
- So if every barista had a computer science degree, they’d get paid a lot more
- Due to Baumol’s cost disease – you have to pay someone the opportunity cost based on what else they could be doing, not necessarily what they are doing
- This might also raise all the wages across the board in other professions – how?
- In a way, using a computer is like using a paintbrush
- “It’s a creative instrument for self-expression, it’s a blank canvas of possibilities”
Immigration
- “Silicon Valley isn’t a place that creates entrepreneurs, wealth, and technology. It’s a place that attracts entrepreneurs who create wealth and technology.”
- Just like Hollywood attracts potential actors, it doesn’t create them
- “An intelligent immigration policy is the largest wealth creator in the world”
- New Zealand has a ton of the elements needed to use immigration policy as a force multiplier
- Good weather, clean water, clean air, a good time zone, access to the Pacific Rim
Technology Trends
- Over the last decade, we’ve created and rolled out new platforms that changed many things, like:
- The internet
- Mobile phones
- Personal computers
- Then we “exploited” these platforms by building apps on top of them
- Twitter, Facebook, etc.
- “Now technology is going back into the paradigm-busting phase” (building new platforms)
- Supersonic airplanes
- Sending rockets to Mars
- Electric cars
- Autonomous vehicles
- Automated/virtual reality (A/VR)
- Synthetic biology
- But – “It’s the nature of technology that the destructive power arrives before the creative power”
- Nuclear weapons came before safe/functioning nuclear plants
- Gun powder came before steam engines and airplanes
- Artificial Intelligence
- Computers are getting better and better at solving specific types of problems
- “I give full credit to Elon Musk for raising the bar on what’s conceivable…even if he fails…the vision inspires people to move forward”
The Entrepreneurship Cult
- There’s definitely one in Silicon Valley
- “I just think it’s the nature of humans that you’ll always have some hero worship and you’ll always create a cult”
- Just like celebrities are worshiped in Hollywood – “There’s such a cult that they give each other rewards every year and we tune in to watch it”
- “It’s fine to use an entrepreneur as a source of inspiration, but it’s silly to use them as a source of truth”
Blockchain and Crypto
- They solve the problem of getting a bunch of people who don’t know each other/don’t trust each other to still be able to agree on something
- The ability to unite/cooperate/organize is foundational to the human species. In the past, we’ve used:
- Dictatorships
- Aristocracies
- Democracies
- But as of late, we’ve created markets
- Blockchains bring the ability to utilize markets into any digital domain
- Here are some really interesting potential applications of crypto and the blockchain technology:
- Self-driving cars bidding each other for rights of way on the fly
- Think of a car “saying” to another – “I want that red light to turn green right now, so I bid X coin to make that happen”
- A network to allocate bandwidth
- A solar network, where everyone puts a solar panel on their house, and they pay into the network with solar power, and they get paid back out with a solar coin
- Self-driving cars bidding each other for rights of way on the fly
- Here are some really interesting potential applications of crypto and the blockchain technology:
- Blockchain-based networks aren’t owned by anybody
- Blockchains use mathematics, cryptography, and peer-to-peer networking to create digital consensus and allow for truly leaderless digital networks
- We’re starting to use blockchains for financial applications, but over time as they prove useful for transferring/keeping track of money, they’ll come to be trusted in other aspects of life
Was crypto a fad?
- The market is down 90% plus over the last year
- But – Dot-com went through this in the late 90s
- “Crypto is a REALLY hard problem”
- “It’s still very much in development” – Kind of like computers were in the 1980s
- “Crypto is not simple computer science, it’s bleeding edge computer science”
- The total Bitcoin market is valued at $80-100 billion, while the total gold supply is valued somewhere around $7-10 trillion
- Bitcoin does a lot of the things gold does
- What it does better – it’s digitally transmissible, easier to secure, and more scarce
- What it does worse – there might be a bug, you can get hacked, or you can lose your passkey
- So the market price of Bitcoin continuously fluctuates as being in the range of 1/100th to 1/1000th the value of gold
- Hence, we see changes in the Bitcoin price
- Bitcoin does a lot of the things gold does
Twitter, Stress, and Happiness
- “Fame is a curse, I don’t recommend it for anybody”
- “You want to be rich and anonymous, not poor and famous”
- “This is the disease of social media – everybody is getting their 5 seconds of fame and becoming a celebrity….but celebrities are the most miserable people in the world”
- Part of what makes entrepreneurship so stressful is you’re never supposed to show weakness (whether to employees, board members, investors, etc.)
- But it’s the nature of the tech business that 99/100 startups effectively fail (as the winners are so outsized and rare)
- “Most entrepreneurs walking around know they don’t have product-market fit and live in great terror of it. They’re not allowed to talk about it and everyone has to pretend they’re crushing it all the time.”
- This is STRESSFUL
- “Most people just melt down under the stress and just hide it”
- Naval, like many, was forced to work through this stress in his entrepreneurial days and started using Twitter as an open diary
- “I just decided 5 or 6 years ago that I was done being miserable and I was going to be happy”
These notes were edited by RoRoPa Editing Services
