September 17, 2020

Lessons from Naval Ravikant | Eric Jorgenson on The North Star

Be aware of the multiplying by zero effect: One bad variable that can ruin the whole experience
- E.g: You might own a beautiful restaurant with amazing food, but if the bathrooms are filthy and overflowing, you’ll have no customer
- E.g: You have your dream job and dream company, but if your manager is a jerk and hates you for no reason, you’ll hate working there
“Impatience with action, patience with results” – Naval Ravikant
- Do that workout or write that blog post today, but don’t expect huge results right away
“Hard work matters but it’s not the most important thing” – Eric Jorgenson
- You need to work smart and build some sort of leverage. Otherwise, you’re just working hard and going in a circle.
Naval is a fan of the iron prescription: Follow the most rigorous piece of advice and if you do it, you’ll be a level above everyone else
- E.g: Read the foundational books in your field, such as Darwin’s Origin of Species if you’re studying evolution
- E.g: Read The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham if you’re studying finance
  - “I’m going to make it through this thing and it’s going to be hard but once I do, I’ll be much more capable of kind of whatever comes next” – Eric Jorgenson

Eric Jorgenson, a Product Strategist at Zaarly and the author of the Almanack of Naval Ravikant: a guide to wealth and happiness.
Host: David Perell (@david_perell)

Be aware of the multiplying by zero effect: One bad variable that can ruin the whole experience
- E.g: You might own a beautiful restaurant with amazing food, but if the bathrooms are filthy and overflowing, you’ll have no customer
- E.g: You have your dream job and dream company, but if your manager is a jerk and hates you for no reason, you’ll hate working there
“Impatience with action, patience with results” – Naval Ravikant
- Do that workout or write that blog post today, but don’t expect huge results right away
If you want to get rich: Productize yourself
- Figure out what you’re uniquely good at, and apply as much leverage as possible

Naval is a fan of the iron prescription: Follow the most rigorous piece of advice and if you do it, you’ll be a level above everyone else
- E.g: Read the foundational books in your field, such as Darwin’s Origin of Species if you’re studying evolution
- E.g: Read The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham if you’re studying finance
  - “I’m going to make it through this thing and it’s going to be hard but once I do, I’ll be much more capable of kind of whatever comes next” – Eric Jorgenson

Naval’s specific knowledge advantage is his knowledge around deal structures
- Naval had a falling out with a former business partner that led to a lawsuit and since then, Naval has been very careful about how he structures deals
Naval played a role in helping create the JOBS Act (Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act) which let investors publicly solicit investments

Naval sees Twitter as a way to take notes and share ideas
- Twitter also provides instant feedback and helps show Naval where he might be wrong
Since Twitter has a character limit on each tweet, it forces Naval to distill his ideas to its absolute core
Twitter is a great way of broadcasting a signal into the world and connecting with people

The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness was complied by Eric Jorgenson
- Eric went through over a million words of Naval to distill the book down to about 200 pages
  - You can download a free online copy of the book here
The foreword was written by Tim Ferriss
The whole project started because he tweeted asking if anyone would be interested in a book that was a collection of the best advice from Naval
Creating this book has given Eric more clarity, confidence, and peace
- “You can’t really spend this much time with these ideas and not kind of take them in” – Eric Jorgenson

Working hard is important, but just working hard won’t make you successful
- The person who gets paid to dig trenches works hard, but they’re going to have to do the same thing tomorrow and the day after
  - “Hard work matters but it’s not the most important thing” – Eric Jorgenson
    - You need to work smart and build some sort of leverage. Otherwise, you’re just working hard and going in a circle.

There are multiple ways to become wealthy:
- Charlie Munger prefers to not lose money and invest in companies that don’t change much
- Naval prefers to invest in lots of startups that are trying to change the world because he knows he only needs one or two to hit a home run and earn a great return
Naval is a big fan of the cartoon show Rick and Morty
Startups are where quality and scale meet
- If you have high-scale but low quality, you get McDonald’s
- If you have low-scale but high quality, you get Ritz-Carlton
- If you have high-scale and high quality, you get an Amazon or Google
We often see ourselves as fixed and the world as malleable, but mostly the world is fixed and we are malleable