How To Get Rich WITHOUT LUCK
w/ Naval Ravikant, Babak Nivi
Hey friend!
I have collected some insightful nuggets [from Naval Ravikant and Babak Nivi] on the topic of Building Wealth without relying on dumb lucky breaks. Naval argues that you can get rich in a deterministic way, by developing a specific skillset. So you can create your *own luck*, which depends complete on you (and not on some random external forces) — which is also very empowering!
Hope you find it valuable :)
🧠 Top Quotes
“In 1,000 parallel universes, you want to be wealthy in 999 of them. You don’t want to be wealthy in the 50 of them where you got lucky. We want to factor luck out of it.”
- Naval Ravikant
“You build your character in a certain way, and then your character becomes your destiny.”
- Naval Ravikant
"Extreme people get extreme results"
- Sam Altman
👨 People
Naval Ravikant is the co-founder of AngelList and co-author of Venture Hacks. He has invested (early-stage) in companies like Uber, Twitter and FourSquare.
Babak Nivi is also the co-founder of AngelList and co-author of Venture Hacks. He received his PhD in Electrical Engineering at MIT.
📝 Notes
Naval argues that you can get rich without having to rely on sheer luck. As an introduction to this topic, he says that you wanna become the kind of person that makes money by developing a specific skill-set.
“I like to think that if I lost all my money and if you drop me on a random street in any English-speaking country, within 5, 10 years I’d be wealthy again. Because it’s a skill set that I’ve developed and I think anyone can develop.
In 1,000 parallel universes, you want to be wealthy in 999 of them. You don’t want to be wealthy in the 50 of them where you got lucky. We want to factor luck out of it."
- Naval Ravikant
Marc Andreessen (co-founder of Netscape) wrote a blogpost on the 4 kinds of Luck, which Naval and Nivi later discussed…
1) Blind Luck (No Control)
When a positive event (that is completely out of your control) happens. That is just fortune.
2) Luck from Hustling (Some Human Influence)
When you are doing many things (Motion, Hard work…), you have more chances to stumble upon an opportunity.
Naval comments how Nenad (YouTuber/Animator) made his luck by creating videos that people enjoy — that’s how Naval found him, and now he works also in the production of Naval’s Podcast!
“Keep on going and chances are you will stumble on something, perhaps when you are least expecting it. I have never heard of anyone stumbling on something sitting down.”
- Charles Kettering
3) Luck from Preparation (Some Human Influence)
When you become highly skilled and knowledgeable in a specific field, you will be able to spot opportunities! You become sensible to Luck!
“I will prepare and someday my chance will come”
- Abraham Lincoln
“Chance favors the prepared mind.”
- Louis Pasteur
4) Luck from your Unique Character (Complete Control)
Sources
When you build a unique Character, Brand, Mindset — so that Luck finds you! (this is the kind of “luck” that is completely on our control)
E.g./ Let’s imagine a person that gets blind luck (the first kind of luck) and finds a sunken treasure off the coast. He knows where the treasure is located, but he does not possess the skills to access it. So he goes to the individual who is the absolute best at deep sea underwater diving and he gets the treasure, and of course the deep diver gets paid really well. We can see here that the person who found the treasure just got lucky (blessed with blind luck), but the other individual developed a unique skill-set so that he was able to capitalize on other people’s opportunities! This is an extreme example, but it serves well to illustrate the point — If you want to get rich in a deterministic way, you gotta develop a unique and valuable skillset.
“You build your character in a certain way, and then your character becomes your destiny.”
- Naval Ravikant
“We make our fortunes and we call them fate.”
- Benjamin Disraeli (former Prime Minister of the UK)
Another aspect that is super important is to develop a Reputation of High Integrity — So that people can trust you. The more trustworthy you are, the more people will want to make deals thru you!
Picking Nuggets Note:
Tip to Build Trust...
Nassim Taleb on his Commencement Speech at the American University of Beirut:
"If something is nonsense... You say it. And you say it out loud. You will be harmed a little bit but it will be Antifragile -- In the long run, people who need to trust you will trust you."Naval and Nivi argue that one thing that helps in developing a unique skillset is to do things in an eccentric way. That is, following your intrinsic interests and quirks rather than doing what everyone else is doing. Because…
"Extreme people get extreme results"
- Sam Altman
"You can't be normal and expect abnormal returns"
- Jeffrey Pfeffer
Also, if you just do what everyone else does, you are highly likely playing Status Game — Which you should avoid, as these are zero-sum games. Also, you will encounter more competition.
“Play stupid games. Win stupid prizes.”
- Naval Ravikant
More on this Luck…
This is the only kind of Luck that does not have Cliches. Almost everyone has heard that if you work hard and prepare you become luckier, but not too many people is aware of the kind of luck that comes from one’s own unique character — which means that there is an even greater opportunity if you focus on pursuing this kind of luck.
Picking Nuggets Reflection:
Personally, I follow a particular framework to develop this unique skill-set. I first learned about this framework from Tim Ferris, and it consists in the following:
When you are thinking about starting any project, think about what skills could you develop or improve by doing the project. If you can identify one or more important skills, then you should be more willing to take the project. Because even if you end up not succeeding, you still will have developed skills that can be useful to you in future projects.
"Is there a way that I can win doing this even if I fail.
And the way that I win something even if I fail is if I develop skills and relationships or deepen relationships that transcend that project"
- Tim Ferris
Tim applied this framework when deciding to whether he should start his Podcast or not. He was able to see that the Podcast would make him better at interviewing and asking questions, which is an important skill in general and even the philosopher Voltaire went to say "Judge a man by his questions, rather than his answers". Besides, Tim was a prolific book author at the time, so this skill would serve him well when interviewing people for new books.
So as you go executing different projects over time and stacking up new skills with each new project, you become increasingly more unique because less people will be able to match your skill-set. And as Naval Ravikant said, is even better if you are genuinely interested in those projects, because you will go deeper than other people and it will feel like play to you rather than work.
Scott Adams argue that he was never the best at any particular skill, but he was the best at something in which he was able to apply many acquired skills. He was able to combine his average knowledge in design, writing, comedy and business skills to produce his most successful project: Dilbert.
So the most deterministic and less competitive way to get rich is to keep learning skills and finding ways to combine them so that you can be the best at what you do.
"The future belongs to those who learn more skills and combine them in creative ways"
- Robert Greene
Also, when I'm doing things and learning new skills, I try not to fixate too much on the particular relevance of those skills to my future self. Because as Steve Jobs said, is impossible to connect the dots looking forward, we can only connect them looking backwards. So I just have faith that somehow those new skills will eventually connect and become useful to my future self.
✅ References
This Blogpost is brought to you by Shortform - The platform that I love using to get nuggets from Books!
Shortform is THE platform to go if you wanna find highly valuable nuggets (big ideas) from important non-fiction books. This is how I mainly learn from books. Beyond offering book summaries, they provide you with a full guide and synthesis of all the worthy ideas in a book. Personally, I love it because I can absorb book ideas at a faster pace compared to reading the entire books, and there is a deep analysis on each idea! (it is not shallowly explained, as it is the case in other platforms). But of course, for books that I’m deeply interested in reading I still read the entire book! And then use Shortform to quickly re-visit the main ideas.
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Until next time :)
Julio xx
This is too good. Naval's wisdom, is truly eye-opening. He's taken the concepts of life, philosophy and entrepreneurship and created a beautiful space.