Naval Ravikant (born November 5, 1974) is a renowned entrepreneur, investor, and thought leader. Born in India, Naval’s family moved to America when he was 9 and Naval moved to Silicon Valley after graduating from Dartmouth College in 1995. Among other companies such as Epinions (Shopping.com) and Vast.com, he is the co-founder of AngelList, a website for connecting startups with angel investors and limited partners. His investment portfolio includes early stakes in companies such as Uber, Twitter, and Yammer.
His life is a study in doing first and explaining later. Raised in Queens after his family came over from India, he treated the local public library as his real school, read his way into Stuyvesant High School, and went on to Dartmouth to study computer science and economics. He co-founded the review site Epinions in 1999, ran Vast.com, and in 2010 co-founded AngelList with Babak Nivi to open startup investing up to founders and backers who had been locked out of the old networks. As an angel he wrote some of the earliest checks into Uber, Twitter, and Yammer. Then he began handing out the lessons in public. His 2018 tweetstorm, “How to Get Rich (without getting lucky),” laid out his operating system on wealth and judgment, and Eric Jorgenson’s Almanack gathered a decade of his writing and interviews into one book.
Additionally, Naval is perhaps now best well known for his thoughts on life and pursuing wealth and personal growth. Through his massive following on social media and many guest appearances on podcasts, Naval has delivered his valuable insights to the world. His thoughts are consistently cited by some of the most influential business and thought leaders in the world, especially among the younger generations. Perhaps the reason for resonating with younger crowds, Naval’s insights have a modern and sometimes futuristic bent, often sitting at the intersection of technology, philosophy, entrepreneurship, and personal development. in 2020, author Eric Jorgenson compiled 244 pages of Naval’s thoughts in what he called, “The Almanack of Naval Ravikant” – a take on Charlie Munger’s “Poor Charlie’s Almanack” and Benjamin Franklin’s “Poor Richard’s Almanack.”
Core Ideas
- Seek wealth, not money or status. Wealth is assets that earn while you sleep, and status games only pay out in rank.
- Follow your specific knowledge. The skill that feels like play to you and like work to everyone else is the one nobody can train a replacement for.
- Build with permissionless leverage. Code and media work while you rest, so forty-hour weeks give way to sprints, rest, and judgment.
- Reading is the meta-skill. Build understanding on a steel frame of first principles and you can trade it for almost any other skill.
- Train happiness the way you train fitness. A calm mind and a house full of love are earned by daily practice, never bought.
Naval Ravikant Quotes
“A fit body, a calm mind, a house full of love. These things cannot be bought — they must be earned.”
— The Almanack of Naval Ravikant (2020)
“If you’re good with computers, if you’re good at basic mathematics, if you’re good at writing, if you’re good at speaking, and if you like reading, you’re set for life.”
“Forty hour workweeks are a relic of the Industrial Age. Knowledge workers function like athletes — train and sprint, then rest and reassess.”
“Knowledge is a skyscraper. You can take a shortcut with a fragile foundation of memorization, or build slowly upon a steel frame of understanding.”
“Reading is the ultimate meta-skill that can be traded for anything else.”
“To the experts, what looks like hard work from the outside, is play from the inside.”
“The means of learning are abundant, the desire to learn is scarce.”
“Wealth is assets that earn while you sleep.”
— The Almanack of Naval Ravikant (2020)
Naval Ravikant Books
“The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness” – by Eric Jorgenson. The definitive collection: a decade of his tweets, essays, and podcast interviews distilled into one volume on creating wealth and choosing happiness.
You can browse all of Naval Ravikant’s quotes in the SAGE QUOTE LIBRARY. For additional information, quotes, and books on similarly relevant famous individuals, please visit the SAGE PROFILES page on the site. Please also visit the SAGE BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS page for many other great reads sure to add to your worldly wisdom. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
