Book and website curating and sharing Naval's wisdom. Join the email list on the site to get updates!

Joined August 2020
Link to the book on Amazon: amzn.to/3gz3btY Your review helps more readers find this book!
9
10
4
94
"Some of the most creative and productive people I have ever met work in multi-week bursts and then have weeks where they just idle with little done. It’s the nature of the human animal."
3
40
4
237
"What is the key to finding Product Market Fit? Specific knowledge, iteration, persistence, and luck."
2
9
57
"Anyone who attempts to serve a customer at a new level of quality and scale is an entrepreneur. Anyone who does not, is not."
1
10
1
83
"Quality measures how far a product advances the customer. Scale measures how many people use it."
1
3
28
"For an entrepreneur, if it is possible to make it better, she must make it better. If it is possible to make it more accessible, she must make it more accessible. If it is impossible to make it better or broader, she innovates." navalmanack.com/secret-secti…
1
13
"It’s the nature of successful companies that become iconic that they’re non-consensus."
2
23
"The returns to scale for being smart, young, skilled, and high-energy have gone up tremendously, and that has profound implications for society. The smart are getting richer."
1
5
37
"I think the best founders have a deep understanding of the space they’re going into, enough to be contrarian. They have a deep passion for it, so they’ll just keep working on it. They have execution skills. They just get things done. They solve problems. They’re capable."
1
3
35
"The best founders I’ve found are the ones who are very long-term thinkers. Even decisions that maybe they shouldn’t care much about early on, they do because they are not building a house, they’re putting bricks in the foundation of the skyscraper, at least in their minds."
1
4
35
"Success and failure hinges heavily on getting an objective assessment of the real strengths and weaknesses of a founder and how well that personality fits with the skills needed to grow the venture."
1
29
"Often, the best companies are ones where the product is an extension of the founder’s personality, which shouldn’t be a big surprise, since everyone is passionate about themselves."
1
3
27
"Before you search for product / market fit, make sure you have passion / product fit. It's a long journey."
1
46
"If the service provider’s duty is to eliminate the frictions in the startup’s journey, then it is the entrepreneur’s duty to only start companies that can make a meaningful contribution to the advancement of humankind."
2
2
10
"Startups aren’t here to change the world, they’re here to save the world—by bringing us innovation that advances humankind."
2
3
39
"It's hard to tell which businesses are going to work because a lot of businesses fail. And a lot of good entrepreneurs chasing bad businesses fail. But the entrepreneurs themselves don't fail over a long period of time. You may have to back them a few times."
1
3
22
"Essentially, the single biggest risk you have as an investor is 'downstream financing risk.' The risk that the company won’t be able to raise more money once it has spent all of your cash."
14
Highly recommend that every would-be investor start a company first. It's hard to understand pain in the abstract.
1
11
"There might be self-driving cars that work for themselves -- driving around, paying charging stations to charge themselves, charging you bitcoin for a ride, and paying mechanics to get repairs." navalmanack.com/secret-secti…
1
1
12