notes from Naval (2025)

someone I resonate a lot with is Naval Ravikant - his classic “How to Get Rich Without Getting Lucky” (henceforth HTGR) is formative to a lot of my thinking, including How to Market Yourself Without Being A Celebrity and “Play Long Term Games with Long Term People”. HTGR also includes “How to Get Lucky”, but I came across that before Naval, from pmarca, and wrote up my mnemonic/insight (that HTGL misses the role of strategy) in How to Create Luck.

someone gave me the Navalmanack book (which you can read for free online) a while ago and I always felt guilty for not reading it, but I just went on a short Tulum holiday and finally had enough time to go through the whole thing. This isn’t a from-scratch summary, this is just for my current self in 2025, hence I will skip a lot of the stuff that a “normal” summary would cover, including some of Naval’s greatest/well known hits. Fortunately, I know Naval would approve of this, since he himself notes that he skims dozens of books at a time, reading for his present enjoyment and state of mind, not for completeness or for others’ approvals. (There are problems with this approach, which I will collate down at the bottom - uncritical Naval acceptance is just as bad as ignoring the good lessons because Naval feels somewhat overrated by some (techbro) circles. I have criticisms for almost every one of my highlights).

Part 1: Wealth

The currently appealing parts of the philosophy are:

• Seek wealth, not money or status: This reminds me most of the Church ladder, and people understand the problem with seeking status even if they cant consistently avoid it. I think the distinction between Wealth and Money is still underappreciated , even by me - there are a LOT of situations where you have a choice between a Lot of Money and a little bit of Wealth, and I think the real hidden message is that the exchange rate for Money:Wealth is a lot higher than you think. eg given a choice between $1m/year for a job, vs $50k/year passive, a lot of people would choose the $1m/year, particularly because the interest rate math on $1m/yr translating to passive is well established; however the comparison becomes a lot more difficult when 1) all Wealth returns are backend loaded ($50k/yr -> $50m over time) and 2) not immediately quantifiable (freedom, learning fundamentals, self development, futzing around indulging pure curiosity).
• Get Paid for your Judgement: I think this is both correct and very similar to the above principle - it’s very hard to get paid for judgment without getting paid for your labor - people always want to couple them. the “purest” way to do this is just be an investor - and the second as a CEO with a fully ramped team taking all direct responsibilities, but I’d be VERY interested in other mental models for how to just get paid for judgment (Naval’s answer very obviously would be the next of his principles on the list - Build or Buy Equity - but that is unsatisfying in terms of value creation as pure investing is also kind of leechy, i’ve been a pure investor and don’t desire to return to that for the next 10-20 years, though never say never - good investing is also not as labor free as you imagine - ask me about that if you care to learn more). For example I’ve often been complimented on my judgment as a content creator (Latent.space) or as a curator (AI.engineer), but the sad truth is that both involve a huge amount of labor as well. The obvious way to do this is to have an apprentice exactly mirror everything you would physically do, under close guidance. This aligns well with the other sub principle of setting a high aspirational personal hourly rate and outsourcing everything below that - reducing your role to pure judgment. I personally struggle to do this well, and resolve to get better at this. The “outsource everything but judgment stack” should include:
  • personal/exec assistant (physical tasks)
  • virtual assistant (email, online tasks)
  • (for each business venture) apprentice/producer/general manager
• Find a position of leverage: he presents an interesting maturity model case study of leverage here in the real estate industry, going from:
  1. real estate repair labor (paid for minimum wage)
  2. general contractor for the repair (paid for specific knowledge on running the team + fitting regulations vs wants)
  3. real estate developer (paid for fundraising, risk taking)
  4. real estate fund (paid for dealing with many developers)
  5. real estate + technology business (paid for code + capital) -> trulia, redfin, zillow One criticism I have hear is the 4-> 5 jump is too high and all 3 examples he chooses are marketplace businesses, which are a very specific type of tech business with unique moats. I probably do a better job of analysis of business models in my LIP book chapter on tech strategy.
• Wealth is created by figuring out how to give society things it wants, and then being able to scale it up with leverage (labor, capital, tech). this is just true.

Part 1: my criticisms

• Reading for the present: the problem with this is that some books are better when you go through the whole argument, the whole journey - even the slow parts. This issue with Naval doesn’t only apply to books.
• Seeking wealth over money: you can invest too much and not earn enough in the present - cash in hand is worth 2 hypothetical degrees in the bush - and you still DO learn a lot making cash, so the choice just isnt that binary in many many scenarios
• Building Judgment: for how important he thinks it is, I found it kind of weak. the heuristics are very basic, familiar to the most novice Farnam Street/Charlie Munger enjoyer, bereft of any useful insight that comes from having struggled with applying them in practice. Naval’s minimalism is wonderful for its simplicity and ability to spread, but suffers in its practical utility. You can just reduce them to a bunch of fortune cookie aphorisms and the book makes no effort at providing higher nutritional value here than that.

Part 2: Happiness

as someone raised in buddhism/who likes stoicism/who is generally already 75% happy, i also currently skip/skim a lot of these, probably to my detriment.

• Choosing to care for yourself: physical health > mental health > spiritual health > family’s health > rest of the world. I’m really bad at this - as an Obliger (4 Tendencies style) I tend to prioritize others over myself. I can’t let myself be this unhealthy for so much longer.

  In the morning, I work out, and however long it takes is how long it takes. I do not start my day, until I’ve worked out. I don’t care if the world is imploding and melting down, it can wait another thirty minutes until I’m done working out.

• Meditation + mental strength: ice baths seem cool. very strong endorsement here - not bases on physical evidence, but on an argument on developing mental strength to overcoming suffering/pain and avoidance.
• his description of Transcendental Meditation, with white noise, is very much like chanting in Buddhism.
• if meditation is good, and exercise is good, then you might as well exercise while you meditate. I like walking meditation for that reason.

Books

recommendations I like:

• Thinking Physics by Epstein
• Six Easy Pieces by Feynman
• Sovereign Individual by Davidson and Rees-Mogg

these i’ve been recommended enough that I can no longer ignore - are probably more important

• Meditations
• Poor Charlie’s Almanack

fiction

• I really like all of Ted Chiang so i should read Stories of your Life and Exhalation and Lifecycle of Software Objects
• Snow Crash I guess, again something everyone likes