How to Get Rich
如何致富

A collection of all my interviews about my ‘How to Get Rich’ tweetstorm. 
我关于“如何致富”推文风暴的所有采访合集。

Seek Wealth, Not Money or Status
追求财富，而非金钱或地位

Wealth is assets that earn while you sleep
财富是你睡觉时也能带来收益的资产

Naval is a prolific tech investor and founder of AngelList
Naval 是一位多产的科技投资者，也是 AngelList 的创始人

Nivi: You probably know Naval from his Twitter account.
Nivi：你可能通过他的 Twitter 账号认识 Naval。

We’re going to talk about his tweetstorm, “How To Get Rich (without getting lucky).” We’ll go through most of the tweets in detail, give Naval a chance to expand on them and generally riff on the topic. He’ll probably throw in ideas he hasn’t published before.
我们将讨论他的推文风暴，“如何致富（不靠运气）”。我们会详细讲解大部分推文，给 Naval 机会进行扩展，并就这个话题进行自由发挥。他可能会提出一些他以前未曾发表过的想法。

Naval’s the co-founder of AngelList and Epinions. He’s also a prolific tech investor in companies like Twitter, Uber and many more.
Naval 是 AngelList 和 Epinions 的联合创始人。他还是 Twitter、Uber 等多家公司的多产科技投资者。

I’m the co-founder of AngelList with Naval. And I co-authored the Venture Hacks blog with him back in the day.
我是 AngelList 的联合创始人，与 Naval 一同创办的。我还曾与他共同撰写过 Venture Hacks 博客。

Naval: The “How to Get Rich” tweetstorm definitely hit a nerve and went viral. A lot of people say it was helpful and reached across aisles.
Naval：“如何致富”的推文风暴确实触动了很多人，迅速走红。很多人说这很有帮助，跨越了不同领域的界限。

People outside of the tech industry—people in all walks of life—want to know how to solve their money problems. Everyone vaguely knows they want to be wealthy, but they don’t have a good set of principles to do it by.
科技行业以外的人——各行各业的人——都想知道如何解决他们的金钱问题。每个人都模糊地知道自己想要富有，但他们没有一套好的原则来实现这一点。

Wealth is assets that earn while you sleep
财富就是在你睡觉时也能赚取收益的资产。

Nivi: What’s the difference between wealth, money and status?
Nivi：财富、金钱和地位有什么区别？

Naval: Wealth is the thing you want. Wealth is assets that earn while you sleep; it’s the factory of robots cranking out things. Wealth is the computer program running at night that’s serving other customers. Wealth is money in the bank that is reinvested into other assets and businesses.
Naval：财富是你想要的东西。财富是你睡觉时也能赚取收益的资产；它是不断生产产品的机器人工厂。财富是夜间运行、为其他客户服务的计算机程序。财富是存入银行并再投资于其他资产和企业的钱。

A house can be a form of wealth, because you can rent it out; although that’s a less productive use of land than running a commercial enterprise.
房子可以是一种财富，因为你可以出租它；尽管这比经营商业企业对土地的利用效率要低。

My definition of wealth is oriented toward businesses and assets that can earn while you sleep.
我对财富的定义是指那些能在你睡觉时赚取收益的企业和资产。

Wealth buys your freedom  财富买来的是自由

You want wealth because it buys you freedom—so you don’t have to wear a tie like a collar around your neck; so you don’t have to wake up at 7:00 a.m. to rush to work and sit in commute traffic; so you don’t have to waste your life grinding productive hours away into a soulless job that doesn’t fulfill you.
你想要财富，因为它能买来自由——这样你就不必像戴着项圈一样系着领带；不必早上七点起床赶去上班，挤在通勤的车流中；不必把生命浪费在一份没有灵魂、无法让你满足的工作中。

The purpose of wealth is freedom; it’s nothing more than that. It’s not to buy fur coats, or to drive Ferraris, or to sail yachts, or to jet around the world in a Gulf Stream. That stuff gets really boring and stupid, really fast. It’s about being your own sovereign individual.
财富的目的就是自由，仅此而已。它不是用来买皮草大衣，开法拉利，驾游艇，或乘坐湾流喷气机环游世界。这些东西很快就会变得无聊和愚蠢。财富关乎成为你自己的主权个体。

You’re not going to get that unless you really want it. The entire world wants it, and the entire world is working hard at it.
除非你真正渴望，否则你得不到它。全世界的人都想要自由，全世界的人都在为此努力。

It is competitive to some extent. It’s a positive sum game—but there are competitive elements to it, because there’s a finite amount of resources right now in society. To get the resources to do what you want, you have to stand out.
在某种程度上这是有竞争性的。这是一个正和游戏——但其中也有竞争因素，因为社会上的资源是有限的。要获得资源去做你想做的事，你必须脱颖而出。

Money is how we transfer wealth
金钱是我们转移财富的方式

Money is how we transfer wealth. Money is social credits; it’s the ability to have credits and debits of other people’s time.
金钱是我们转移财富的方式。金钱是社会信用；它是拥有他人时间的借贷能力。

If I do my job right and create value for society, society says, “Oh, thank you. We owe you something in the future for the work that you did. Here’s a little IOU. Let’s call that money.”
如果我做好我的工作，为社会创造价值，社会会说：“哦，谢谢你。我们欠你未来的某些东西，作为你所做工作的回报。这是一张小小的欠条。我们称之为金钱。”

That money gets debased because people steal the IOUs; the government prints extra IOUs; and people renege on their IOUs. But money tries to be a reliable IOU from society that you are owed something for something you did in the past.
货币会贬值，因为人们会偷窃债务凭证；政府会印制额外的债务凭证；人们也会违约不还债务。但货币试图成为社会中一种可靠的债务凭证，表示你因过去所做的事情而被欠某些东西。

We transfer these IOUs around; money is how we transfer wealth.
我们转移这些债务凭证；货币就是我们转移财富的方式。

Status is your rank in the social hierarchy
地位是你在社会等级中的排名。

There are fundamentally two huge games in life that people play. One is the money game. Money is not going to solve all of your problems; but it’s going to solve all of your money problems. I think people know that. They realize that, so they want to make money.
人生中基本上有两个巨大的游戏。一个是金钱游戏。金钱不会解决你所有的问题；但它会解决你所有的金钱问题。我认为人们都知道这一点。他们意识到了，所以他们想赚钱。

At the same time, deep down many people believe they can’t make it; so they don’t want any wealth creation to happen. They virtue signal by attacking the whole enterprise, saying, “Well, making money is evil. You shouldn’t do it.”
与此同时，内心深处许多人相信自己无法成功；所以他们不希望财富的创造发生。他们通过攻击整个事业来表现自己的美德，说：“赚钱是邪恶的，你不应该这么做。”

But they’re actually playing the other game, which is the status game. They’re trying to be high status in the eyes of others by saying, “Well, I don’t need money. We don’t want money.” 
但他们实际上是在玩另一种游戏，那就是地位游戏。他们试图通过说“我不需要钱，我们不需要钱”来在别人眼中获得高地位。

Status is your ranking in the social hierarchy.
地位是你在社会等级中的排名。

Wealth is not a zero-sum game. Everybody in the world can have a house. Because you have a house doesn’t take away from my ability to have a house. If anything, the more houses that are built, the easier it becomes to build houses, the more we know about building houses, and the more people can have houses.
财富不是零和游戏。世界上的每个人都可以拥有一所房子。因为你有房子，并不会减少我拥有房子的能力。实际上，建造的房子越多，建房就越容易，我们对建房的了解也越多，能拥有房子的人也就越多。

Wealth is a very positive-sum game. We create things together. We’re starting this endeavor to create a piece of art that explains what we’re doing. At the end of it, something brand new will be created. It’s a positive-sum game.
财富是一个非常正和的游戏。我们共同创造事物。我们开始这项努力，是为了创作一件艺术品，来解释我们正在做的事情。最终，将会创造出全新的东西。这是一个正和游戏。

Status is a very old game
地位是一场非常古老的游戏

Status, on the other hand, is a zero-sum game. It’s a very old game. We’ve been playing it since monkey tribes. It’s hierarchical. Who’s number one? Who’s number two? Who’s number three? And for number three to move to number two, number two has to move out of that slot. So, status is a zero-sum game.
另一方面，地位是一场零和游戏。这是一场非常古老的游戏。我们从猴子部落时代就开始玩了。它是等级制的。谁是第一？谁是第二？谁是第三？而且第三名要升到第二名的位置，第二名必须离开那个位置。所以，地位是一场零和游戏。

Politics is an example of a status game. Even sports is an example of a status game. To be the winner, there must be a loser. Fundamentally, I don’t like status games. They play an important role in our society, so we can figure out who’s in charge. But you play them because they’re a necessary evil.
政治是地位游戏的一个例子。即使体育也是地位游戏的一个例子。要成为赢家，必须有输家。从根本上说，我不喜欢地位游戏。它们在我们的社会中扮演着重要角色，因此我们可以弄清楚谁掌权。但你玩它们是因为它们是必要的恶。

On an evolutionary basis—if you go back thousands of years—status is a much better predictor of survival than wealth. You couldn’t have wealth before the farming age because you couldn’t store things. Hunter-gatherers carried everything on their backs.
从进化的角度来看——如果你回溯到几千年前——地位比财富更能预测生存能力。在农业时代之前，你不可能拥有财富，因为你无法储存物品。狩猎采集者背负着他们所有的东西。

Hunter-gatherers lived in entirely status-based societies. Farmers started going to wealth-based societies. The modern industrial economies are much more heavily wealth-based societies.
狩猎采集者生活在完全基于地位的社会中。农民开始进入基于财富的社会。现代工业经济则更多地是基于财富的社会。

People creating wealth will always be attacked by people playing status games
创造财富的人总会受到玩弄地位游戏的人的攻击。

There’s always a subtle competition going on between status and wealth. For example, when journalists attack rich people or the tech industry, they’re really bidding for status. They’re saying, “No, the people are more important. And I, the journalist, represent the people, and therefore I am more important.”
地位和财富之间总存在着微妙的竞争。例如，当记者攻击富人或科技行业时，他们实际上是在争夺地位。他们在说：“不，人民更重要。而我，作为记者，代表人民，因此我更重要。”

The problem is, to win at a status game you have to put somebody else down. That’s why you should avoid status games in your life—because they make you into an angry combative person. You’re always fighting to put other people down and elevate yourself and the people you like.
问题是，要在地位游戏中获胜，你必须贬低别人。这就是为什么你应该避免生活中的地位游戏——因为它们会让你变成一个愤怒好斗的人。你总是在争斗中贬低别人，以提升自己和你喜欢的人。

Status games are always going to exist; there’s no way around it. Realize that most of the time when you’re trying to create wealth, you’re getting attacked by someone else and they’re trying to look like a goody-two shoes. They’re trying to up their own status at your expense.
地位游戏永远都会存在；这是无法避免的。要明白，大多数时候当你试图创造财富时，总有人在攻击你，而他们却试图装作好好先生。他们试图以你的代价提升自己的地位。

They’re playing a different game. And it’s a worse game. It’s a zero-sum game, instead of a positive-sum game.
他们在玩一场不同的游戏。而且这是一场更糟糕的游戏。这是一场零和游戏，而不是正和游戏。

Make Abundance for the World
为世界创造丰盛

Wealth isn’t about taking something from somebody else
财富不是从别人那里夺取什么

Ethical wealth creation makes abundance for the world
道德的财富创造为世界带来丰盛

Naval: I think there is this notion that making money is evil, right? It’s rooted all the way back down to “money is the root of all evil.” People think that the bankers steal our money. It’s somewhat true in that, in a lot of the world, there’s a lot of theft going on all the time.
Naval：我认为有一种观念认为赚钱是邪恶的，对吧？这观念可以追溯到“金钱是万恶之源”。人们认为银行家在偷我们的钱。这在某种程度上是对的，因为在世界上很多地方，确实一直存在大量的盗窃行为。

The history of the world, in some sense, is this predator/prey relationship between makers and takers. There are people who go out and create things, and build things, and work hard on things.
从某种意义上说，世界的历史就是制造者和掠夺者之间的捕食者/猎物关系。有些人出去创造东西，建造东西，努力工作。

Then there are people who come along with a sword, or a gun, or taxes, or crony capitalism, or Communism, or what have you. There’s all these different methods to steal.
然后有些人带着剑、枪、税收、裙带资本主义、共产主义等等各种手段出现。这些都是不同的偷窃方式。

Even in nature, there are more parasites than there are non-parasitical organisms. You have a ton of parasites in you, who are living off of you. The better ones are symbiotic, they’re giving something back. But there are a lot that are just taking. That’s the nature of how any complex system is built.
即使在自然界中，寄生虫的数量也多于非寄生生物。你体内有大量寄生虫，它们靠你生存。较好的寄生虫是共生的，它们会有所回馈。但也有很多只是单纯地索取。这就是任何复杂系统构建的本质。

What I am focused on is true wealth creation. It’s not about taking money. It’s not about taking something from somebody else. It’s from creating abundance.
我关注的是真正的财富创造。这不是拿走钱财，也不是从别人那里夺取什么，而是创造丰盛。

Obviously, there isn’t a finite number of jobs, or finite amount of wealth. Otherwise we would still be sitting around in caves, figuring out how to divide up pieces of fire wood, and the occasional dead deer.
显然，工作岗位和财富的数量不是有限的。否则，我们现在还会坐在洞穴里，琢磨如何分配几根柴火和偶尔猎获的一只鹿。

Most of the wealth in civilization, in fact all of it, has been created. It got created from somewhere. It got created from people. It got created from technology. It got created from productivity. It got created from hard work. This idea that it’s stolen is this horrible zero-sum game that people who are trying to gain status play.
文明中的大部分财富，实际上是全部财富，都是创造出来的。它来自某个地方，来自人们，来自技术，来自生产力，来自辛勤劳动。那种财富是被偷来的观点，是一种可怕的零和游戏，是那些试图获得地位的人玩的把戏。

Everyone can be rich  每个人都可以变得富有

But the reality is everyone can be rich. We can see that by seeing, that in the First World, everyone is basically richer than almost anyone who was alive 200 years ago.
但现实是，每个人都可以变得富有。我们可以通过观察发现，在第一世界国家，几乎每个人的财富都比 200 年前的任何人都要多。

200 years ago nobody had antibiotics. Nobody had cars. Nobody had electricity. Nobody had the iPhone. All of these things are inventions that have made us wealthier as a species.
200 年前，没有人拥有抗生素。没有人拥有汽车。没有人拥有电力。没有人拥有 iPhone。所有这些发明都使我们作为一个物种变得更加富裕。

Today, I would rather be a poor person in a First World country, than be a rich person in Louis the XIV’s France. I’d rather be a poor person today than aristocrat back then. That’s because of wealth creation.
今天，我宁愿是第一世界国家的穷人，也不愿成为路易十四时代法国的富人。我宁愿今天是穷人，也不愿当时是贵族。这就是财富创造的原因。

The engine of technology is science that is applied for the purpose of creating abundance. So, I think fundamentally everybody can be wealthy.
技术的引擎是为了创造丰裕而应用的科学。所以，我认为从根本上说，每个人都可以富有。

This thought experiment I want you to think through is imagine if everybody had the knowledge of a good software engineer and a good hardware engineer. If you could go out there, and you could build robots, and computers, and bridges, and program them. Let’s say every human knew how to do that.
我想让你思考的这个思想实验是，假设每个人都具备优秀的软件工程师和硬件工程师的知识。如果你能出去，建造机器人、计算机和桥梁，并对它们进行编程。假设每个人都知道如何做到这一点。

What do you think society would look like in 20 years? My guess is what would happen is we would build robots, machines, software and hardware to do everything. We would all be living in massive abundance.
你认为 20 年后的社会会是什么样子？我猜想会发生的是，我们会制造机器人、机器、软件和硬件来完成所有事情。我们都会生活在极度富足的环境中。

We would essentially be retired, in the sense that none of us would have to work for any of the basics. We’d even have robotic nurses. We’d have machine driven hospitals. We’d have self-driving cars. We’d have farms that are 100% automated. We’d have clean energy.
我们基本上可以退休了，因为我们都不需要为基本生活而工作。我们甚至会有机器人护士。我们会有机器驱动的医院。我们会有自动驾驶汽车。我们会有 100%自动化的农场。我们会有清洁能源。

At that point, we could use technology breakthroughs to get everything that we wanted. If anyone is still working at that point, they’re working as a form of expressing their creativity. They’re working because it’s in them to contribute, and to build and design things.
到那时，我们可以利用技术突破来获得我们想要的一切。如果那时还有人在工作，那他们工作是为了表达自己的创造力。他们工作是因为内心渴望贡献，渴望建造和设计东西。

I don’t think capitalism is evil. Capitalism is actually good. It’s just that it gets hijacked. It gets hijacked by improper pricing of externalities. It gets hijacked by improper yields, where you have corruption, or you have monopolies.
我不认为资本主义是邪恶的。资本主义实际上是好的。只是它被劫持了。它被外部性定价不当劫持了。它被不当收益劫持了，比如腐败或垄断。

Free Markets Are Intrinsic to Humans
自由市场是人类的本质

We use credits and debits to cooperate across genetic boundaries
我们使用信用和借记来跨越基因界限进行合作

Free markets are intrinsic to the human species
自由市场是人类物种的内在特征

Naval: Overall capitalism [meaning free markets] is intrinsic to the human species. Capitalism is not something we invented. Capitalism is not even something we discovered. It is in us in every exchange that we have.
Naval：总体来说，资本主义【指自由市场】是人类物种的内在特征。资本主义不是我们发明的。资本主义甚至不是我们发现的。它存在于我们每一次的交换之中。

When you and I exchange information, I want some information back from you. I give you information. You give me information. If we weren’t having a good information exchange, you’d go talk to somebody else. So, the notion of exchange, and keeping track of credits and debits, this is built into us as flexible social animals.
当你和我交换信息时，我希望你也能回馈一些信息给我。我给你信息，你也给我信息。如果我们之间的信息交换不顺畅，你就会去找别人聊。所以，交换的概念，以及记账借贷的观念，是作为灵活的社会动物内置在我们体内的。

We are the only animals in the animal kingdom that cooperate across genetic boundaries. Most animals don’t even cooperate. But when they do, they cooperate only in packs where they co-evolve together, and they share blood, so they have some shared interests.
我们是动物王国中唯一跨越基因界限进行合作的动物。大多数动物甚至都不合作。但当它们合作时，也只是成群结队地一起进化，它们有血缘关系，因此有共同的利益。

Humans don’t have that. I can cooperate with you guys. One of you is a Serbian. The other one is a Persian by origin. And I’m Indian by origin. We have very little blood in common, basically none. But we still cooperate.
人类没有那个。我可以和你们合作。你们中有一个是塞尔维亚人，另一个是波斯血统。而我则是印度血统。我们几乎没有共同的血缘，基本上没有。但我们仍然合作。

What lets us cooperate? It’s because we can keep track of debits and credits. Who put in how much work? Who contributed how much? That’s all free market capitalism is.
是什么让我们能够合作？那是因为我们可以记录借方和贷方。谁付出了多少劳动？谁贡献了多少？这就是自由市场资本主义的全部内容。

So, I strongly believe that it is innate to the human species, and we are going to create more and more wealth, and abundance for everybody.
所以，我坚信这是人类的天性，我们将创造越来越多的财富和丰裕，惠及每一个人。

Everybody can be wealthy. Everybody can be retired. Everybody can be successful. It is merely a question of education and desire. You have to want it. If you don’t want it, that’s fine. Then you opt out of the game.
每个人都可以富有。每个人都可以退休。每个人都可以成功。这仅仅是教育和渴望的问题。你必须想要它。如果你不想要，那也没关系。那你就选择退出这个游戏。

But don’t try to put down the people who are playing the game. Because that’s the game that keeps you in a comfortable warm bed at night. That’s the game that keeps a roof over your head. That’s the game that keeps your supermarkets stocked. That’s the game that keeps the iPhone buzzing in your pocket.
但不要试图贬低那些正在玩这个游戏的人。因为正是这个游戏让你晚上能睡在舒适温暖的床上。正是这个游戏让你有屋顶遮风挡雨。正是这个游戏让你的超市货架上有货。正是这个游戏让你的口袋里 iPhone 不停地震动。

So, it is a beautiful game that is worth playing ethically, rationally, morally, socially for the human race. It’s going to continue to make us all richer and richer, until we have massive wealth creation for anybody who wants it.
所以，这是一场值得以伦理、理性、道德和社会责任来参与的美丽游戏。它将继续让我们所有人变得越来越富有，直到为任何想要财富的人创造出巨大的财富。

Too many takers and not enough makers will plunge a society into ruin
太多的索取者而缺乏足够的创造者，将使一个社会陷入毁灭。

Nivi: It’s not just individuals secretly despising wealth, right? There are countries, groups, political parties that overtly despise wealth. Or at least seem to.
Nivi：不仅仅是个人暗地里鄙视财富，对吧？还有国家、团体、政党公开鄙视财富。或者至少看起来是这样。

Naval: That’s right. What those countries, political parties, and groups are reduced to is playing the zero-sum game of status. In the process to destroy wealth creation, they drag everybody down to their level.
Naval：没错。这些国家、政党和团体最终沦为玩零和的地位游戏。在摧毁财富创造的过程中，他们把所有人都拉到了他们的水平。

Which is why the U.S. is a very popular country for immigrants because of the American dream. Anyone can come here, be poor, and then work really hard and make money, and get wealthy. But even just make some basic money for their life.
这就是为什么美国因“美国梦”而成为移民非常受欢迎的国家。任何人都可以来到这里，起初贫穷，然后努力工作赚钱，变得富有。即使只是赚取一些基本的生活费用也行。

Obviously, the definition of wealth is different for different people. A First World citizen’s definition of wealth might be, “Oh, I have to make millions of dollars, and I’m completely done.”
显然，不同的人对财富的定义不同。一个第一世界国家的公民对财富的定义可能是，“哦，我必须赚到数百万美元，然后我就完全成功了。”

Whereas to a Third World poor immigrant just entering the country, and we were poor immigrants who came here when I as fairly young, to the United States, wealth may just be a much lower number. It may just be, “I don’t have to work a manual labor job for the rest of my life that I don’t want to work.”
而对于刚进入这个国家的第三世界贫穷移民来说——我们就是当我还很年轻时来到美国的贫穷移民——财富的数字可能要低得多。可能只是，“我不必再做一辈子我不想做的体力劳动工作。”

But groups that despise it will essentially bring the entire group to that level. If you get too many takers, and not enough makers, society falls apart. You end up with a communist country.
但那些鄙视它的群体本质上会将整个群体拉到那个水平。如果接受者太多，而创造者不足，社会就会崩溃。最终你会得到一个共产主义国家。

Look at Venezuela, right? They were so busy taking, and dividing, and reallocating, that people are literally starving in the streets, and losing kilograms of body weight every year just from sheer starvation.
看看委内瑞拉，对吧？他们忙于掠夺、分配和重新分配，以至于人们真的在街头挨饿，每年因为纯粹的饥饿而体重减少好几公斤。

Another way to think about it is imagine an organism that has too many parasites. You need some small number of parasites to stay healthy.
换个角度想，想象一个有太多寄生虫的生物体。你需要少量的寄生虫才能保持健康。

You need a lot of symbiotes. All the mitochondria in all of our cells that help us respirate and burn oxygen. These are symbiotes that help us survive. We couldn’t survive without them.
你需要大量的共生体。我们所有细胞中的线粒体帮助我们呼吸和燃烧氧气。这些是帮助我们生存的共生体。没有它们我们无法生存。

But, to me, those are partners in the wealth creation that creates the human body. But if you just were filled with parasites, if you got infected with worms, or a virus, or bacteria that were purely parasitical, you would die.  So, any organism can only withstand a small number of parasites. When the parasitic element gets too far out of control, you die.
但对我来说，这些是创造人体财富的合作伙伴。但如果你体内充满了寄生虫，如果你感染了纯粹寄生的蠕虫、病毒或细菌，你就会死去。任何生物体只能承受少量寄生虫。当寄生元素失控时，你就会死。

Again I’m talking about ethical wealth creation. I’m not talking about monopolies. I’m not talking about crony capitalism. I’m not talking about mispriced externalities like the environment.
我说的依然是道德的财富创造。我不是在谈垄断。我不是在谈裙带资本主义。我也不是在谈像环境这样被错误定价的外部性。

I’m talking about free minds, and free markets. Small-scale exchange between humans that’s voluntary, and doesn’t have an outsized impact on others.
我说的是自由的思想和自由的市场。人们之间自愿进行的小规模交换，不会对他人产生过大影响。

I think that kind of wealth creation, if a society does not respect it, if the group does not respect it, then society will plunge into ruin, and darkness.
我认为，如果一个社会不尊重这种财富创造，如果群体不尊重它，那么社会将陷入毁灭和黑暗。

Making Money Isn’t About Luck
赚钱不是靠运气

Become the kind of person who makes money
成为那种会赚钱的人

Making money isn’t about luck
赚钱不是靠运气

Naval: Obviously, we want to be wealthy, and we want to get there in this lifetime without having to rely on luck.
Naval：显然，我们都想变得富有，并且希望在有生之年实现这一目标，而不必依赖运气。

A lot of people think making money is about luck. It’s not. It’s about becoming the kind of person that makes money.
很多人认为赚钱靠运气。其实不是。赚钱是关于成为那种能够赚钱的人。

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.
我喜欢这样想：如果我失去了所有的钱，被丢到任何一个讲英语的国家的随机街道上，五年、十年内我会再次变得富有。因为这是一种我已经培养出来的技能，我认为任何人都可以培养。

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.
在一千个平行宇宙中，你希望在其中的 999 个宇宙里都富有。你不想只在那 50 个你运气好的宇宙里富有。我们想要把运气因素剔除出去。

There’s four kinds of luck that we’re talking about. This came from a book. Marc Andreessen, wrote a blog post about it.
我们谈论的是四种运气。这来自一本书。Marc Andreessen 写过一篇关于它的博客文章。

1. Blind luck  1. 盲目运气

The first kind of luck you might say is blind luck. Where I just got lucky because something completely out of my control happened. That’s fortune, that’s fate.
第一种运气可以说是盲目运气。就是我只是因为某些完全不受我控制的事情发生而走运。那是幸运，那是命运。

2. Luck from hustling  2. 努力带来的运气

Then there’s luck that comes through persistence, hard work, hustle, motion. Which is when you’re running around creating lots of opportunities, you’re generating a lot of energy, you’re doing a lot of things, lots of things will get stirred up in the dust.
然后还有通过坚持、努力、拼搏、行动带来的运气。那是当你四处奔波创造许多机会，产生大量能量，做很多事情时，尘埃中会激起许多波澜。

It’s almost like mixing a petri dish and seeing what combines. Or mixing a bunch of reagents and seeing what combines. You’re generating enough force and hustle and energy that luck will find you.
这几乎就像混合一个培养皿，看看会产生什么反应。或者混合一堆试剂，看看会产生什么反应。你产生了足够的力量、干劲和能量，幸运自然会找到你。

We, as a group, you could argue, got together because of that. Nenad had put up these great videos online, I saw them on Twitter. In that sense, he generated his own luck by creating videos until people like me keep finding him.
我们作为一个团队，可以说是因为这个原因聚在一起的。Nenad 在网上发布了这些很棒的视频，我是在推特上看到的。从这个意义上说，他通过不断制作视频创造了自己的运气，直到像我这样的人不断发现他。

3. Luck from preparation  3. 来自准备的幸运

A third way is that you become very good at spotting luck. If you are very skilled in a field, you will notice when a lucky break happens in that field. When other people who aren’t attuned to it won’t notice. So you become sensitive to luck and that’s through skill and knowledge and work.
第三种方式是你变得非常擅长发现幸运。如果你在某个领域非常有技能，你会注意到该领域中出现的幸运机会，而其他不熟悉的人则不会注意到。所以你变得对幸运敏感，而这正是通过技能、知识和努力工作实现的。

4. Luck from your unique character
4. 来自你独特个性的运气

Then the last kind of luck is the weirdest, hardest kind. But that’s what we want to talk about. Which is where you build a unique character, a unique brand, a unique mindset, where then luck finds you.
最后一种运气是最奇怪、最难得的。但这正是我们想要讨论的。那就是你打造一个独特的个性、独特的品牌、独特的思维方式，然后运气就会找到你。

For example, let’s say that you’re the best person in the world at deep sea underwater diving. You’re known to take on deep sea underwater dives that nobody else will even attempt to dare.
例如，假设你是世界上最擅长深海潜水的人。你以敢于挑战别人根本不敢尝试的深海潜水而闻名。

Then, by sheer luck, somebody finds a sunken treasure ship off the coast. They can’t get it. Well, their luck just became your luck, because they’re going to come to you to get that treasure. You’re going to get paid for it.  
然后，凭借纯粹的运气，有人在海岸附近发现了一艘沉船宝藏。他们无法取出宝藏。好吧，他们的运气刚好变成了你的运气，因为他们会来找你帮忙取出宝藏。你将因此获得报酬。

Now, that’s an extreme example. The person who got lucky by finding the treasure chest, that was blind luck. But them coming to you and asking you to extract it and having to give you half, that’s not luck.
这只是一个极端的例子。那个通过找到宝箱而走运的人，那是纯粹的运气。但他们来找你，让你帮忙取出宝藏，并且必须给你一半，那就不是运气了。

You created your own luck. You put yourself in a position to be able to capitalize on that luck. Or to attract that luck when nobody else has created that opportunity for themselves. When we talk about “without getting lucky,” we want to be deterministic, we don’t want to leave it to chance.
你创造了自己的运气。你让自己处于能够利用那份运气的位置。或者在别人都没有为自己创造机会的时候，吸引那份运气。当我们说“没有运气成分”时，我们想要的是确定性，而不是把一切交给偶然。

In 1,000 parallel universes, you want to be wealthy in 999 of them
在 1000 个平行宇宙中，你希望在 999 个宇宙里都变得富有。

Nivi: Do you want to elaborate a little bit more on the idea that in a 1,000 parallel universes you want to get rich in 999 of them? I think some people are going to see that and say, “that sounds impossible, it sounds like it’s too good to be true.”
Nivi：你愿意多谈谈“在 1000 个平行宇宙中你希望在 999 个宇宙里变得富有”这个观点吗？我觉得有些人看到这句话会说，“这听起来不可能，听起来好得令人难以置信。”

Naval: No, I don’t think it’s impossible. I think that you may have to work a little bit harder at it given your starting circumstances. I started as a poor kid in India, so if I can make it, anybody can, in that sense.
Naval：不，我不认为这是不可能的。我觉得鉴于你起步的环境，你可能需要更努力一些。我是印度的一个贫穷孩子出身，所以如果我能成功，从这个意义上说，任何人都可以。

Now, obviously, I had all my limbs and I had my mental faculties and I did have an education. There are some prerequisites you can’t get past. But if you’re listening to this video or podcast, you probably have the requisite means at your disposal, which is a functioning body and a functioning mind.
显然，我有四肢健全，有正常的思维能力，也接受过教育。有些先决条件是无法逾越的。但如果你正在听这个视频或播客，你大概已经具备了必要的条件，那就是一个正常运作的身体和头脑。

And I’ve encountered plenty of bad luck along the way. The first little fortune that I made, I instantly lost in the stock market. The second little fortune that I made, or I should have made, I basically got cheated by my business partners. It’s only the third time around has been a charm.
在这条路上，我也遇到了不少厄运。我赚到的第一个小财富，立刻就在股市中亏光了。第二次本该赚到的小财富，基本上被我的商业伙伴骗走了。只有第三次才算是幸运。

And, even then, it has been in a slow and steady struggle. I haven’t made money in my life in one giant payout. It’s always been a whole bunch of small things piling up. It’s more about consistently creating wealth by creating businesses, including opportunities and creating investments. It hasn’t been a giant one-off thing.
即便如此，这也是一场缓慢而稳定的奋斗。我一生中没有靠一次巨额回报赚到钱。总是许多小的积累堆积起来。更多的是通过持续地创造财富，建立企业，包括创造机会和投资。这不是一次性的大赚一笔。

Wealth stacks up one chip at a time, not all at once
财富是一次积累一筹码，而不是一次性全部获得

My personal wealth has not been generated by one big year. It stacks up little bit, chips at a time. More options, more businesses, more investments, more things that I can do.
我的个人财富不是靠某一年暴富积累起来的。它是一点一点积累的，像筹码一样。更多的选择，更多的生意，更多的投资，更多我能做的事情。

Same way that someone like Nenad, illacertus, he’s building his brand online. He’s building videos. It’s not like any one video is going to suddenly shower him with riches overnight. It’s going to be a long lifetime of learning, of reading, of creating that’s going to compound.
就像 Nenad，illacertus 这样的人，他在网上打造自己的品牌。他在制作视频。并不是某个视频会让他一夜暴富。这是一个漫长的学习、阅读和创作的过程，会逐渐积累起来。

We’re talking about getting wealthy so you can retire, so you have your freedom. Not retire in the sense that you don’t do anything. But in the sense that you don’t have to be any place you don’t want to be, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do, you can wake up when you want, you can sleep when you want, you don’t have a boss. That’s freedom.
我们谈论的是变得富有，以便你可以退休，拥有自由。不是说退休后什么都不做，而是说你不必去你不想去的地方，不必做你不想做的事，你可以想什么时候醒就什么时候醒，想什么时候睡就什么时候睡，没有老板。这就是自由。

We’re talking about enough wealth to get to freedom. Especially thanks to the Internet these days, though, opportunities are massively abundant. I, in fact, have too many ways to make money, I don’t have enough time. I have opportunities pouring out of my ears and the thing I keep running out of is time.
我们谈论的是足够的财富来获得自由。尤其是现在有了互联网，机会极其丰富。事实上，我有太多赚钱的方式，时间却不够用。机会多得让我应接不暇，而我最缺的就是时间。

There’s just so many ways to create wealth, to create products, to create businesses, to create opportunities, and to, as a byproduct, get paid by society that I can’t even handle it all.
创造财富、创造产品、创造企业、创造机会的方式实在太多了，而作为副产品，从社会中获得报酬的方式也多得让我应接不暇。

Make Luck Your Destiny
让运气成为你的命运

Build your character in a way that luck becomes deterministic
塑造你的品格，使运气变得可预测

Nivi: I think it’s pretty interesting that the first three kinds of luck that you described there are very common cliches for them that everybody knows. And then for that last kind of luck that comes to you out of the unique way that you act, there’s no real cliche for it.
Nivi：我觉得很有趣的是，你刚才描述的前三种运气都有非常常见的陈词滥调，大家都知道。而对于最后一种通过你独特行为方式而来的运气，却没有真正的陈词滥调。

So, for the first three kinds, there’s “dumb luck,” or “blind luck.” That’s the first kind of luck. The second kind of luck there’s the cliché that “fortune favors the bold.” That’s a person who gets lucky just by stirring the pot and acting. The third kind of luck, people say that “chance favors the prepared mind.”
所以，前三种运气有“愚蠢的运气”或“盲目的运气”。这是第一种运气。第二种运气有一句陈词滥调：“幸运青睐勇敢者。”这是指那些通过搅动局面和行动而获得好运的人。第三种运气，人们常说“机会青睐有准备的头脑。”

But for the fourth kind of luck, there isn’t a common cliché out there that matches the unique character of your action, which I think is interesting and perhaps an opportunity and it also shows that people aren’t necessarily taking advantage of that kind of luck the way they should be.
但对于第四种运气，目前并没有一个通用的陈词滥调能匹配你行动的独特性质，我觉得这很有趣，也许是一个机会，同时也表明人们并没有像他们应该的那样利用这种运气。

Naval: I think also at that point, it starts becoming so deterministic that it stops being luck. So, the definition starts fading from luck to more destiny. So, I would characterize that fourth one as you build your character in a certain way and then your character becomes your destiny.
Naval：我认为到了那个阶段，它开始变得如此决定论，以至于不再是运气了。所以，这个定义开始从运气转向更多的命运。因此，我会将第四种运气描述为你以某种方式塑造了你的性格，然后你的性格成为了你的命运。

Build your character so opportunity finds you
塑造你的性格，让机会找到你

One of the things I think that is important to making money, when you want the kind of reputation that makes people do deals through you. I use the example of like, if you’re a great diver then treasure hunters will come and give you a piece of the treasure for your diving skills.
我认为赚钱的重要因素之一是，当你想要那种让人们通过你达成交易的声誉时。我举个例子，比如说，如果你是一个出色的潜水员，那么寻宝者会因为你的潜水技能而给你一份宝藏的分成。

If you’re a trusted, reliable, high-integrity, long-term thinking deal maker, then when other people want to do deals but they don’t know how to do them in a trustworthy manner with strangers, they will literally approach you and give you a cut of the deal or offer you a unique deal just because of the integrity and reputation that you have built up.
如果你是一个值得信赖、可靠、高诚信、具有长远眼光的交易者，那么当其他人想做交易但不知道如何以可信赖的方式与陌生人进行时，他们实际上会主动找你，并因为你建立的诚信和声誉而给你分成或提供独特的交易机会。

Warren Buffett, he gets offered deals, and he gets to buy companies, and he gets to buy warrants, and bailout banks and do things that other people can’t do because of his reputation.
沃伦·巴菲特，他会收到交易邀约，能够购买公司、购买认股权证、救助银行，做其他人无法做到的事情，这都是因为他的声誉。

But of course that’s fragile. It has accountability on the line, it has a strong brand on the line, and as we will talk about later, that comes with accountability attached.
但当然，这种声誉是脆弱的。它关系到责任，也关系到强大的品牌，正如我们稍后会谈到的，这伴随着责任。

But I would say your character, your reputation, these are things that you can build that then will let you take up advantage of opportunities that other people may characterize as lucky but you know that it wasn’t luck.
但我想说的是，你的品格、你的声誉，这些都是你可以建立起来的东西，它们会让你抓住那些别人可能认为是幸运的机会，而你知道那并非运气。

Nivi: You said that this fourth kind of luck is more or less a destiny. There’s a quote from that original book that was in Marc’s blog posts from Benjamin Disraeli, who I think was the former prime minister of the UK. The quote to describe this kind of luck was, “we make our fortunes and we call them fate.”
Nivi：你说第四种运气或多或少是一种命运。马克博客文章中引用了本杰明·迪斯雷利的一句话，我认为他是英国前首相。用来描述这种运气的那句话是：“我们创造了自己的财富，却称之为命运。”

You have to be a little eccentric to be out on the frontier by yourself
你得有点古怪，才能独自一人在前沿地带。

There were a couple other interesting things about this kind of luck that were mentioned in the blog post, I think it’ll be good for the listeners to hear about is that, this fourth kind of luck can almost come out of eccentric ways that you do your things and that eccentricity is not necessarily a bad thing in this case. In fact, it’s a good thing.
博客文章中还提到了关于这种运气的另外几个有趣点，我觉得听众们听听会很有帮助，那就是，这第四种运气几乎可以来自你做事时的古怪方式，而这种古怪在这里不一定是坏事。事实上，这是件好事。

Naval: Yeah, absolutely. Because the world is a very efficient place, so, everyone has dug through all the obvious places to dig and so to find something that’s new and novel and uncovered, it helps to be operating on a frontier.
Naval：是的，绝对如此。因为这个世界非常高效，每个人都已经挖掘过所有显而易见的地方，所以要找到一些新的、新颖的、未被发现的东西，确实需要在前沿地带行动。

Where right there you have to be a little eccentric to be out on the frontier by yourself, and then you have to be willing to dig deeper than other people do, deeper than seems rational just because you’re interested.
在那里，你必须有点古怪，才能独自一人在边境上生活，然后你还得比别人更愿意深入挖掘，比看起来理性所要求的更深入，仅仅因为你感兴趣。

Nivi: Yeah, the two quotes that I’ve seen that express this kind of luck in addition to that Benjamin Disraeli one, are this one from Sam Altman where he said, “extreme people get extreme results.” I think that’s pretty nice. And then there’s this other one from Jeffrey Pfeffer, who is a professor at Stanford that, “you can’t be normal and expect abnormal returns.” I’ve always enjoyed that one too.
Nivi：是的，除了本杰明·迪斯雷利的那句名言外，我见过的表达这种运气的两句名言是，萨姆·奥特曼说的，“极端的人会得到极端的结果。”我觉得这句话挺不错的。还有斯坦福教授杰弗里·菲弗说的，“你不能平凡却期望获得非凡的回报。”我也一直很喜欢这句。

Naval: Yeah. And one quote that I like which is the exact opposite of that is, “play stupid games win stupid prizes.” A lot of people spend a lot of their time playing social games like on Twitter where you’re trying to improve your social standing and you basically win stupid social prizes which are worthless.
Naval：是的。我喜欢的一句完全相反的话是，“玩愚蠢的游戏，就赢愚蠢的奖品。”很多人花大量时间玩社交游戏，比如在推特上，你试图提升自己的社交地位，结果赢得的只是毫无价值的愚蠢社交奖品。

Nivi: I guess the last thing that I have from this blog post is the idea that by pursuing these kinds of luck especially the last one, basically everything but dumb luck, by pursuing them you essentially run out of unluck. So, if you just keep stirring the pot and stirring the pot, that alone you will run out of unluck.
Nivi：我想我从这篇博客文章中得到的最后一个想法是，通过追求这些类型的运气，尤其是最后一种，基本上除了愚蠢的运气之外，通过追求它们，你本质上会用尽坏运气。所以，如果你不停地搅动局面，仅凭这一点你就会用尽坏运气。

Naval: Yeah, or it could just be reversion to the mean. So, then you at least neutralized luck so that it’s your own talents that come into play.
Naval：是的，或者这也可能只是回归均值。所以，至少你中和了运气，这样就轮到你自己的才能发挥作用了。

You Won’t Get Rich Renting Out Your Time
你不会通过出租时间变得富有

You can’t earn non-linearly when you’re renting out your time
当你出租时间时，你无法实现非线性收入增长

You won’t get rich renting out your time
你不会通过出租时间变得富有

Nivi: Next you go into more specific details on how you can actually get rich, and how you can’t get rich. The first point was about how you’re not going to get rich: “You are not going to get rich renting out your time. You must own equity, a piece of the business to gain your financial freedom.”
Nivi：接下来你详细讲了如何真正变富，以及为什么不能变富。第一个观点是关于你不会变富的原因：“你不会通过出租时间变得富有。你必须拥有股权，拥有企业的一部分，才能获得财务自由。”

Naval: This is probably one of the absolute most important points. People seem to think that you can create wealth, and make money through work. And it’s probably not going to work. There are many reasons for that.
Naval：这可能是最重要的观点之一。人们似乎认为可以通过工作创造财富和赚钱，但这很可能行不通。原因有很多。

But the most basic is just that your inputs are very closely tied to your outputs. In almost any salaried job, even at one that’s paying a lot per hour like a lawyer, or a doctor, you’re still putting in the hours, and every hour you get paid.
但最基本的原因是你的投入和产出紧密相关。在几乎所有的有薪工作中，即使是像律师或医生这样每小时收入很高的职业，你仍然是在投入时间，每投入一小时就获得相应的报酬。

So, what that means is when you’re sleeping, you’re not earning. When you’re retired, you’re not earning. When you’re on vacation, you’re not earning. And you can’t earn non-linearly.
所以，这意味着当你在睡觉时，你没有赚钱。当你退休时，你没有赚钱。当你度假时，你没有赚钱。而且你不能非线性地赚钱。

If you look at even doctors who get rich, like really rich, it’s because they open a business. They open like a private practice. And that private practice builds a brand, and that brand attracts people. Or they build some kind of a medical device, or a procedure, or a process with an intellectual property.
即使是那些变得非常富有的医生，也是因为他们开了自己的生意。他们开了私人诊所。那个私人诊所建立了一个品牌，而那个品牌吸引了人们。或者他们开发了某种医疗设备、手术程序或拥有知识产权的流程。

So, essentially you’re working for somebody else, and that person is taking on the risk, and has the accountability, and the intellectual property, and the brand. So, they’re just not gonna pay you enough. They’re gonna pay you the bare minimum that they have to, to get you to do their job. And that can be a high bare minimum, but it’s still not gonna be true wealth where you’re retired.
所以，基本上你是在为别人工作，而那个人承担风险，负责管理，拥有知识产权和品牌。所以，他们不会给你足够的报酬。他们只会支付让你完成他们工作的最低工资。这个最低工资可能很高，但仍然不会是真正的财富，无法让你退休。

Renting out your time means you’re essentially replaceable
出租你的时间意味着你本质上是可以被替代的。

And then finally you’re actually just not even creating that much original for society. Like I said, this tweetstorm should have been called “How to Create Wealth.” It’s just “How to Get Rich” was a more catchy title. But you’re not creating new things for society. You’re just doing things over and over.
最后，你实际上并没有为社会创造太多原创的东西。就像我说的，这个推文风暴本应该叫做“如何创造财富”。只是“如何变富”这个标题更吸引人罢了。但你并没有为社会创造新事物，你只是不断重复做同样的事情。

And you’re essentially replaceable because you’re now doing a set role. Most set roles can be taught. If they can be taught like in a school, then eventually you’re gonna be competing with someone who’s got more recent knowledge, who’s been taught, and is coming in to replace you.
而且你本质上是可以被替代的，因为你现在做的是一个固定的角色。大多数固定角色都是可以被教会的。如果它们能像在学校里那样被教会，那么最终你将会和那些掌握了最新知识、受过培训、准备来替代你的人竞争。

You’re much more likely to be doing a job that can be eventually replaced by a robot, or by an AI. And it doesn’t even have to be wholesale replaced over night. It can be replaced a little bit at a time. And that kind of eats into your wealth creation, and therefore your earning capability.
你很可能正在做一份最终会被机器人或人工智能取代的工作。而且这不必是一夜之间完全取代，可以一点一点地被替代。这种情况会侵蚀你的财富创造能力，从而影响你的赚钱能力。

So, fundamentally your inputs are matched to your outputs. You are replaceable, and you’re not being creative. I just don’t think that, that is a way that you can truly make money.
所以，根本上你的投入和产出是匹配的。你是可以被替代的，而且你并没有发挥创造力。我只是觉得，这并不是你真正能赚钱的方式。

You must own equity to gain your financial freedom
你必须拥有股权才能获得财务自由

So everybody who really makes money at some point owns a piece of a product, or a business, or some kind of IP. That can be through stock options, so you can be working at a tech company. That’s a fine way to start.
所以，所有真正赚钱的人在某个阶段都会拥有某个产品、企业或某种知识产权的一部分。这可以通过股票期权实现，比如你可以在一家科技公司工作。这是一个不错的起点。

But usually the real wealth is created by starting your own companies, or by even investors. They’re in an investment firm, and they’re buying equity. These are much more the routes to wealth. It doesn’t come through the hours.
但通常真正的财富是通过创办自己的公司，或者通过投资者来创造的。他们在投资公司工作，购买股权。这些才是通往财富的主要途径。财富不是通过时间换来的。

You want a career where your inputs don’t match your outputs
你想要的是一个你的投入和产出不成正比的职业

You really just want a job, or a career, or a profession where your inputs don’t match your outputs. If you look at modern society, again this is later in the tweetstorm. Businesses that have high creativity and high leverage tends to be ones where you could do an hour of work, and it can have a huge effect. Or you can do 1,000 hours of work, and it can have no effect.
你真正想要的是一个工作、职业或行业，在那里你的投入和产出不成正比。如果你观察现代社会，这也是后面推文风暴中提到的。那些具有高度创造力和高杠杆效应的企业，往往是你做一小时工作就能产生巨大影响，或者你做一千小时工作却毫无效果的那种。

For example, look at software engineering. One great engineer can for example create bitcoin, and create billions of dollars worth of value. And an engineer who is working on the wrong thing, or not quite as good, or just not as creative, or thoughtful, or whatever, can work for an entire a year, and every piece of code they ship ends up not getting used. Customers don’t want it.
例如，看看软件工程。一位优秀的工程师可以创造比特币，创造数十亿美元的价值。而一个做错事情、能力稍逊、缺乏创造力或思考的工程师，可能整整一年工作，写出的每一行代码最终都没人使用，客户不需要它。

That is an example of a profession where the input and the outputs are highly disconnected. It’s not based on the number of hours that you put in.
这是一个输入和输出高度脱节的职业例子。它并不取决于你投入的小时数。

Whereas on the extreme other end, if you’re a lumberjack, even the best lumberjack in the world, assuming you’re not working with tools, so the inputs and outputs are clearly connected. You’re just using an ax, or a saw. You know, the best lumberjack in the world may be like 3x better than one of the worst lumberjacks, right? It’s not gonna be a gigantic difference.
而在极端的另一端，如果你是一个伐木工人，即使是世界上最好的伐木工人，假设你不使用工具，那么投入和产出是直接相关的。你只是用斧头或锯子。你知道，世界上最好的伐木工人可能比最差的伐木工人好三倍，对吧？这不会是一个巨大的差别。

So, you want to look for professions and careers where the inputs and outputs are highly disconnected. This is another way of saying that you want to look for things that are leveraged. And by leveraged I don’t mean financial leveraged alone, like Wall Street uses, and that has a bad name. I’m just talking about tools. We’re using tools.
所以，你想寻找那些投入和产出高度脱节的职业和事业。这换句话说就是你想寻找那些有杠杆效应的事情。而我说的杠杆效应不仅仅是金融杠杆，比如华尔街使用的那种，那个词有坏名声。我只是说工具。我们在使用工具。

A computer is a tool that software engineers use. If I’m a lumberjack with bulldozers, and automatic robot axes, and saws, I’m gonna be using tools, and have more leverage than someone who is just using his bare hands, and trying to rip the trees out by the roots.
计算机是软件工程师使用的工具。如果我是一个拥有推土机、自动机器人斧头和锯子的伐木工人，我会使用工具，拥有比仅用双手试图连根拔起树木的人更多的杠杆效应。

Tools and leverage are what create this disconnection between inputs and outputs. Creativity, so the higher the creativity component of a profession, the more likely it is to have disconnected inputs and outputs.
工具和杠杆正是造成投入与产出脱节的原因。创造力，因此，一个职业中创造力成分越高，投入与产出脱节的可能性就越大。

So, I think that if you’re looking at professions where your inputs and your outputs are highly connected, it’s gonna be very, very, hard to create wealth, and make wealth for yourself in that process.
所以，我认为如果你所从事的职业中，投入和产出高度相关，那么在这个过程中创造财富并为自己积累财富将会非常非常困难。

Live Below Your Means for Freedom
节俭生活以获得自由

People busy upgrading their lifestyles just can’t fathom this freedom
那些忙着提升生活水平的人根本无法理解这种自由。

People living below their means have freedom
生活节俭的人拥有自由

Nivi: Any other big things you should avoid, other than renting out your time?
Nivi：除了出租你的时间之外，还有什么大事是你应该避免的吗？

Naval: Yeah, there are two tweets that I put out that are related. The first one I was talking about where someone, like, how your lifestyle has to upgrade, shouldn’t get upgraded too fast. And that one basically said, people who are living far below their means enjoy a freedom that people busy upgrading their lifestyles just can’t fathom.
Naval：是的，我发过两条相关的推文。第一条是说，有人提到你的生活方式不应该升级得太快。那条推文的意思是，生活远低于自己经济能力的人享有一种自由，那些忙着升级生活方式的人根本无法理解这种自由。

And I think that’s very important, just to not upgrade your lifestyle all the time. To maintain your freedom. And it just gives you freedom of operation. You basically, once you make a little bit of money, you still want to be living like your old self, so that just the worry goes away. So, don’t run out to upgrade that house, and lifestyle, and all that stuff.
我认为这非常重要，就是不要总是升级你的生活方式。这样才能保持你的自由。这会给你行动的自由。基本上，一旦你赚了一点钱，你仍然想保持以前的生活方式，这样担忧就会消失。所以，不要急着去升级房子、生活方式和所有那些东西。

The most dangerous things are heroin and a monthly salary
最危险的东西是海洛因和月薪

Let’s say you’re getting paid $1,000 an hour. The problem is, is that when you go into a work lifestyle like that, you don’t just suddenly go from making $20 an hour to making $1,000 an hour. That’s a progression over a long career.
假设你每小时赚 1000 美元。问题是，当你进入那种工作生活方式时，你不会突然从每小时赚 20 美元变成每小时赚 1000 美元。这是一个长期职业生涯中的渐进过程。

And as that happens, one subtle problem is that you upgrade your lifestyle as you make more, and more money. And that upgrading of the lifestyle kind of ups what you consider to be wealth, and you stay in this wage slave trap.
随着这种变化发生，一个微妙的问题是，随着你赚得越来越多，你会提升自己的生活方式。而这种生活方式的提升会提高你对财富的认知标准，让你一直陷在工资奴隶的陷阱里。

So, I forget who said it, maybe it was Nassim Taleb. But he said, “The most dangerous things are heroin, and a monthly salary.” Right, because they are highly addictive. The way you want to get wealthy is you want to be poor, and working, and working, and working.
我忘了是谁说的，可能是纳西姆·塔勒布。但他说过，“最危险的东西是海洛因和月薪。”对，因为它们极具成瘾性。你想变得富有的方式是，你得先穷，然后不断地工作、工作、再工作。

Ideally, you’ll make your money in discrete lumps
理想情况下，你会一次次地赚到一大笔钱

And this is for example how the tech industry works. Where you don’t make any money for ten years, and then suddenly at year eleven, you might have a giant payday.
这就是科技行业的运作方式。你可能十年都赚不到钱，然后突然在第十一年，可能会有一次巨大的收入。

Which is by the way one reason why these very high marginal tax rates for the so-called wealthy are flawed because the highest risk-taking, most creative professions you literally lose money for a decade over your life, while you take massive risk, and you bleed, and bleed, and bleed.
顺便说一句，这也是为什么对所谓富人征收极高边际税率存在缺陷的原因之一，因为那些承担最高风险、最具创造性的职业，你实际上可能十年都在亏钱，承担巨大风险，不断流血流汗。

And then suddenly in year eleven, or year fifteen, you might have one single big payday. But then of course Uncle Sam show up, and basically say, “Hey, you know what, you just made a lot money this year. Therefore, you’re rich. Therefore, you’re evil and you’ve got to hand it all over to us.” So, it just destroys those kinds of creative risk taking professions.
然后突然在第十一年或第十五年，你可能会有一次巨大的收入。但随后，当然是山姆大叔出现，基本上说：“嘿，你知道吗，你今年赚了很多钱。因此，你很富有。因此，你是邪恶的，你必须把钱全部交给我们。”所以，这种做法毁掉了那些富有创造性和冒险精神的职业。

But ideally you want to make your money in discrete lumps, separated over long periods of time, so that your own lifestyle does not have a chance to adapt quickly, and then you basically say, “Okay, now I’m done. Now I’m retired. Now I’m free. I’m still gonna work because you got to do something with your life, but I’m gonna work on only the things that I want, when I want.” And so you have much more creative expression, and much less about money.
但理想情况下，你希望将钱分成几笔大额收入，分布在较长的时间段内，这样你的生活方式就没有机会迅速适应，然后你基本上可以说，“好了，我完成了。现在我退休了。现在我自由了。我仍然会工作，因为你必须为生活做点什么，但我只会做我想做的事情，什么时候想做就什么时候做。”这样你就有了更多的创造性表达，钱的重要性也大大降低了。

Give Society What It Doesn’t Know How to Get
给予社会它不知道如何获得的东西

Society will pay you for creating what it wants and delivering it at scale
社会会为你创造它想要的东西并大规模交付而付钱给你

Give society what it wants, but doesn’t know how to get—at scale
给予社会它想要但不知道如何大规模获得的东西

Nivi: You’re not gonna get rich renting out your time. But you say that, “you will get rich by giving society what it wants, but does not yet know how to get at scale.”
Nivi：你靠出租时间是赚不到大钱的。但你说，“你会通过给社会提供它想要的，但还不知道如何大规模获得的东西来致富。”

Naval: That’s right. So, essentially as we talked about before, money is IOUs from society saying, “You did something good in the past. Now here’s something that we owe you for the future.” And so society will pay you for creating things that it wants.
Naval：没错。所以，正如我们之前所说，钱本质上是社会的欠条，表示“你过去做了件好事。现在这是我们欠你未来的东西。”因此，社会会为你创造它想要的东西而付钱。

But society doesn’t yet know how to create those things because if it did, they wouldn’t need you. They would already be stamped out big time.
但社会还不知道如何创造那些东西，因为如果知道了，就不需要你了。那些东西早就大规模生产出来了。

Almost everything that’s in your house, in your workplace, and on the street used to be technology at one point in time. There was a time when oil was a technology, that made J.D. Rockefeller rich. There was a time when cars were technology, that made Henry Ford rich.
你家里、工作场所和街道上的几乎所有东西，曾经都是技术。有一段时间，石油是一项技术，让 J.D.洛克菲勒变得富有。有一段时间，汽车是一项技术，让亨利·福特变得富有。

So, technology is just the set of things, as Alan Kay said, that don’t quite work yet [correction: Danny Hillis]. Once something works, it’s no longer technology. So, society always wants new things.
所以，技术就是一套东西，正如艾伦·凯所说，那些还不完全可行的东西【更正：丹尼·希利斯说的】。一旦某样东西可行了，它就不再是技术了。所以，社会总是渴望新事物。

Figure out what product you can provide and then figure out how to scale it
弄清楚你能提供什么产品，然后再弄清楚如何将其规模化。

And if you want to be wealthy, you want to figure out which one of those things you can provide for society, that it does not yet know how to get, but it will want, that’s natural to you, and within your skillset, within your capabilities.
如果你想变得富有，你需要弄清楚哪些东西是你能为社会提供的，而社会还不知道如何获得，但将会需要的，这些东西对你来说是自然的，且在你的技能范围和能力之内。

And then you have to figure out how to scale it. Because if you just build one of it, that’s not enough. You’ve got to build thousands, or hundreds of thousands, or millions, or billions of them. So, everybody can have one.
然后你必须弄清楚如何将其规模化。因为如果你只制造一个，那是不够的。你必须制造成千上万，甚至数百万、数十亿个。这样，每个人都能拥有一个。

Steve Jobs, and his team of course figured out that society would want smartphones. A computer in their pocket that had all the phone capability times 100, and be easy to use. So, they figured out how to build that, and then they figured out how to scale it.
史蒂夫·乔布斯和他的团队当然意识到社会会需要智能手机。一台口袋里的电脑，拥有所有电话功能的百倍能力，而且易于使用。所以，他们想出了如何制造它，然后又想出了如何规模化生产。

And they figured out how to get one into every First World citizen’s pocket, and eventually every Third World citizen too. And so because of that they’re handsomely rewarded, and Apple is the most valuable company in the world.
他们还想出了如何让每个第一世界国家的公民口袋里都有一部，最终也让每个第三世界国家的公民拥有一部。正因为如此，他们获得了丰厚的回报，苹果也成为了世界上最有价值的公司。

Nivi: The way I tried to put it was that the entrepreneur’s job is to try to bring the high end to the mass market.
Nivi：我试图表达的是，企业家的工作就是将高端产品带入大众市场。

Naval: It starts as high end. First it starts as an act of creativity. First you create it just because you want it. You want it, and you know how to build it, and you need it. And so you build it for yourself. Then you figure out how to get it to other people. And then for a little while rich people have it.
Naval：一开始是高端的。最初它是一种创造行为。你首先创造它，仅仅是因为你想要它。你想要它，你知道如何去建造它，而且你需要它。所以你为自己建造它。然后你想办法把它带给其他人。然后有一段时间，富人拥有它。

Like, for example rich people had chauffeurs, and then they had black town cars. And then Uber came along, and everyone’s private driver is available to everybody. And now you can even see Uber pools that are replacing shuttle buses because it’s more convenient. And then you get scooters, which are even further down market of that. So, you’re right. It’s about distributing what rich people used to have to everybody.
比如说，富人曾经有专职司机，然后他们有了黑色豪华轿车。后来 Uber 出现了，每个人的私人司机都变得对所有人开放。现在你甚至可以看到 Uber 拼车取代了班车，因为它更方便。然后出现了滑板车，这甚至更贴近大众市场。所以，你说得对。这就是把富人曾经拥有的东西分发给所有人。

But the entrepreneur’s job starts even before that, which is creation. Entrepreneurship is essentially an act of creating something new from scratch. Predicting that society will want it, and then figuring out how to scale it, and get it to everybody in a profitable way, in a self-sustaining way.
但创业者的工作甚至在这之前就开始了，那就是创造。创业本质上是一种从零开始创造新事物的行为。预测社会会需要它，然后想办法将其规模化，以盈利的方式、自我维持的方式让所有人都能获得它。

The Internet Has Massively Broadened Career Possibilities
互联网极大地拓宽了职业可能性。

The Internet allows you to scale any niche obsession
互联网让你能够扩大任何小众兴趣的规模

The Internet has massively broadened the possible space of careers
互联网极大地拓宽了职业的可能领域

Nivi: Let’s look at this next tweet, which I thought was cryptic, and also super interesting, about the kind of job or career that you might have. You said, “The internet has massively broadened the possible space of careers. Most people haven’t figured this out yet.”
Nivi：我们来看下一条推文，我觉得它既隐晦又非常有趣，关于你可能拥有的那种工作或职业。你说：“互联网极大地拓宽了职业的可能领域。大多数人还没有意识到这一点。”

Naval: The fundamental property of the internet more than any other single thing is it connects every human to each other human on the planet. You can now reach everyone.
Naval：互联网最根本的特性，比任何其他单一事物都重要，就是它将地球上每个人连接到其他每个人。你现在可以接触到所有人。

Whether it’s by emailing them personally, whether it’s by broadcasting to them on Twitter, whether it’s by posting something on Facebook that they find, whether it’s by putting up a website they come and access.
无论是通过给他们发送个人邮件，还是通过在推特上向他们广播，或者是在脸书上发布他们能看到的内容，亦或是搭建一个他们可以访问的网站。

It connects everyone to everyone. So, the internet is an inter-networking tool. It connects everybody. That is its superpower. So, you want to use that.
它将每个人连接到每个人。所以，互联网是一个互联工具。它连接所有人。这就是它的超能力。所以，你要利用这一点。

What that helps you figure out is the internet means you can find your audience for your product, or your talent, and skill no matter how far away they are.
这能帮助你明白，互联网意味着无论你的产品、才华或技能的受众有多远，你都能找到他们。

For example, Nenad, who is Illacertus, if you look at his videos pre-internet, how would he get the message out there? It would just be … what would he do? He would run around where he lives in his neighborhood showing it to people on a computer, or a screen? Or he would try to get it played at his local movie theater? It was impossible. It only works because he can put it on the internet.
例如，Nenad，也就是 Illacertus，如果你看他互联网出现之前的视频，他怎么把信息传播出去？那会是……他会怎么做？他会在自己住的社区里跑来跑去，拿着电脑或屏幕给人们看？还是他会试图让当地电影院播放？那是不可能的。只有因为他能把内容放到互联网上，才有可能。

And then how many people in the world are really interested in it? Or even in interested in what we’re talking about are really gonna absorb it, right? It’s gonna be a very small subset of humanity. The key is being able to reach them.
那么，世界上有多少人真正对这感兴趣？或者甚至对我们谈论的内容感兴趣的人，真正会吸收的又有多少，对吧？这将是人类中非常小的一部分。关键是能够接触到他们。

The Internet allows you to scale any niche obsession
互联网让你能够扩大任何小众的痴迷群体。

So, what the internet does is allows any niche obsession, which could be just the weirdest thing. It could be like people who collect snakes, to like people who like to ride hot air balloons, to people who like to sail around the world by themselves, just one person on a craft, or someone who’s obsessed with miniature cooking. Like, there’s this whole Japanese miniature cooking phenomenon. Or there’s a show about a woman who goes in people’s houses, and tidies it up, right?
所以，互联网所做的就是允许任何小众的痴迷，这可能是最奇怪的事情。可能是收集蛇的人，喜欢乘坐热气球的人，喜欢独自一人驾船环游世界的人，或者痴迷于微型烹饪的人。比如，有一个完整的日本微型烹饪现象。或者有一个节目，讲的是一个女人走进别人家里，帮他们整理收拾，对吧？

So, whatever niche obsession you have, the internet allows you to scale. Now that’s not to say that what you build will be the next Facebook, or reach billions of users, but if you just want to reach 50,000 passionate people like you, there’s an audience out there for you.
所以，无论你有什么小众的痴迷，互联网都允许你扩大影响力。这并不是说你所建立的东西会成为下一个 Facebook，或者达到数十亿用户，但如果你只是想接触到像你一样有激情的 5 万人，那外面就有这样的受众。

So the beauty of this is that we have 7 billion human beings on the planet. The combinatorics of human DNA are incredible. Everyone is completely different. You’ll never meet any two people who are even vaguely similar to each other, that can substitute for each other.
这其中的美妙之处在于，我们地球上有 70 亿人类。人类 DNA 的组合是惊人的。每个人都是完全不同的。你永远不会遇到两个即使稍微相似、可以互相替代的人。

It’s not like you can say, “Well, Nivi, just left my life. So, I can have this other person come in, and he’s just like Nivi. And I get the same feelings, and the same responses, and the same ideas.” No. There are no substitutes for people. People are completely unique.
你不能说，“嗯，Nivi 刚离开了我的生活，所以我可以让另一个人进来，他和 Nivi 一模一样。我能获得同样的感受、同样的反应、同样的想法。”不行。人是无法替代的。每个人都是独一无二的。

So, given that each person has different skillsets, different interests, different obsessions. And it’s that diversity that becomes a creative superpower. So, each person can be creatively superb at their own unique thing.
所以，鉴于每个人拥有不同的技能、不同的兴趣、不同的执着。正是这种多样性成为了一种创造力的超级力量。每个人都能在自己独特的领域展现出卓越的创造力。

But before that didn’t matter. Because if you were living in a little fishing village in Italy, like your fishing village didn’t necessarily need your completely unique skill, and you had to conform to just the few jobs that were available. But now today you can be completely unique.
但以前这并不重要。因为如果你生活在意大利的一个小渔村里，你的渔村不一定需要你那完全独特的技能，你必须适应仅有的几个工作岗位。但现在，你可以完全独一无二。

You can go out on the internet, and you can find your audience. And you can build a business, and create a product, and build wealth, and make people happy just uniquely expressing yourself through the internet.
你可以上网，找到你的受众。你可以建立一个企业，创造一个产品，积累财富，通过互联网独特地表达自己，让人们感到快乐。

The space of careers has been so broadened. E-sports players, you know, people making millions of dollars playing Fortnite. People creating videos, and uploading them. YouTube broadcasters. Bloggers, podcasters. Joe Rogan, I read, true or false, I don’t know, but I read that he’s gonna make about $100 million a year on his podcast. And he’s had 2 billion downloads.
职业领域已经大大拓宽了。电子竞技选手，你知道的，有人靠玩《堡垒之夜》赚了数百万美元。有人制作视频并上传。YouTube 主播。博主，播客主持人。我读到乔·罗根，据说他每年靠播客赚大约 1 亿美元，真假我不确定，但我确实读到了这个数字。他的播客下载量达到了 20 亿次。

Even PewDiePie… there’s a hilarious tweet that I retweeted the other day. PewDiePie is the number one trusted name in news. This is a kid I think in Sweden, and he’s got three times the distribution of the top cable news networks. Just on his news channel. It’s not even on his entertainment channel.
甚至是 PewDiePie……我前几天转发了一条非常搞笑的推文。PewDiePie 是新闻界最受信任的名字。这是我认为来自瑞典的一个年轻人，他的新闻频道的覆盖量是顶级有线新闻网络的三倍。这还只是他的新闻频道，甚至不是他的娱乐频道。

Escape competition through authenticity
通过真实性逃避竞争

The internet enables any niche interest, as long as you’re the best at it to scale out. And the great news is because every human is different, everyone is the best at something. Being themselves.
互联网使任何小众兴趣都有可能发展壮大，只要你是其中最优秀的。好消息是，因为每个人都不同，每个人都在某方面是最棒的。做他们自己。

Another tweet I had that is worth kind of weaving in, but didn’t go into this tweetstorm, was a very simple one. I like things when I can compress them down because they’re easy to remember, and easy to hook onto. But that one was, “Escape competition through authenticity.”
我之前发过另一条推文，虽然没放进这次的推文风暴里，但也值得一提，那条推文很简单。我喜欢把事情压缩成简洁的形式，因为这样容易记住，也容易抓住重点。那条推文是：“通过真实来逃避竞争。”

Basically, when you’re competing with people it’s because you’re copying them. It’s because you’re trying to do the same thing. But every human is different. Don’t copy.
基本上，当你和别人竞争时，是因为你在模仿他们。因为你试图做同样的事情。但每个人都是不同的。不要模仿。

I know we’re mimetic creatures, and René Girard has a whole mimesis theory. But it’s much easier than that. Don’t imitate. Don’t copy. Just do your own thing. No one can compete with you on being you. It’s that simple.
我知道我们是模仿性的生物，雷内·吉拉尔（René Girard）有一整套模仿理论。但其实没那么复杂。不要模仿。不要复制。只管做你自己。没人能在做你这件事上和你竞争。就是这么简单。

And so the more authentic you are to who you are, and what you love to do, the less competition you’re gonna have. So, you can escape competition through authenticity when you realize that no one can compete with you on being you. And normally that would have been useless advice pre-internet. Post-internet you can turn that into a career.
所以，你越真实地做自己，做你热爱的事情，竞争就越少。所以，当你意识到没人能在做你这件事上和你竞争时，你就能通过真实来逃避竞争。以前互联网没普及时，这种建议没什么用。互联网时代之后，你可以把这变成一份职业。

Play Long-Term Games With Long-Term People
与长期合作的人一起玩长期游戏

All returns in life come from compound interest in long-term games
生活中的所有回报都来自长期游戏中的复利效应

Play long-term games with long-term people
与长期合作的人一起玩长期游戏

Nivi: Talk a little bit about what industries you should think about working in. What kind of job you should have? And who you might want to work with? So, you said, “One should pick an industry where you can play long-term games with long-term people.” Why?
Nivi：谈谈你应该考虑从事哪些行业。你应该做什么样的工作？你可能想和谁一起工作？你说过，“人们应该选择一个可以与长期合作的人一起玩长期游戏的行业。”为什么？

Naval: Yeah, this is an insight into what makes Silicon Valley work, and what makes high trust societies work. Essentially, all the benefits in life come from compound interests. Whether it’s in relationships, or making money, or in learning.
Naval：是的，这就是硅谷运作的秘诀，也是高信任社会运作的秘诀。本质上，生活中的所有好处都来自复利。无论是在关系中，还是赚钱，或者学习。

So, compound interest is a marvelous force, where if you start out with 1x what you have, and then if you increase 20% a year for 30 years, it’s not that you got 30 years times 20% added on. It was compounding, so it just grew, and grew, and grew until you suddenly got a massive amount of whatever it is. Whether it’s goodwill, or love, or relationships, or money. So, I think compound interest is a very important force.
复利是一种奇妙的力量，如果你从拥有 1 倍的基础开始，然后每年增长 20%，持续 30 年，这并不是简单地把 30 年乘以 20%加起来。它是复合增长，所以它不断增长，增长，增长，直到你突然拥有了大量的某种东西。无论是善意、爱、关系，还是金钱。所以，我认为复利是一种非常重要的力量。

You have to be able to play a long-term game. And long-term games are good not just for compound interest, they’re also good for trust. If you look at prisoner’s dilemma type games, a solution to prisoner’s dilemma is tit-for-tat, which is I’m just going do to you what you did last time to me, with some forgiveness in case there was a mistake made. But that only works in an iterated prisoner’s dilemma, in another words if we play a game multiple times.
你必须能够玩长期游戏。长期游戏不仅对复利有利，对信任也有好处。如果你看囚徒困境类型的游戏，囚徒困境的一个解决方案是针锋相对，也就是我会对你做你上次对我做的事情，同时带有一定的宽容，以防出现错误。但这只在反复囚徒困境中有效，换句话说，就是我们多次玩这个游戏。

So, if you’re in a situation, like for example you’re in Silicon Valley, where people are doing business with each other, and they know each other, they trust each other. Then they do right by each other because they know this person will be around for the next game.
所以，如果你处在一个环境中，比如说你在硅谷，人们彼此做生意，彼此认识，彼此信任。那么他们会对彼此公平，因为他们知道这个人在下一轮游戏中还会出现。

Now of course that doesn’t always work because you can make so much money in one move in Silicon Valley, sometimes people betray each other because they’re just like, “I’m going to get rich enough off this that I don’t care.” So, there can be exceptions to all these circumstances.
当然，这并不总是奏效，因为在硅谷你有时可以一举赚取巨额财富，有时人们会背叛彼此，因为他们会想，“我从这次赚够了钱，其他的都无所谓。”所以，这些情况都有例外。

But essentially if you want to be successful, you have to work with other people. And you have to figure out who can you trust, and who can you trust over a long, long period of time, that you can just keep playing the game with them, so that compound interest, and high trust will make it easier to play the game, and will let you collect the major rewards, which are usually at the end of the cycle.
但本质上，如果你想成功，你必须与他人合作。你必须弄清楚你能信任谁，以及谁是你可以长期信任的，可以一直和他们一起玩这场游戏的人，这样复利和高度信任会让游戏更容易进行，并让你获得主要的回报，而这些回报通常是在周期的末尾。

So, for example, Warren Buffett has done really well as an investor in the U.S. stock market, but the biggest reason he could do that was because the U.S. stock market has been stable, and around, and didn’t get for example seized by the government during a bad administration. Or the U.S. didn’t plunge into some war. The underlying platform didn’t get destroyed. So, in his case, he was playing a longterm game. And the trust came from the U.S. stock market’s stability.
例如，沃伦·巴菲特作为美国股市的投资者表现非常出色，但他之所以能做到这一点，最大的原因是美国股市一直稳定存在，并且没有在糟糕的政府管理期间被政府没收。或者美国没有陷入某场战争。其基础平台没有被摧毁。所以，在他的案例中，他是在玩一个长期游戏。而信任来自于美国股市的稳定性。

When you switch industries, you’re starting over from scratch
当你转换行业时，你就是从零开始。

In Silicon Valley, the trust comes from the network of people in the small geographic area, that you figure out over time who you can work with, and who you can’t.
在硅谷，信任来自于这个小地理区域内的人际网络，随着时间推移，你会弄清楚谁是可以合作的，谁是不可以的。

If you keep switching locations, you keep switching groups… let’s say you started out in the woodworking industry, and you built up a network there. And you’re working hard, you’re trying to build a product in the woodworking industry. And then suddenly another industry comes along that’s adjacent but different, but you don’t really know anybody in it, and you want to dive in, and make money there.
如果你不断更换地点，不断更换团队……假设你最初是在木工行业，并在那里建立了一个网络。你努力工作，试图在木工行业打造一个产品。然后突然出现了另一个相邻但不同的行业，而你在那个行业里几乎不认识任何人，你想要跳进去，在那里赚钱。

If you keep hopping from industry to … “No, actually I need to open a line of electric car stations for electric car refueling.” That might make sense. That might be the best opportunity. But every time you reset, every time you wander out of where you built your network, you’re going to be starting from scratch. You’re not going to know who to trust. They’re not going to know to trust you.
如果你总是在行业间跳来跳去……“不，实际上我需要开设一条电动汽车充电站的线路。”那可能有道理。那可能是最好的机会。但每次你重置，每次你离开你建立人脉的地方，你都得从零开始。你不知道该信任谁。他们也不知道该信任你。

There are also industries in which people are transient by definition. They’re always coming in and going out. Politics is an example of that, right? In politics new people are being elected. You see in politics that when you have a lot of old-timers, like the Senate, people who have been around for a long time, and they’ve been career politicians.
还有一些行业本质上人员流动性很大。他们总是进进出出。政治就是一个例子，对吧？在政治中，新人不断当选。你会看到政治中有很多老资格的人，比如参议院，那些长期在位的职业政治家。

There’s a lot of downside to career politicians like corruption. But an upside is they actually get deals done with each other because they know the other person is going to be in the same position ten years from now, and they’re going to have to keep dealing with them, so they might as well learn how to cooperate.
职业政治家有很多弊端，比如腐败。但好处是他们实际上能彼此达成协议，因为他们知道对方十年后还会在同一个位置上，他们必须继续与对方打交道，所以不如学会合作。

Whereas every time you get a new incoming freshman class in the House of Representatives, which turns over every two years with a big wave election. Nothing gets done because of a lot fighting. “Because I just got here, I don’t know you, I don’t know if you’re going to be around, why should I work with you rather than just try to do whatever I think is right?”
每当众议院迎来一批新的新生议员时，众议院每两年就会经历一次大规模换届选举。由于争斗激烈，什么事情都无法完成。“因为我刚到这里，我不认识你，也不知道你是否会继续留在这里，为什么我要和你合作，而不是只做我认为正确的事？”

So, it’s important to pick an industry where you can play long-term games, and with long-term people. So, those people have to signal that they’re going to be around for a long time. That they’re ethical. And their ethics are visible through their actions.
所以，选择一个你可以长期参与的行业非常重要，而且要和长期合作的人一起玩。所以，这些人必须表明他们会长期存在。他们是有道德的。而且他们的道德通过他们的行为显而易见。

Long-term players make each other rich
长期玩家让彼此变得富有

Nivi: In a long-term game, it seems that everybody is making each other rich. And in a short-term game, it seems like everybody is making themselves rich.
Nivi：在一个长期游戏中，似乎每个人都在让对方变得富有。而在一个短期游戏中，似乎每个人都在让自己变得富有。

Naval: I think that is a brilliant formulation. In a longterm game, it’s positive sum. We’re all baking the pie together. We’re trying to make it as big as possible. And in a short term game, we’re cutting up the pie.
Naval：我认为这是一个精彩的表述。在长期游戏中，是正和的。我们一起烘焙这个蛋糕。我们试图让它尽可能大。而在短期游戏中，我们是在切分蛋糕。

Now this is not to excuse the socialists, right? The socialists are the people who are not involved in baking the pie, who show up at the end, and say, “I want a slice, or I want the whole pie.” They show up with the guns.
这并不是为社会主义者开脱，对吧？社会主义者是不参与“烤馅饼”的人，他们在最后出现，说：“我要一块，或者我要整个馅饼。”他们是带着枪来的。

But I think a good leader doesn’t take credit. A good leader basically tries to inspire people, so the team gets the job done. And then things get divided up according to fairness, and who contributed how much, or as close to it as possible, and took a risk, as opposed to just whoever has the longest knife… the sharpest knife at the end.
但我认为一个好的领导者不会抢功劳。一个好的领导者基本上是试图激励人们，让团队完成任务。然后根据公平、贡献多少，或者尽可能接近公平的原则来分配成果，而不是最后由谁的刀最长……谁的刀最锋利来决定。

Returns come from compound interest in iterated games
回报来自迭代博弈中的复利效应。

Nivi: So, these next two tweets are, “Play iterated games. All returns in life, whether in wealth, relationships, or knowledge come from compound interest.”
Nivi：所以，接下来的两条推文是，“玩迭代博弈。生活中的所有回报，无论是财富、人际关系还是知识，都是来自复利效应。”

Naval: When you have been doing business with somebody, you’ve been friends with somebody for ten years, twenty years, thirty years, it just gets better and better because you trust them so easily. The friction goes down, you can do bigger, and bigger things together.
Naval：当你和某人做生意，和某人成为朋友十年、二十年、三十年时，关系只会越来越好，因为你很容易信任他们。摩擦减少了，你们可以一起做更大、更重要的事情。

For example, the simplest one is getting married to someone, and having kids, and raising children. That’s compound interest, right? Investing in those relationships. Those relationships end up being invaluable compared to more casual relationships.
举个最简单的例子，就是和某人结婚，生孩子，养育孩子。这就是复利，对吧？投资于这些关系。这些关系最终比更随意的关系更有价值。

It’s true in health and fitness. You know, the fitter you are, the easier it is to stay fit. Whereas the more you deteriorate your body, the harder it is to come back, and claw your way back to a baseline. It requires heroic acts.
这在健康和健身方面也同样适用。你知道，你越健康，保持健康就越容易。而你越是让身体退化，想要恢复到基线就越难，需要付出英雄般的努力。

Nivi: Regarding compound interest, I think I saw retweet something a while back. Maybe it was from Ed Latimore. It went something along the lines of, “Get some traction. Get purchase, and don’t lose it” [correction: the tweet is by @mmay3r]. So, the idea was to gain some initial traction, and never fall back, just keep ratcheting up, and up.
Nivi：关于复利，我记得我之前看到过转发的内容。可能是 Ed Latimore 发的。大意是，“获得一些动力，获得立足点，不要失去它”【更正：这条推文是@mmay3r 发的】。所以，意思是要获得初步的动力，永远不要倒退，只要不断地提升、提升。

Naval: I don’t remember it exactly. But I think that was right. Yes, it was like, “Get traction, and don’t let go.” It was a good one, yes.
Naval：我不记得确切的内容了。但我想应该是对的。是的，大概是“获得牵引力，然后不要放手。”这句话不错，是的。

Pick Partners With Intelligence, Energy and Integrity
选择有智慧、精力和正直的合作伙伴

You can’t compromise on any of these three
这三点你都不能妥协

Pick business partners with high intelligence, energy and integrity
选择具有高智商、高精力和高诚信的商业伙伴

Naval: In terms of picking people to work with, pick ones that have high intelligence, high energy, and high integrity, I find that’s the three-part checklist that you cannot compromise on.
纳瓦尔：在选择合作伙伴时，我发现必须选择那些具有高智商、高精力和高诚信的人，这是你绝不能妥协的三项标准。

You need someone who is smart, or they’ll head in the wrong direction. And you’re not going to end up in the right place. You need someone high-energy because the world is full of smart, lazy people.
你需要一个聪明的人，否则他们会走错方向，你也不会到达正确的地方。你需要一个精力充沛的人，因为这个世界充满了聪明但懒惰的人。

We all know people in our life who are really smart, but can’t get out of bed, or lift a finger. And we also know people who are very high energy, but not that smart. So, they work hard, but they’re sort of running in the wrong direction.
我们都认识生活中那些非常聪明，但起不来床，甚至连手指都不愿意动的人。我们也认识那些精力充沛，但不太聪明的人。他们努力工作，但方向却错了。

And smart is not a pejorative. It’s not meant to say someone is smart, someone else is stupid. But it’s more that everyone is smart at different things. So, depending on what you want to do well, you have to find someone who is smart at that thing.
聪明并不是贬义词。它并不是说某人聪明，某人愚蠢。而是说每个人在不同的事情上都很聪明。所以，根据你想要做好什么，你必须找到在那方面聪明的人。

And then energy, a lot of times people are unmotivated for a specific thing, but they’re motivated for other things. So, for example, someone might be really unmotivated to go to a job, and sit in an office. But they might be really motivated to go paint, right?
然后是精力，很多时候人们对某件事缺乏动力，但对其他事情却很有动力。举个例子，有人可能对去上班、坐在办公室里毫无动力，但他们可能非常有动力去画画，对吧？

Well, in that case they should be a painter. They should be putting art up on the internet. Trying to figure out how to build a career out of that, rather than wearing a collar around their neck, and going to a dreary job.
那么，在这种情况下，他们应该成为画家。他们应该把艺术作品放到网上，努力想办法把这变成一份职业，而不是戴着领带去做一份枯燥的工作。

And then high integrity is the most important because otherwise if you’ve got the other two, what you have is you have a smart and hard working crook, who’s eventually going to cheat you. So, you have to figure out if the person is high-integrity.
而高诚信是最重要的，因为如果没有诚信，即使你有前两者，你得到的也只是一个聪明且勤奋的骗子，最终会欺骗你。所以，你必须判断这个人是否具有高度诚信。

And as we talked about, the way you do that is through signals. And signals is what they do, not what they say. It’s all the non-verbal stuff that they do when they think nobody is looking.
正如我们所说，你做到这一点的方式是通过信号。信号是他们做的事情，而不是他们说的话。就是当他们认为没人看见时所做的所有非语言行为。

Motivation has to come intrinsically
动力必须来自内在

Nivi: With respect to the energy, there was this interesting thing from Sam Altman a while back, where he was talking about delegation, and he was saying, “One of the important things for delegation is, delegate to people who are actually good at the thing that you want them to do.”
Nivi：关于能量，之前 Sam Altman 说过一件有趣的事，他谈到委派时说：“委派的重要一点是，把任务交给那些真正擅长你希望他们做的事情的人。”

It’s the most obvious thing, but it seems like…  you want to partner with people who are naturally going to do the things that you want them to do.
这是最显而易见的事情，但看起来……你想要与那些天生就会做你希望他们做的事情的人合作。

Naval: Yeah. I almost won’t start a company, or hire a person, or work with somebody if I just don’t think they’re into what I want them to do.
Naval：是的。如果我觉得某人对我希望他们做的事情不感兴趣，我几乎不会创办公司、雇佣他们或与他们合作。

When I was younger, I used to try and talk people into things. I had this idea that you could sell someone into doing something. But you can’t. You can’t keep them motivated. You can get them inspired initially. It might work if you’re a king like Henry V, and you’re trying to get them to just charge into battle, and then they’ll figure it out.
当我年轻的时候，我常常试图说服别人去做某事。我曾经认为你可以通过说服让别人去做某事。但事实并非如此。你无法持续激励他们。你可以最初激发他们的灵感。如果你是像亨利五世那样的国王，试图让他们冲锋陷阵，那可能会奏效，然后他们会自己想办法。

But if you’re trying to keep someone motivated for the long-term, that motivation has to come intrinsically. You can’t just create it, nor can you be the crutch for them if they don’t have that intrinsic motivation. So, you have to make sure people actually are high-energy, and want to do what you want them to do, and what you want to work with them on.
但如果你想让某人长期保持动力，这种动力必须来自内在。你不能凭空创造它，也不能成为他们的依靠，如果他们没有那种内在动力。所以，你必须确保人们确实充满活力，愿意做你希望他们做的事，以及你希望与他们合作的事情。

Integrity is what someone does, despite what they say they do
诚信是指一个人做的事，而不是他说他做的事。

Reading signals is very, very important. Signals are what people do despite what they say. So, it’s important to pay attention to subtle signals. We all know that socially if someone treats a waiter, or waitress in a restaurant really badly, then it’s only a matter of time until they treat you badly.
解读信号非常非常重要。信号是指人们做的事，而不是他们说的事。所以，注意细微的信号很重要。我们都知道，如果有人在餐厅里对服务员态度很差，那么迟早他们也会对你态度不好。

If somebody screws over an enemy, and is vindictive towards them, well it’s only a matter of time before they redefine you from friend to enemy, and you feel their wrath. So, angry, outraged, vindictive, short-term thinking people are essentially that way in many interactions in real life.
如果有人对敌人下狠手，并且怀有报复心，那么迟早他们会把你从朋友重新定义为敌人，你将感受到他们的愤怒。所以，愤怒、愤慨、报复心强、短视的人在现实生活中的许多交往中本质上就是这样。

People are oddly consistent. That’s one of the things you learn about them. So, you want to find long-term people. You want to find people who seem irrationally ethical.
人们表现得奇怪地一致。这是你对他们了解后会发现的事情之一。所以，你想找到那些有长远眼光的人。你想找到那些看起来不合常理地讲道德的人。

For example, I had a friend of mine whose company I invested in, and the company failed, and he could have wiped out all of the investors. But he kept putting more and more personal money in. Through three different pivots he put personal money in until the company finally succeeded. And in the process, he never wiped out the investors.
举个例子，我有一个朋友，我投资了他的公司，但公司失败了，他本可以让所有投资者血本无归。但他不断投入更多的个人资金。经过三次不同的转型，他一直投入个人资金，直到公司最终成功。在这个过程中，他从未让投资者血本无归。

And I was always grateful to him for that. I said, “Wow, that’s amazing that you were so good to your investors. You didn’t wipe them out.” And he got offended by that. He said, “I didn’t do it for you. I didn’t do it for my investors. I did it for me. It’s my own self-esteem. It’s what I care about. That’s how I live my life.” That’s the kind of person you want to work with.
我一直很感激他。我说：“哇，你对你的投资者真好，你没有让他们血本无归。”他却因此感到被冒犯了。他说：“我不是为了你，也不是为了我的投资者。我是为了我自己。这是我的自尊心，是我关心的东西。这就是我生活的方式。”这就是你想合作的那种人。

Another quote that I like, I have a tweet on this. I think I read this somewhere else, so I’m not taking credit for this. But I kind of modified it a little bit. Which is that “self-esteem is the reputation that you have with yourself.” You’ll always know.
我喜欢的另一句名言，我在推特上也发过。我想我是在别处看到的，所以这句话的功劳不归我。但我稍微改动了一下。就是说，“自尊是你对自己所拥有的声誉。”你永远都会知道。

So, good people, moral people, ethical people, easy to work with people, reliable people, tend to have very high self-esteem because they have very good reputations with themselves, and they understand that.
所以，好人、有道德的人、讲伦理的人、容易相处的人、可靠的人，往往自尊心很强，因为他们在自己心中有很好的声誉，并且他们明白这一点。

It’s not ego. Self-esteem and ego are different things. Because ego can be undeserved, but self-esteem at least you feel like you lived up to your own internal moral code of ethics.
这不是自负。自尊和自负是不同的东西。因为自负可能是没有根据的，但自尊至少让你觉得自己遵守了内心的道德准则。

And so it’s very hard to work with people who end up being low integrity. And it’s hard to figure out who is high integrity and low integrity. Generally, the more someone is saying that they’re moral, ethical, and high integrity, the less likely they are to be that way.
所以，与那些最终缺乏诚信的人共事非常困难。而且很难分辨谁是高诚信，谁是低诚信。通常来说，一个人越是声称自己有道德、有伦理、高诚信，他实际上越不太可能是那样的人。

It’s very much like status signalling. If you overtly bid for status, if you overtly talk about being high status, that is a low status move. If you openly talk about how honest, reliable, and trustworthy you are, you’re probably not that honest and trustworthy. That is a characteristic of con men.
这很像是地位的信号传递。如果你公开地争取地位，如果你公开谈论自己地位很高，那反而是低地位的表现。如果你公开谈论自己有多诚实、可靠和值得信赖，你很可能并不那么诚实和值得信赖。这是骗子的典型特征。

So, yeah, pick an industry in which you can play long-term games with long-term people.
所以，是的，选择一个你可以与长期合作伙伴一起玩长期游戏的行业。

Partner With Rational Optimists
与理性乐观主义者合作

Don’t partner with cynics and pessimists; their beliefs are self-fulfilling
不要与愤世嫉俗者和悲观主义者合作；他们的信念会自我实现。

Don’t partner with pessimists
不要与悲观主义者合作

Nivi: Let’s do this last tweet. You said, “Don’t partner with cynics, and pessimists. Their beliefs are self-fulfilling.”
Nivi：我们来做最后一条推文。你说过，“不要与愤世嫉俗者和悲观主义者合作。他们的信念会自我实现。”

Naval: Yes. Essentially, to create things, you have to be a rational optimist. Rational in the sense that you have to see the world for what it really is. And yet you have to be optimistic about your own capabilities, and your capability to get things done.
Naval：是的。基本上，要创造东西，你必须是一个理性的乐观主义者。理性是指你必须看到世界的真实面貌，但同时你要对自己的能力以及完成事情的能力保持乐观。

We all know people who are consistently pessimistic, who will shoot down everything. Everyone in their life has the helpful critical guy, right? He thinks he’s being helpful, but he’s actually being critical, and he’s a downer on everything.
我们都认识那些一贯悲观的人，他们会否定一切。每个人的生活中都有那个自认为有帮助的批评者，对吧？他认为自己是在帮忙，但实际上是在批评，他对一切都持消极态度。

That person will not only never do anything great in their lives, they’ll prevent other people around them from doing something great. They think their job is to shoot holes in things. And it’s okay to shoot holes in things as long as you come up with a solution.
那个人不仅一生中永远不会做成任何伟大的事情，他们还会阻止周围的人做成伟大的事情。他们认为自己的工作就是挑毛病。只要你能提出解决方案，挑毛病也是可以的。

There’s also the classic military line, “Either lead, follow, or get out of the way.” And these people want a fourth option, where they don’t want to lead, they don’t want to follow, but they don’t want to get out of the way. They want to tell you why the thing is not going to work.
还有一句经典的军队格言，“要么领导，要么跟随，要么让开。”而这些人想要第四个选项，他们既不想领导，也不想跟随，但又不想让开。他们想告诉你为什么这件事行不通。

And all the really successful people I know have a very strong action bias. They just do things. The easiest way to figure out if something is viable or not is by doing it. At least do the first step, and the second step, and the third, and then decide.
我认识的所有真正成功的人都有很强的行动倾向。他们就是去做。判断一件事是否可行，最简单的方法就是去做。至少先迈出第一步，第二步，第三步，然后再决定。

So, if you want to be successful in life, creating wealth, or having good relationships, or being fit, or even being happy, you need to have an action bias towards getting what you want.
所以，如果你想在人生中成功，无论是创造财富，拥有良好的人际关系，保持健康，甚至是获得幸福，你都需要有一种行动倾向，去争取你想要的东西。

Partner with rational optimists
与理性乐观主义者合作

And you have to be optimistic about it. Not irrationally. You know, there’s nothing worse than someone who is foolhardy and chasing something that’s not worth it.
而且你必须对此保持乐观，但不是盲目乐观。你知道，没有什么比一个鲁莽行事、追逐不值得的东西的人更糟糕的了。

That’s why I say rational optimist. But you have to be rational. Know all the pitfalls. Know the downsides, but still keep your chin up.
这就是为什么我说理性乐观主义者。但你必须理性。了解所有陷阱。知道其中的缺点，但仍然保持积极的态度。

You’ve got one life on this planet. Why not try to build something big? This is the beauty of Elon Musk, and why I think he inspires so many people, it’s just because he takes on really, really big audacious tasks. And he provides an example for people to think big.
你在这个星球上只有一次生命。为什么不尝试去建立一些伟大的东西呢？这就是埃隆·马斯克的魅力所在，也是我认为他能激励这么多人的原因，因为他承担了非常非常大胆的任务。他为人们树立了敢于梦想的榜样。

And it takes a lot of work to build even small things. I don’t think the corner grocery store owner is working any less hard than Elon Musk, or pouring any less sweat and toil into it. Maybe even more.
即使是建造小东西也需要大量的工作。我不认为街角杂货店的老板比埃隆·马斯克工作得少，或者付出的汗水和劳苦更少。甚至可能更多。

But for whatever reason, education, circumstance, they didn’t get the chance to think as big, so the outcome is not as big. So, it’s just better to think big. Obviously, rationally, within your means, stay optimistic.
但无论出于什么原因，教育、环境，他们没有机会去思考更大的事情，所以结果也不会那么大。所以，最好还是要有大格局的思考。显然，要理性，在自己能力范围内，保持乐观。

The cynics and the pessimists, what they’re really saying, it’s unfortunate, but they’re basically saying, “I’ve given up. I don’t think I can do anything. And so the world to me just looks like a world where nobody can do anything. And so why should you go do something because if you fail, then I’m right, which is great. But if you succeed, then you just make me look bad.”
愤世嫉俗者和悲观主义者，他们真正想表达的是，不幸的是，他们基本上是在说，“我已经放弃了。我觉得自己什么都做不了。所以在我看来，世界就是一个没人能做成什么事的世界。那么你为什么还要去做呢？因为如果你失败了，那我就是对的，这很好。但如果你成功了，那你就让我难堪了。”

We descended from pessimists
我们是从悲观主义者那里走过来的

Nivi: Yes, it’s probably better to be an irrational optimist, then it is to be a rational cynic.
Nivi：是的，做一个非理性的乐观主义者，可能比做一个理性的愤世嫉俗者更好。

Naval: There’s a completely rational frame on why you should be an optimist. Historically, if you go back 2,000 years, 5,000 years, 10,000 years, two people are wandering through a jungle, they hear a tiger. One’s an optimist, and says, “Oh, it’s not headed our way.” The other one says, “I’m a pessimist, I’m out of here.” And the pessimist runs and survives, and the optimist gets eaten.
Naval：有一个完全理性的理由说明为什么你应该做一个乐观主义者。从历史上看，如果你回溯到 2000 年前、5000 年前、10000 年前，有两个人在丛林中漫步，他们听到老虎的声音。一个是乐观主义者，说：“哦，它没朝我们这边来。”另一个说：“我是悲观主义者，我得走了。”悲观主义者跑了，活了下来，乐观主义者则被吃掉了。

So, we’re descended from pessimists. We’re genetically hardwired to be pessimists. But modern society is far, far safer. There are no tigers wandering around the street. It’s very unlikely that you will end up in total ruin, although you should avoid total ruin.
所以，我们是悲观主义者的后代。我们的基因天生就是悲观的。但现代社会安全得多得多。街上不会有老虎游荡。你最终陷入彻底破产的可能性非常小，尽管你应该避免彻底破产。

Much more likely that the upside is unlimited, and the downside is limited. So, adapting for modern society means overriding your pessimism, and taking slightly irrationally optimistic bets because the upside is unlimited if you start the next SpaceX, or Tesla, or Uber, you can make billions of dollars of value for society, and for yourself, and change the world.
更有可能的是，上行空间无限，而下行风险有限。因此，适应现代社会意味着要克服你的悲观情绪，采取略显非理性的乐观赌注，因为如果你创办下一个 SpaceX、Tesla 或 Uber，上行空间是无限的，你可以为社会和自己创造数十亿美元的价值，改变世界。

And if you fail, what’s the big deal? You lost a few million dollars of investor money, and they’ve got plenty more, and that’s the bet they take on the chances that you will succeed.
如果失败了，那又怎样？你损失了几百万美元的投资者资金，他们还有很多资金，这就是他们下注你会成功的风险。

It made sense to be pessimistic in the past. It makes sense to be optimistic today, especially if you’re educated and living in a First World country. Even a Third World country. I actually think the economic opportunities in Third World countries are much larger.
过去保持悲观是有道理的。今天保持乐观才是明智的，尤其是如果你受过教育，生活在第一世界国家。即使是在第三世界国家，我实际上认为第三世界国家的经济机会更大。

The one thing you have to avoid is the risk of ruin. Ruin means stay out of jail. So, don’t do anything that’s illegal. It’s never worth it to wear an orange jumpsuit. And stay out of total catastrophic loss. That could mean that you stay out of things that could be physically dangerous, hurt your body.
你必须避免的唯一一件事就是破产的风险。破产意味着避免入狱。所以，不要做任何非法的事情。穿橙色囚服永远不值得。同时，也要避免彻底的灾难性损失。这可能意味着你要远离那些可能对身体有危险、伤害你的事情。

You have to watch your health. And stay out of things that can cause you to lose all of your capital, all of your savings. So, don’t gamble everything on one go. But take rationally optimistic bets with big upside.
你必须关注你的健康。远离那些可能让你失去全部资本、全部积蓄的事情。所以，不要把所有赌注都押在一次机会上。但要理性乐观地下注，追求高回报。

BOCTAOE

Nivi: I think there’s people that will try and build up your ideas, and build on your ideas, no matter how far fetched they might seem. And then there are people who list all of the obvious exceptions, no matter how obvious they are.
Nivi：我认为有人会尝试建立你的想法，并在你的想法基础上发展，无论这些想法看起来多么牵强。还有一些人会列出所有明显的例外情况，无论这些例外多么显而易见。

And fortunately in the startup world, I don’t even really get exposed to the people that are giving you the obvious exceptions, and all the reasons it’s not going to work. I barely get exposed to that anymore.
幸运的是，在创业圈里，我几乎不会接触到那些告诉你明显例外情况和各种不可能成功理由的人。我现在几乎不再接触到这些了。

Naval: That’s what Twitter is for. Scott Adams got so annoyed by this that he came up with a phrase, an acronym, which is “but of course there are obvious exceptions”, BOCTAOE. And he used to pin that acronym at the end of his articles for a while.
Naval：这就是 Twitter 的作用。Scott Adams 对此感到非常烦恼，他创造了一个短语和缩写，叫做“but of course there are obvious exceptions”，缩写为 BOCTAOE。他曾经在文章末尾固定使用这个缩写一段时间。

But Twitter is overrun with nitpickers. Whereas exactly as you were pointing out, Silicon Valley has learned that the upside is so great that you never look down on the kid who’s wearing a hoodie and has coffee on his shoes. And just looks like a slob because you don’t know if he’s going to be the next Mark Zuckerberg, or the next Reid Hoffman.
但 Twitter 上充斥着吹毛求疵的人。正如你所指出的，硅谷已经学会了，成功的潜力如此巨大，以至于你绝不会轻视那个穿着连帽衫、鞋上沾着咖啡渍、看起来邋遢的年轻人，因为你不知道他是否会成为下一个 Mark Zuckerberg，或者下一个 Reid Hoffman。

So, you’ve got to treat everybody with respect. You’ve got to look up to every possibility, and opportunity because the upside is so unlimited, and the downside is so limited in the modern world, especially with financial assets and instruments.
所以，你必须尊重每一个人。你必须仰望每一个可能性和机会，因为在现代世界，尤其是在金融资产和工具领域，上行空间无限，而下行风险极其有限。

Arm Yourself With Specific Knowledge
武装自己以获得特定知识

Specific knowledge can be found by pursuing your genuine curiosity
特定知识可以通过追求你真正的好奇心来获得

Arm yourself with specific knowledge
用特定知识武装自己

Nivi: Do you want to talk a little bit about the skills that you need, in particular specific knowledge, accountability, leverage and judgment. So, the first tweet in this area is “Arm yourself with specific knowledge accountability and leverage.” And I’ll throw in judgment as well. I don’t think you covered that in that particular tweet.
Nivi：你想谈谈你需要的技能吗，特别是特定知识、责任感、杠杆作用和判断力？这一领域的第一条推文是“用特定知识、责任感和杠杆作用武装自己。”我还会加上判断力。我觉得你在那条推文里没有提到判断力。

Naval: If you want to make money you have to get paid at scale. And why you, that’s accountability, at scale, that’s leverage, and just you getting paid as opposed to somebody else getting paid , that’s specific knowledge.
Naval：如果你想赚钱，你必须实现规模化收入。为什么是你？那是责任感；规模化，那是杠杆；而且是你自己获得报酬，而不是别人获得报酬，那就是特定知识。

So, specific knowledge is probably the hardest thing to get across in this whole tweetstorm, and it’s probably the thing that people get the most confused about.
所以，特定知识可能是这整串推文中最难传达的内容，也可能是人们最容易混淆的地方。

The thing is that we have this idea that everything can be taught, everything can be taught in school. And it’s not true that everything can be taught. In fact, the most interesting things cannot be taught. But everything can be learned. And very often that learning either comes from some innate characteristics in your DNA, or it could be through your childhood where you learn soft skills which are very, very hard to teach later on in life, or it’s something that is brand new so nobody else knows how to do it either, or it’s true on the job training because you’re pattern matching into highly complex environments, basically building judgment in a specific domain.
问题是，我们有一种观念，认为所有东西都能被教会，所有东西都能在学校里学到。但事实并非如此，很多最有趣的东西是无法被教会的。但所有东西都能被学会。而且这种学习往往来自于你 DNA 中的某些天赋特质，或者来自你的童年时期，在那时你学会了软技能，而这些软技能在后期很难被教会；或者是一些全新的东西，没人知道如何去做；又或者是通过在职培训，因为你在高度复杂的环境中进行模式匹配，基本上是在特定领域内建立判断力。

Classic example is investing, but it could be in anything. It could be in judgment in running a fleet of trucks, it could be judgment in weather forecasting.
经典的例子是投资，但它也可以是任何事情。它可以是管理一支卡车车队的判断力，也可以是天气预报的判断力。

So, specific knowledge is the knowledge that you care about. Especially if you’re later in life, let’s say your post 20, 21, 22, you almost don’t get to choose which specific knowledge you have. Rather, you get to look at what you have already built by that point in time, and then you can build on top of it.
所以，特定知识就是你关心的知识。特别是如果你已经年纪较大，比如说 20 岁、21 岁、22 岁以后，你几乎无法选择你拥有什么样的特定知识。相反，你只能看看到那个时间点你已经建立了什么，然后在此基础上继续发展。

Specific knowledge can’t be trained
特定知识是无法通过培训获得的

The first thing to notice about specific knowledge is that you can’t be trained for it. If you can be trained for it, if you can go to a class and learn specific knowledge, then somebody else can be trained for it too, and then we can mass-produce and mass-train people. Heck, we can even program computers to do it and eventually we can program robots to walk around doing it.
关于特定知识，首先要注意的是你无法通过培训获得它。如果你能通过上课学习特定知识，那么别人也能通过培训获得它，然后我们就能大规模生产和培训人。甚至，我们还能编程让计算机去做，最终还能编程让机器人四处走动去做。

So, if that’s the case, then you’re extremely replaceable and all we have to pay you is the minimum wage that we have to pay you to get you to do it when there are lots of other takers who can be trained to do it. So really, your returns just devolve into your cost of training plus the return on investment on that training.
所以，如果情况是这样，那么你就非常容易被替代，我们只需要支付你最低工资，只要有很多其他人可以被培训来做这份工作，我们就能让你去做。所以，实际上，你的回报只是你的培训成本加上对这项培训的投资回报。

So, you really want to pick up specific knowledge, you need your schooling, you need your training to be able to capitalize on the best specific knowledge, but the part of it that you’re going to get paid for is the specific knowledge.
所以，你真的想掌握特定的知识，你需要接受教育，需要培训，才能利用最好的特定知识，但你获得报酬的部分就是这部分特定知识。

Specific knowledge is found by pursuing your curiosity
特定知识是通过追求你的好奇心发现的。

For example, someone who goes and gets a degree in psychology and then becomes a salesperson. Well if they were already a formidable salesperson, a high grade salesmanship to begin with, then the psychology degree is leverage, it arms them and they do much better at sales.
例如，有人获得了心理学学位，然后成为一名销售员。如果他们本来就是一名出色的销售员，具备高水平的销售技巧，那么心理学学位就是杠杆，它武装了他们，使他们在销售方面表现得更好。

But if they were always an introvert never very good at sales and they’re trying to use psychology to learn sales, they’re just not going to get that great at it.
但如果他们一直是内向的人，从来不擅长销售，却试图用心理学来学习销售，他们就是无法变得非常擅长。

So, specific knowledge is found much more by pursuing your innate talents, your genuine curiosity, and your passion. It’s not by going to school for whatever is the hottest job, it’s not for going into whatever field investors say is the hottest.
因此，特定知识更多是通过追随你与生俱来的天赋、真正的好奇心和热情来获得的。不是通过去学校学习当下最热门的职业，也不是进入投资者说最热门的领域。

Very often specific knowledge is at the edge of knowledge. It’s also stuff that’s just being figured out or is really hard to figure out.
特定知识往往处于知识的前沿。它也是那些刚刚被发现或非常难以弄清楚的东西。

So, if you’re not 100% into it somebody else who is 100% into it will outperform you. And they won’t just outperform you by a little bit, they’ll outperform you by a lot because now we’re operating the domain of ideas, compound interest really applies and leverage really applies.
所以，如果你不是百分之百投入，别人百分之百投入的话，他们会比你表现得更好。而且他们不仅仅是稍微好一点，而是好很多，因为现在我们是在思想领域运作，复利真正起作用，杠杆也真正起作用。

So, if you’re operating with 1,000 times leverage and somebody is right 80% of the time, and somebody else is right 90% of time, the person who’s right 90% of the time will literally get paid hundreds of times more by the market because of the leverage and because of the compounding factors and being correct. So, you really want to make sure you’re good at it so that genuine curiosity is very important.
所以，如果你使用 1000 倍的杠杆操作，有人正确率是 80%，而另一个人正确率是 90%，那个正确率 90%的人因为杠杆效应和复利因素以及正确性，实际上会从市场获得数百倍的收益。所以，你真的要确保自己擅长这件事，因此真正的好奇心非常重要。

Building specific knowledge will feel like play to you
积累特定的知识对你来说会感觉像是在玩耍。

So, very often, it’s not something you sit down and then you reason about, it’s more found by observation. You almost have to look back on your own life and see what you’re actually good at.
所以，很多时候，这不是你坐下来推理出来的，而是通过观察发现的。你几乎必须回顾自己的生活，看看自己到底擅长什么。

For example, I wanted to be a scientist and that is where a lot of my moral hierarchy comes from. I view scientists sort of at the top of the production chain for humanity. And the group of scientists who have made real breakthroughs and contributions that probably added more to human society, I think, than any single other class of human beings.
例如，我想成为一名科学家，这也是我很多道德层次观念的来源。我把科学家视为人类生产链的顶端。而那些取得真正突破和贡献的科学家群体，可能对人类社会的贡献超过了任何其他单一的人类群体。

Not to take away anything from art or politics or engineering or business, but without the science we’d still be scrambling in the dirt fighting with sticks and trying to start fires.
这并不是贬低艺术、政治、工程或商业的重要性，但如果没有科学，我们仍然会在泥土中挣扎，用棍棒互相争斗，试图生火。

My whole value system was built around scientists and I wanted to be a great scientist. But when I actually look back at what I was uniquely good at and what I ended up spending my time doing, it was more around making money, tinkering with technology, and selling people on things. Explaining things, talking to people.
我的整个价值体系是围绕科学家建立的，我也想成为一名伟大的科学家。但当我回头看自己独特擅长的东西以及最终花时间做的事情时，更多的是围绕赚钱、摆弄技术和向人们推销东西。解释事情，与人交谈。

So, I have some sales skills, which is a form specific knowledge that I have. I have some analytical skills around how to make money. And I have this ability to absorb data, obsess about it, and break it down and that is a specific skill that I have. I also just love tinkering with technology. And all of this stuff feels like play to me, but it looks like work to others.
所以，我有一些销售技巧，这是一种我拥有的特定知识。我还有一些关于如何赚钱的分析能力。我还有吸收数据、痴迷于数据并将其分解的能力，这是一种我拥有的特定技能。我也非常喜欢摆弄技术。所有这些对我来说都像是在玩，但在别人眼里却像是在工作。

So, there are other people to whom these things would be hard and they say like, “Well, how do I get good at being pithy and selling ideas?” Well, if you’re not already good at it or if you’re not really into it, maybe it’s not your thing, focus on the thing that you are really into.
所以，对于其他人来说，这些事情可能很难，他们会说，“我怎么才能擅长简洁有力地表达和推销想法呢？”嗯，如果你还不擅长或者你并不真正喜欢它，也许这不是你的事情，专注于你真正喜欢的事情吧。

This is ironic, but the first person to actually point out my real specific knowledge was my mother. She did it as an aside, talking from the kitchen and she said it when I was like 15 or 16 years old. I was telling a friend of mine that I want to be an astrophysicist and she said, “No, you’re going to go into business.”
这很讽刺，但第一个真正指出我具体知识的人是我妈妈。她是在厨房里随口说的，那时我大概 15、16 岁。我当时跟一个朋友说我想成为一名天体物理学家，她说：“不，你会去做生意的。”

I was like, “What, my mom’s telling me I’m going to be in business. I’m going to be an astrophysicist. Mom doesn’t know she’s talking about.” But mom knew exactly what she was talking about.
我当时想，“什么，我妈告诉我我会做生意。我会成为天体物理学家。妈妈根本不知道她在说什么。”但妈妈完全知道她在说什么。

She’d already observed that every time we walk down the street, I would critique the local pizza parlor on why they were selling their slices a certain way with certain toppings and why their process of ordering was this way when it should have been that way.
她已经注意到，每次我们走在街上，我都会批评当地的披萨店，为什么他们卖的披萨片要用某种方式和某些配料，为什么他们的点餐流程是这样，而应该是那样。

So, she knew that I had more of a business curious mind, but then my obsession with science combined to create technology and technology businesses where I found myself.
所以，她知道我更有商业好奇心，但后来我对科学的痴迷结合起来，创造了技术和技术企业，这就是我最终所处的地方。

So, very often, your specific knowledge is observed and often observed by other people who know you well and revealed in situations rather than something that you come up with.
所以，你的特定知识往往是被观察到的，通常是被那些了解你的人在特定情境中发现的，而不是你自己想出来的。

Specific Knowledge Is Highly Creative or Technical
特定知识具有高度的创造性或技术性

Specific knowledge is on the bleeding edge of technology, art and communication
特定知识处于技术、艺术和交流的前沿

Specific knowledge can be taught through apprenticeships
特定知识可以通过学徒制传授

Naval: To the extent that specific knowledge is taught, it’s on the job. It’s through apprenticeships. And that’s why the best businesses, the best careers are the apprenticeship or self-taught careers, because those are things society still has not figured out how to train and automate yet.
Naval：在特定知识被传授的程度上，主要是在工作中学习。通过学徒制来实现。这也是为什么最好的企业、最好的职业是学徒制或自学的职业，因为这些是社会尚未弄清楚如何培训和自动化的领域。

The classic line here is that Warren Buffett went to Benjamin Graham when he got out of school. Benjamin Graham was the author of the Intelligent Investor and sort of modernized or created value investing as a discipline. And Warren Buffett went to Benjamin Graham and offered to work for him for free.
这里的经典例子是，沃伦·巴菲特刚毕业时去找本杰明·格雷厄姆。本杰明·格雷厄姆是《聪明的投资者》的作者，他现代化或创造了价值投资这一学科。沃伦·巴菲特去找本杰明·格雷厄姆，主动提出免费为他工作。

And Graham said, “Actually, you’re overpriced, free is overpriced.” And Graham was absolutely right. When it comes to a very valuable apprenticeship like the type that Graham was going to give Buffet, Buffet should have been paying him a lot of money. That right there tells you that those are skills worth having.
格雷厄姆说：“实际上，你的价格太高了，免费的东西才是价格过高。”格雷厄姆说得完全正确。对于像格雷厄姆将要给巴菲特的那种非常宝贵的学徒机会，巴菲特本应该付给他很多钱。仅这一点就告诉你，这些技能非常值得拥有。

Specific knowledge is often highly creative or technical
特定知识通常具有高度的创造性或技术性

Specific knowledge also tends to be technical and creative. It’s on the bleeding edge of technology, on the bleeding edge of art, on the bleeding edge of communication.
特定知识往往也具有技术性和创造性。它处于技术的前沿，艺术的前沿，沟通的前沿。

Even today, for example, there are probably meme lords out there on the Internet who can create incredible memes that will spread the idea to millions of people. Or are very persuasive – Scott Adams is a good example of this. He is essentially becoming one of the most credible people in the world by making accurate predictions through persuasive arguments and videos.
即使在今天，例如，互联网上可能有一些“表情包大师”能够创造出令人难以置信的表情包，将想法传播给数百万人。或者非常有说服力——斯科特·亚当斯就是一个很好的例子。他通过有说服力的论点和视频做出准确预测，实际上正在成为世界上最具可信度的人之一。

And that is specific knowledge that he has built up over the years because he got obsessed with hypnosis when he was young, he learned how to communicate through cartooning, he embraced Periscope early, so he’s been practicing lots of conversation, he’s read all the books on the topic, he’s employed it in his everyday life. If you look at his girlfriend, she’s this beautiful young Instagram model.
这就是他多年来积累的特定知识，因为他年轻时痴迷于催眠术，他学会了通过漫画进行交流，他早早接受了 Periscope，所以他一直在练习大量的对话，他读过所有相关的书籍，并在日常生活中运用它。如果你看看他的女朋友，她是一个漂亮的年轻 Instagram 模特。

That is an example of someone who has built up a specific knowledge over the course of his career. It’s highly creative, it has elements of being technical in it, and it’s something that is never going to be automated.
这是一个人在职业生涯中积累特定知识的例子。这种知识高度具有创造性，包含技术元素，而且永远不会被自动化取代。

No one’s going to take that away from him, because he’s also accountable under one brand as Scott Adams, and he’s operating with the leverage of media with Periscope and drawing Dilbert cartoons and writing books. He has massive leverage on top of that brand and he can build wealth out of it if he wanted to build additional wealth beyond what he already has.
没人能从他那里夺走这些，因为他以 Scott Adams 这个品牌承担责任，并且利用 Periscope 媒体、绘制《Dilbert》漫画和写书的杠杆作用。他在这个品牌基础上拥有巨大的杠杆，如果他想在已有财富之外再创造更多财富，他完全可以做到。

Specific knowledge is specific to the individual and situation
特定知识是针对个人和具体情况的。

Nivi: Should we be calling it unique knowledge or does specific knowledge somehow make more sense for it?
Nivi：我们应该称之为独特知识，还是说“特定知识”这个说法更合适一些？

Naval: You know, I came up with this framework when I was really young. We’re talking decades and decades. It’s now probably over 30 years old. So, at the time specific knowledge stuck with me so that is how I think about it.
Naval：你知道，我是在很年轻的时候想出这个框架的。那已经是几十年前的事了。现在大概已经有 30 多年了。所以，当时“特定知识”这个词让我印象深刻，这就是我对它的理解方式。

The reason I didn’t try and change it is because every other term that I found for it was overloaded in a different way. At least specific knowledge isn’t that used. I can kind of rebrand it.
我之所以没有尝试去改变这个词，是因为我找到的其他所有词汇都有不同程度的过载。至少“特定知识”这个词用得不多，我可以稍微重新定义一下它。

The problem with unique knowledge is, yeah, maybe it’s unique but if I learn it from somebody else it’s no longer unique, then we both know it. So, it’s not so much that it is unique, it’s that it is highly specific to the situation, it’s specific to the individual, it’s specific to the problem, and it can only be built as part of a larger obsession, interest, and time spent in that domain.
独特知识的问题是，没错，它可能是独特的，但如果我从别人那里学到了它，它就不再独特了，那么我们俩都知道它。所以，问题不在于它是否独特，而在于它高度依赖具体情境，依赖个人，依赖问题，而且只能作为更大范围的痴迷、兴趣和在该领域投入时间的一部分来构建。

It can’t just be read straight out of a single book, nor can it be taught in a single course, nor can it be programmed into a single algorithm.
它不能仅仅从一本书中直接读出来，也不能通过一门课程教授，更不能被编程进一个算法。

You can’t be too deliberate about assembling specific knowledge
你不能过于刻意地去组装特定知识。

Nivi: Speaking of Scott Adams, he’s got a blog post on how to build your career by getting in, say, the top 25 percentile at three or more things. And by doing that, you become the only person in the world who can do those three things in the 25th percentile.
Nivi：说到 Scott Adams，他写过一篇博客文章，讲的是如何通过在三个或更多领域进入前 25 百分位来建立你的职业生涯。通过这样做，你就成为了世界上唯一一个能在这三个领域都达到 25 百分位的人。

So, instead of trying to be the best at one thing, you just try to be very, very good at three or more things. Is that a way of building specific knowledge?
所以，与其试图成为某一件事的最佳，不如努力在三个或更多领域都非常非常优秀。这是一种建立特定知识的方法吗？

Naval: I actually think the best way is just to follow your own obsession. And somewhere in the back of your mind, you can realize that, actually, this obsession I like and I’ll keep an eye out for the commercial aspects of it.
Naval：我实际上认为最好的方法就是追随你自己的执着。在你内心深处，你可以意识到，实际上，这种执着是我喜欢的，我会留意它的商业方面。

But I think if you go around trying to build it a little too deliberately, if you become too goal-oriented on the money, then you won’t pick the right thing. You won’t actually pick the thing that you love to do, so you won’t go deep enough into it.
但我认为如果你过于刻意地去构建它，如果你过于以赚钱为目标，那么你就不会选择正确的事情。你实际上不会选择你热爱的事情，所以你也不会深入钻研它。

Scott Adams’ observation is a good one, predicated on statistics. Let’s say there’s 10,000 areas that are valuable to the human race today in terms of knowledge to have, and the number one in those 10,000 slots is taken.
斯科特·亚当斯的观察很有道理，基于统计数据。假设今天对人类来说，有 1 万个有价值的知识领域，而这 1 万个领域中的第一名已经被占据了。

Someone else is likely to be the number one in each of those 10,000, unless you happen to be one of the 10,000 most obsessed people in the world that at a given thing.
在这 1 万个领域中，每个领域的第一名很可能是不同的人，除非你恰好是世界上在某个特定领域最痴迷的 1 万人之一。

But when you start combining, well, number 3,728 with top-notch sales skills and really good writing skills and someone who understands accounting and finance really well, when the need for that intersection arrives, you’ve expanded enough from 10,000 through combinatorics to millions or tens of millions. So, it just becomes much less competitive.
但当你开始将第 3,728 名的顶级销售技能、非常好的写作能力以及对会计和金融非常了解的人结合起来时，当这种交叉需求出现时，你通过组合学已经从 1 万个扩展到了数百万甚至数千万。因此，竞争就变得没那么激烈了。

Also, there’s diminishing returns. So, it’s much easier to be top 5 percentile at three or four things than it is to be literally the number one at something.
此外，收益递减效应也存在。成为三四个领域的前 5%要比在某个领域成为绝对第一容易得多。

Build specific knowledge where you are a natural
在你天赋所在的领域建立具体知识

I think it’s a very pragmatic approach. But I think it’s important that one not start assembling things too deliberately because you do want to pick things where you are a natural. Everyone is a natural at something.
我认为这是一种非常务实的方法。但我觉得重要的是，不要过于刻意地开始积累东西，因为你确实想选择那些你天生擅长的领域。每个人在某些方面都有天赋。

We’re all familiar with that phrase, a natural. “Oh, this person is a natural at meeting men or women, this person is a natural socialite, this person is a natural programmer, this person is a natural reader.” So, whatever you are a natural at, you want to double down on that.
我们都熟悉“天赋”这个词。“哦，这个人天生擅长与异性交往，这个人天生是社交达人，这个人天生是程序员，这个人天生是读者。”所以，无论你在哪方面有天赋，你都应该加倍努力。

And then there are probably multiple things you’re natural at because personalities and humans are very complex. So, we want to be able to take the things that you are natural at and combine them so that you automatically, just through sheer interest and enjoyment, end up top 25% or top 10% or top 5% at a number of things.
而且你可能在多个方面都有天赋，因为人格和人类本身非常复杂。所以，我们希望能够把你天生擅长的东西结合起来，这样你就能仅凭兴趣和享受，自然而然地在多个领域进入前 25%、前 10%甚至前 5%。

Learn to Sell, Learn to Build
学会销售，学会构建

If you can do both, you will be unstoppable
如果你两者都能做到，你将势不可挡

Learn to sell, learn to build
学会销售，学会构建

Nivi: Talking about combining skills, you said that you should “learn to sell, learn to build, if you can do both, you will be unstoppable.”
Nivi：谈到技能的结合，你说过“学会销售，学会构建，如果你两者都能做到，你将势不可挡。”

Naval: This is a very broad category. It’s two broad categories. One is building the product. Which is hard, and it’s multivariate. It can include design, it can include development, it can include manufacturing, logistics, procurement, it can even be designing and operating a service. It has many, many definitions.
Naval：这是一个非常广泛的类别。实际上是两个广泛的类别。一个是构建产品。这很难，而且是多变量的。它可以包括设计，可以包括开发，可以包括制造、物流、采购，甚至可以是设计和运营一项服务。它有很多很多种定义。

But in every industry, there is a definition of the builder. In our tech industry it’s the CTO, it’s the programmer, it’s the software engineer, hardware engineer. But even in the laundry business, it could be the person who’s building the laundry service, who is making the trains run on time, who’s making sure all the clothes end up in the right place at the right time, and so on.
但在每个行业中，都有一个“建设者”的定义。在我们的科技行业里，就是 CTO、程序员、软件工程师、硬件工程师。但即使是在洗衣行业，也可能是那个构建洗衣服务的人，是确保列车准时运行、确保所有衣物在正确的时间送到正确地点的人，诸如此类。

The other side of it is sales. Again, selling has a very broad definition. Selling doesn’t necessarily just mean selling individual customers, but it can mean marketing, it can mean communicating, it can mean recruiting, it can mean raising money, it can mean inspiring people, it could mean doing PR. It’s a broad umbrella category.
另一方面是销售。同样，销售的定义非常广泛。销售不一定仅仅指向个人客户销售，它可以指市场营销，可以指沟通，可以指招聘，可以指筹集资金，可以指激励人们，也可以指公关。这是一个广泛的总括类别。

The Silicon Valley model is a builder and seller
硅谷模式是建造者和销售者

So, generally, the Silicon Valley startup model tends to work best. It’s not the only way, but it is probably the most common way, when you have two founders, one of whom is  world class at selling, and one of whom is world class at building.
所以，通常来说，硅谷创业模式往往效果最佳。这不是唯一的方式，但可能是最常见的方式，当你有两个创始人时，其中一个在销售方面是世界级的，另一个在构建方面是世界级的。

Examples are, of course, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak with Apple, Gates and Allen probably had similar responsibilities early on with Microsoft, Larry and Sergey probably broke down along those lines, although it’s a little different there because that was a very technical product delivered to end users through a simple interface.
例子当然有，苹果的史蒂夫·乔布斯和史蒂夫·沃兹尼亚克，盖茨和艾伦在微软早期可能也有类似的职责分工，拉里和谢尔盖可能也是沿着这些方向分工，尽管那里有些不同，因为那是一个通过简单界面向终端用户交付的非常技术性的产品。

But generally, you will see this pattern repeated over and over. There’s a builder and there’s a seller. There’s a CEO and CTO combo. And venture and technology investors are almost trained to look for this combo whenever possible. It’s the magic combination.
但通常情况下，你会反复看到这种模式。一个是建设者，一个是销售者。一个是 CEO，一个是 CTO 的组合。风险投资者和技术投资者几乎都被训练成尽可能寻找这种组合。这是魔法般的组合。

If you can do both you will be unstoppable
如果你两者都能做到，你将势不可挡。

The ultimate is when one individual can do both. That’s when you get true superpowers. That’s when you get people who can create entire industries.
终极状态是一个人能同时做到这两点。那时你就拥有了真正的超能力。那时你会遇到能够创造整个行业的人。

The living example is Elon Musk. He may not necessarily be building the rockets himself, but he understands enough that he actually makes technical contributions. He understands the technology well enough that no one’s going to snow him on it, and he’s not running around making claims that he doesn’t think he can’t eventually deliver. He may be optimistic on the timelines but he thinks this is within reasonableness for delivery.
活生生的例子就是埃隆·马斯克。他可能不一定亲自制造火箭，但他理解得足够深入，实际上能做出技术贡献。他对技术的理解足够透彻，没有人能在这方面糊弄他，他也不会到处宣称自己无法最终实现的目标。他对时间表可能持乐观态度，但他认为这是合理可行的交付范围。

Even Steve Jobs developed enough product skills and was involved enough in the product that he also operated in both of these domains. Larry Ellison started as a programmer and I think wrote the first version of Oracle, or was actually heavily involved in it.
即使是史蒂夫·乔布斯，他也具备足够的产品技能，并且深度参与产品开发，因此他也能在这两个领域中运作。拉里·埃里森最初是程序员，我认为他编写了 Oracle 的第一个版本，或者至少在其中扮演了重要角色。

Marc Andreessen was also in this domain. He may not have had enough confidence in his sales skills, but he was the programmer who wrote Netscape Navigator, or a big chunk of it. So, I think the real giants in any field are the people who can both build and sell.
马克·安德森也属于这个领域。他可能对自己的销售技能没有足够的自信，但他是编写 Netscape Navigator 程序员，或者说编写了其中很大一部分。所以，我认为任何领域的真正巨人都是那些既能构建产品又能销售产品的人。

I’d rather teach an engineer marketing than a marketer engineering
我宁愿教一个工程师市场营销，也不愿教一个市场营销人员工程技术。

And usually the building is a thing that a sales person can’t pick up later in life. It requires too much focused time. But a builder can pick up selling a little bit later, especially if they were already innately wired to be a good communicator. Bill Gates famously paraphrases this as, “I’d rather teach an engineer marketing, than a marketer engineering.”
而且通常构建产品是销售人员后来很难掌握的技能，因为这需要大量专注的时间。但一个构建者稍后可以学会销售，尤其是如果他们天生就是一个优秀的沟通者。比尔·盖茨著名地将这句话转述为：“我宁愿教一个工程师市场营销，也不愿教一个市场营销人员工程技术。”

I think if you start out with a building mentality and you have building skills and it’s still early enough in your life, or you have enough focused time that you think you can learn selling, and you have some natural characteristics or you’re a good salesperson, then you can double down on those.
我认为，如果你一开始就有建设思维并具备建设技能，而且你的人生还足够早，或者你有足够专注的时间认为自己可以学会销售，同时你有一些天生的特质或者你是一个优秀的销售人员，那么你可以在这些方面加倍努力。

Now, your sales skills could be in a different than traditional domain. For example, let’s say you’re a really good engineer and then people are saying, well, now you need to be good at sales, well, you may not be good at hand-to-hand sales, but you may be a really good writer.
你的销售技能可能在一个不同于传统领域的地方。举个例子，假设你是一个非常优秀的工程师，然后有人说，现在你需要擅长销售，那么你可能不擅长面对面的销售，但你可能是一个非常好的写作者。

And writing is a skill that can be learned much more easily than, say, in-person selling, and so you may just cultivate writing skills until you become a good online communicator and then use that for your sales.
写作是一项比面对面销售更容易学习的技能，所以你可以培养写作技能，直到你成为一个优秀的在线沟通者，然后用这项技能来进行销售。

On the other hand, it could just be that you’re a good builder and you’re bad at writing and you don’t like communicating to mass audiences but you’re good one-on-one, so then you might use your sales skills for recruiting or for fundraising, which are more one-on-one kinds of endeavors.
另一方面，可能你是一个优秀的建设者，但写作很差，不喜欢对大众进行沟通，但你擅长一对一交流，那么你可能会将销售技能用于招聘或筹款，这些都是更偏向一对一的活动。

This is pointing out that if you’re at the intersection of these two, don’t despair because you’re not going to be the best technologist and you’re not going to be the best salesperson, but in a weird way, that combination, back to the Scott Adams skill stack, that combination of two skills is unstoppable.
这指出了如果你正处于这两者的交汇点，不要绝望，因为你不会成为最顶尖的技术专家，也不会成为最出色的销售员，但以一种奇怪的方式，回到斯科特·亚当斯的技能叠加理论，这两种技能的结合是无可阻挡的。

Long term, people who understand the underlying product and how to build it and can sell it, these are catnip to investors, these people can break down walls if they have enough energy, and they can get almost anything done.
从长远来看，那些理解产品本质、知道如何构建产品并能销售产品的人，对投资者来说就像猫薄荷一样有吸引力，这些人如果有足够的精力，可以打破障碍，几乎能完成任何事情。

Nivi: If you could only pick one to be good at, which one would you pick?
Nivi：如果只能选择擅长其中一项，你会选择哪一项？

Naval: When you’re trying to stand out from the noise building is actually better because there’re so many hustlers and sales people who have nothing to back them up. When you’re starting out, when you’re trying to be recognized, building is better.
Naval：当你试图从喧嚣中脱颖而出时，构建实际上更好，因为有太多的推销员和销售人员却没有任何实质支撑。当你刚开始，想要被认可时，构建更好。

But much later down the line building gets exhausting because it is a focus job and it’s hard to stay current because there’s always new people, new products coming up who have newer tools, and frankly more time because it’s very intense, it’s a very focused task.
但在更远的未来，构建会变得令人疲惫，因为这是一项需要专注的工作，而且很难保持最新状态，因为总会有新人、新产品出现，他们拥有更新的工具，说实话也有更多时间，因为这是一项非常紧张、非常专注的任务。

So, sales skills actually scale better over time. Like for example, if you have a reputation for building a great product, that’s good, but when you ship your new product, I’m going to validate it based on the product. But if you have a reputation for being a good person to do business with and you’re persuasive and communicative then that reputation almost becomes self-fulfilling.
所以，销售技巧实际上随着时间的推移更具扩展性。比如说，如果你有打造出色产品的声誉，那很好，但当你推出新产品时，我会根据产品本身来验证它。但如果你有一个值得合作的好人的声誉，并且你有说服力和良好的沟通能力，那么这种声誉几乎会成为自我实现的预言。

So, I think if you only had to pick up one, you can start with building and then transition to selling. This is a cop-out answer, but I think that is actually the right answer.
所以，我认为如果你只能选择学一样技能，可以先从打造产品开始，然后过渡到销售。这是一个逃避式的答案，但我认为这实际上是正确的答案。

Read What You Love Until You Love to Read
读你所爱，直到你爱上阅读

You should be able to pick up any book in the library and read it
你应该能够拿起图书馆里的任何一本书并阅读它

Read what you love until you love to read
读你所爱，直到你爱上阅读

Nivi: Before we go and talk about accountability and leverage and judgment, you’ve got a few tweets further down the line that I would put in the category of continuous learning.
Nivi：在我们讨论责任感、杠杆作用和判断力之前，你在后面还有几条推文，我会把它们归为持续学习的范畴。

They’re essentially, “there is no skill called business. Avoid business magazines and business class, study microeconomics, game theory, psychology, persuasion, ethics, mathematics and computers.”
它们的核心意思是，“没有一种叫做商业的技能。避免商业杂志和商业课程，学习微观经济学、博弈论、心理学、说服术、伦理学、数学和计算机。”

There’s one other comment that you made in a Periscope that was, “you should be able to pick up any book in the library and read it.” And the last tweet in this category was, “reading is faster than listening, doing is faster than watching.”
你在一次 Periscope 直播中还说过一句话，“你应该能够拿起图书馆里的任何一本书来读。”这一类别的最后一条推文是，“阅读比听更快，做比看更快。”

Naval: Yeah, the most important tweet on this, I don’t even have in here unfortunately, which is, the foundation of learning is reading. I don’t know a smart person who doesn’t read and read all the time.
Naval：是的，关于这个话题，最重要的一条推文我这里甚至没有提到，那就是学习的基础是阅读。我不认识不读书且一直读书的聪明人。

And the problem is, what do I read? How do I read? Because for most people it’s a struggle, it’s a chore. So, the most important thing is just to learn how to educate yourself and the way to educate yourself is to develop a love for reading.
问题是，我该读什么？我该怎么读？因为对大多数人来说，这是一种挣扎，是一件苦差事。所以，最重要的是学会如何自我教育，而自我教育的方法就是培养对阅读的热爱。

So, the tweet that is left out, the one that I was hinting at is, “read what you love until you love to read.” It’s that simple.
所以，那条被遗漏的推文，我之前暗示过的，就是“读你喜欢的书，直到你爱上阅读。”就是这么简单。

Everybody I know who reads a lot loves to read, and they love to read because they read books that they loved. It’s a little bit of a catch-22, but you basically want to start off just reading wherever you are and then keep building up from there until reading becomes a habit. And then eventually, you will just get bored of the simple stuff.
我认识的所有大量阅读的人都热爱阅读，他们之所以热爱阅读，是因为他们读的是自己喜欢的书。这有点像一个悖论，但基本上你要从你所在的地方开始阅读，然后不断积累，直到阅读成为一种习惯。最终，你会对简单的内容感到厌倦。

So you may start off reading fiction, then you might graduate to science fiction, then you may graduate to non-fiction, then you may graduate to science, or philosophy, or mathematics or whatever it is, but take your natural path and just read the things that interest you until you kind of understand them. And then you’ll naturally move to the next thing and the next thing and the next thing.
所以你可能一开始读小说，然后可能进阶到科幻小说，再然后可能进阶到非小说类书籍，再然后可能进阶到科学、哲学、数学或其他什么领域，但要顺其自然，读你感兴趣的东西，直到你大致理解它们。然后你自然会转向下一样，再下一样，再下一样。

Read the original scientific books in a field
阅读某个领域的原版科学书籍

Now, there is an exception to this, which is where I was hinting with what things you actually do want to learn, which is, at some point there’s too much out there to read. Even reading is full of junk.
现在，这里有一个例外，我之前提到过你真正想学的东西，就是在某个阶段，外面的书太多了，根本读不过来。即使是阅读，也充满了垃圾内容。

There are actually things you can read, especially early on, that will program your brain a certain way, and then later things that you read, you will decide whether those things are true or false based on the earlier things.
实际上，有些东西你可以读，尤其是在早期，这些东西会以某种方式编程你的大脑，然后你后面读的东西，你会根据之前读过的东西来判断它们是真还是假。

So, it is important that you read foundational things. And foundational things, I would say, are the original books in a given field that are very scientific in their nature.
所以，阅读基础性的内容非常重要。而基础性的内容，我认为是某一领域中最原始的、具有科学性质的书籍。

For example, instead of reading a business book, pick up Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations. Instead of reading a book on biology or evolution that’s written today, I would pick up Darwin’s Origin of the Species. Instead of reading a book on biotech right now that may be very advanced, I would just pick up The Eighth Day of Creation by Watson and Crick. Instead of reading advanced books on what cosmology and what Neil Degrasse Tyson and Stephen Hawking have been saying, you can pick up Richard Feynman’s Six Easy Pieces and start with basic physics.
例如，与其读一本商业书籍，不如拿起亚当·斯密的《国富论》。与其读一本当代写的生物学或进化论书籍，我会选择达尔文的《物种起源》。与其读一本可能非常先进的生物技术书籍，我会选择沃森和克里克的《创造的第八天》。与其读关于宇宙学以及尼尔·德格拉斯·泰森和斯蒂芬·霍金所说的高级书籍，不如拿起理查德·费曼的《六个简单的物理学片段》，从基础物理学开始。

Don’t fear any book  不要害怕任何书籍

If you understand the basics, especially in mathematics and physics and sciences, then you will not be afraid of any book. All of us have that memory of when we were sitting in class and we’re learning mathematics, and it was all logical and all made sense until at one point the class moved too fast and we fell behind.
如果你理解了基础知识，特别是数学、物理和科学，那么你就不会害怕任何书籍。我们所有人都有这样的记忆：当我们坐在课堂上学习数学时，一切都是合乎逻辑且讲得通的，直到某个时刻课堂进度太快，我们跟不上了。

Then after that we were left memorizing equations, memorizing concepts without being able to derive them from first principles. And at that moment, we’re lost, because unless you’re a professional mathematician, you’re not going to remember those things. All you’re going to remember are the techniques, the foundations.
然后之后我们就开始死记硬背方程式，死记硬背概念，却无法从基本原理推导出来。那一刻，我们迷失了，因为除非你是专业的数学家，否则你不会记住那些东西。你只会记住技巧和基础。

So, you have to make sure that you’re building on a steel frame of understanding because you’re putting together a foundation for skyscraper, and you’re not just memorizing things because you’re just memorizing things you’re lost. So the foundations are ultra important.
所以，你必须确保你是在一个钢铁般坚固的理解框架上构建，因为你是在为摩天大楼打基础，而不是仅仅死记硬背东西。仅仅死记硬背你就会迷失方向。所以基础极其重要。

And the ultimate, the ultimate is when you walk into a library and you look at it up and down and you don’t fear any book. You know that you can take any book off the shelf, you can read it, you can understand it, you can absorb what is true, you can reject what is false, and you have a basis for even working that out that is logical and scientific and not purely just based on opinions.
最终的境界是，当你走进图书馆，环顾四周，你不害怕任何一本书。你知道你可以从书架上拿起任何一本书，阅读它，理解它，吸收其中的真理，拒绝其中的谬误，并且你有一个逻辑且科学的基础去推敲这些内容，而不仅仅是基于个人观点。

The means of learning are abundant; the desire to learn is scarce
学习的手段是丰富的；渴望学习的人却很少

The beauty of the internet is the entire library of Alexandria times 10 is at your fingertips at all times. It’s not the means of education or the means of learning are scarce, the means of learning are abundant. It’s the desire to learn that’s scarce. So, you really have to cultivate the desire.
互联网的美妙之处在于，整个亚历山大图书馆的藏书乘以十倍，随时触手可及。教育手段或学习手段并不稀缺，学习的手段是丰富的。稀缺的是学习的渴望。所以，你真的需要培养这种渴望。

And it’s not even cultivating you’ve to not lose it. Children have a natural curiosity. If you go to a young child who’s first learning language, they’re pretty much always asking: What’s this? What’s that? Why is this? Who’s that? They’re always asking questions.
而且这不仅仅是培养，你还得保持它不消失。孩子们天生具有好奇心。如果你去看一个刚学语言的小孩，他们几乎总是在问：这是什么？那是什么？为什么是这样？那是谁？他们总是在提问。

But one of the problems is that schools and our educational system, and even our way of raising children replaces curiosity with compliance. And once you replace the curiosity with the compliance, you get an obedient factory worker, but you no longer get a creative thinker. And you need creativity, you need the ability to feed your own brain to learn whatever you want.
但问题之一是，学校和我们的教育体系，甚至我们的育儿方式，都用服从取代了好奇心。一旦你用服从取代了好奇心，你就会得到一个听话的工厂工人，但你不再得到一个有创造力的思考者。而你需要创造力，你需要有能力喂养自己的大脑，去学习你想学的任何东西。

The Foundations Are Math and Logic
基础是数学和逻辑

Mathematics and logic are the basis for understanding everything else
数学和逻辑是一切其他事物理解的基础

The ultimate foundations are math and logic
最终的基础是数学和逻辑

Naval: Foundational things are principles, they’re algorithms, they’re deep seated logical understanding where you can defend it or attack it from any angle. And that’s why microeconomics is important because macroeconomics is a lot of memorization, a lot of macro bullshit.
Naval：基础性的东西是原则，是算法，是深层的逻辑理解，你可以从任何角度去辩护或质疑它。这就是为什么微观经济学很重要，因为宏观经济学更多是记忆，很多宏观的废话。

As Nassim Taleb says, it is easier to macro bullshit than it is the micro bullshit. Because macroeconomics is voodoo-complex-science meets politics. You can’t find two macroeconomists to agree on anything these days, and different macroeconomists get used by different politicians to peddle their different pet theories.
正如纳西姆·塔勒布所说，宏观胡扯比微观胡扯更容易。因为宏观经济学是巫术复杂科学与政治的结合。如今你找不到两个宏观经济学家能在任何问题上达成一致，不同的宏观经济学家被不同的政治家利用，兜售他们各自的宠儿理论。

There are even macroeconomists out there now peddling something called Modern Monetary Theory which basically says, hey, except for this pesky thing called inflation, we can just print all the money that we want. Yes, except for this pesky thing called inflation. That’s like saying, except for limited energy, we can fire rockets off into space all day long.
现在甚至有宏观经济学家在兜售一种叫做现代货币理论的东西，基本上就是说，嘿，除了这个讨厌的通货膨胀问题，我们可以随意印钱。是的，除了这个讨厌的通货膨胀问题。这就像说，除了有限的能量，我们可以整天发射火箭到太空。

It’s just nonsense, but the fact that there are people who have “macroeconomist” in their title and are peddling Modern Monetary Theory just tells you that macroeconomics as a so-called science has been corrupted. It’s now a branch of politics.
这完全是胡说八道，但事实是，有些人头衔上带着“宏观经济学家”，却在兜售现代货币理论，这就告诉你，作为所谓科学的宏观经济学已经被腐蚀了。它现在成了政治的一个分支。

So, you really want to focus on the foundations. The ultimate foundation are mathematics and logic. If you understand logic and mathematics, then you have the basis for understanding the scientific method. Once you understand the scientific method, then you can understand how to separate truth from falsehood in other fields and other things that you’re reading.
所以，你真的要专注于基础。最终的基础是数学和逻辑。如果你理解逻辑和数学，那么你就有了理解科学方法的基础。一旦你理解了科学方法，你就能理解如何在其他领域和你所阅读的其他事物中区分真理与谬误。

It’s better to read a great book slowly than to fly through a hundred books quickly
慢慢读一本好书，比快速浏览一百本书要好。

So, be very careful about reading other people’s opinions and even be careful when reading facts because so-called facts are often just opinions with a veneer [of pseudoscience] around them.
所以，在阅读别人的观点时要非常小心，甚至在阅读事实时也要小心，因为所谓的事实往往只是带有伪科学外衣的观点。

What you are really looking for are algorithms. What you are really looking for is understanding. It’s better to go through a book really slowly and struggle and stumble and rewind, than it is to fly through it quickly and say, “Well, now I’ve read 20 books, I’ve read 30 books, I’ve read 50 books in the field.”
你真正寻找的是算法。你真正寻找的是理解。慢慢地读一本书，经历挣扎、跌倒和倒带，比快速浏览然后说“我已经读了 20 本、30 本、50 本该领域的书”要好得多。

It’s like Bruce Lee said, “I don’t fear the man who knows a thousand kicks and a thousand punches, I fear the man who’s practiced one punch ten thousand times or one kick ten thousand times.” It’s that understanding that comes through repetition and through usage and through logic and foundations that really makes you a smart thinker.
正如李小龙所说：“我不怕那个会一千种踢法和一千种拳法的人，我怕的是那个把一种拳法练了一万次或一种踢法练了一万次的人。”正是通过重复、运用、逻辑和基础所获得的理解，才真正让你成为一个聪明的思考者。

Learn persuasion and programming
学习说服术和编程

Nivi: To lay a foundation for learning for the rest of your life I think you need two things, if I was going to try and sum it up. One, practical persuasion and two, you need to go deep in some technical category, whether it’s abstract math, or you want to read Donald Knuth’s books on algorithms, or you want to read Feynman’s lectures on physics.
Nivi：如果我要总结一生学习的基础，我认为你需要两样东西。第一，实用的说服技巧；第二，你需要在某个技术领域深入钻研，无论是抽象数学，还是阅读 Donald Knuth 关于算法的书籍，或者是阅读 Feynman 的物理学讲座。

If you have practical persuasion and a deep understanding of some complex topic, I think you’ll have a great foundation for learning for the rest of your life.
如果你具备实用的说服能力和对某个复杂主题的深入理解，我认为你将拥有一生学习的坚实基础。

Naval: Yeah. In fact let me expand that a little bit. I would say that the five most important skills are of course, reading, writing, arithmetic, and then as you’re adding in, persuasion, which is talking. And then finally, I would add computer programming just because it’s an applied form of arithmetic that just gets you so much leverage for free in any domain that you operate in.
Naval：是的。事实上让我稍微展开说一下。我会说最重要的五项技能当然是阅读、写作、算术，然后随着你不断增加，劝说能力，也就是口才。最后，我会加上计算机编程，因为它是一种应用算术的形式，能在你所处的任何领域免费为你带来巨大的杠杆效应。

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.
如果你擅长电脑，擅长基础数学，擅长写作，擅长表达，并且喜欢阅读，你的人生就已经有保障了。

There’s No Actual Skill Called ‘Business’
实际上并没有一种叫做“商业”的技能

Avoid business schools and magazines
远离商学院和商业杂志

There’s no actual skill called ‘business’
没有一种真正叫做“商业”的技能

Naval: In that sense, business to me is bottom of the barrel. There’s no actual skill called business, it’s too generic. It’s like a skill called “relating.” Like “relating to humans.” That’s not a skill, it’s too broad.
Naval：从这个意义上说，对我来说，商业是最底层的东西。没有一种真正叫做商业的技能，它太泛泛了。就像有一种叫“交际”的技能一样，比如“与人交往”。那不是一种技能，太宽泛了。

A lot of what goes on in business schools, and there is some very intelligent stuff taught in business schools – I don’t mean to detract from them completely – some of the things taught in business school are just anecdotes. They call them “case studies.”
商学院里教的很多东西，确实有一些非常聪明的内容——我并不是完全贬低它们——但商学院里教的一些东西只是轶事。他们称之为“案例研究”。

But they’re just anecdotes, and they’re trying to help you pattern match by throwing lots of data points at you, but the reality is, you will never understand them fully until you’re actually in that position yourself. 
但它们只是轶事，他们试图通过给你大量数据点来帮助你进行模式匹配，但现实是，除非你自己亲身处于那个位置，否则你永远无法完全理解它们。

Even then you will find that basic concepts from game theory, psychology, ethics, mathematics, computers, and logic will serve you much, much better.
即使那样，你也会发现博弈论、心理学、伦理学、数学、计算机和逻辑学的基本概念会对你帮助更大得多。

I would focus on the foundations, I would focus with a science bent. I would develop a love for reading, including by reading so-called junk food that you’re not supposed to read. You don’t have to read the classics. That [reading] is the foundation for your self-education.
我会专注于基础，我会以科学的态度去专注。我会培养阅读的兴趣，包括阅读那些所谓的“垃圾食品”——你本不该读的东西。你不必非读经典不可。那（阅读）是你自我教育的基础。

Doing is faster than watching
行动比观看更快。

Nivi: What did you mean when you said that “doing is faster than watching?”
Nivi：当你说“行动比观看更快”时，你是什么意思？

Naval: When it comes to your learning curve, if you want to optimize your learning curve… One of the reasons why I don’t love podcasts, even though I’m a generator of podcasts, is that I like to consume my information very quickly.
Naval：谈到你的学习曲线，如果你想优化你的学习曲线……我不太喜欢播客的原因之一，尽管我自己也制作播客，是因为我喜欢非常快速地获取信息。

And I’m a good reader, or a fast reader and I can read very fast but I can only listen at a certain speed. I know people listen at 2x, 3x, but everyone sounds like a chipmunk and it’s hard to go back, it’s hard to highlight, it’s hard to pinpoint snippets and save them in your notebook, and so on.
我阅读能力不错，读得很快，但听的速度只能有限。我知道有人会以 2 倍、3 倍速听，但听起来像花栗鼠一样，很难回放，很难做标记，很难精准摘录并保存到笔记本里，等等。

Similarly, a lot of people think they can become really skilled at something by watching others do it, or even by reading about others doing it. And going back to the business school case study, that’s a classic example.
同样，很多人认为通过观看别人做某事，甚至通过阅读别人做某事的内容，就能变得非常熟练。回到商学院的案例研究，这就是一个经典的例子。

They study other people’s businesses, but in reality, you’re going to learn a lot more about running a business by operating your own lemonade stand or equivalent. Or even opening a little retail store down the street.
他们研究别人的生意，但实际上，你通过经营自己的柠檬水摊或类似的小生意，甚至开一家街角的小零售店，会学到更多关于经营企业的知识。

That is how you’re going to learn on the job because a lot of the subtleties don’t express themselves until you’re actually in the business.
这就是你在工作中学习的方式，因为很多细节只有当你真正进入业务时才会显现出来。

For example, everyone’s into mental models these days. You go to Farnam Street, you go to Poor Charlie’s Almanack, and you can learn all the different mental models. But which ones matter more? Which ones do you apply more often? Which ones matter in which circumstances? That’s actually the hard part.
例如，现在大家都热衷于心理模型。你可以去 Farnam Street，去读《Poor Charlie’s Almanack》，学习各种不同的心理模型。但哪些更重要？哪些你更常用？哪些在特定情况下更有用？这才是真正的难点。

For example, my personal learning has been that the principal-agent problem drives so much in this world. It’s an incentives problem. I’ve learned that tit-for-tat iterated prisoner’s dilemma is the piece of game theory that is worth knowing the most. You can almost put down the game theory book after that.
举个例子，我个人的学习是，委托-代理问题驱动了这个世界上的许多事情。这是一个激励问题。我了解到，针锋相对的重复囚徒困境是博弈论中最值得了解的部分。掌握了这一点，你几乎可以放下博弈论的书了。

By the way, the best way to learn game theory is to play lots of games. I never even read game theory books. I consider myself extremely good at game theory. I’ve never opened up a game theory book and found a result in there where I didn’t think, “Oh, yeah, that’s common sense to me.”
顺便说一句，学习博弈论的最好方法就是玩很多游戏。我甚至从未读过博弈论的书。我认为自己在博弈论方面非常擅长。我从未打开过一本博弈论书籍，发现里面的结论让我觉得“哦，是的，这对我来说是常识”。

The reason is that I grew up playing all kinds of games and I ran into all kinds of corner cases with all kinds of friends, and so it’s just second nature to me. You can always learn better by doing it on the job.
原因是我从小就玩各种游戏，遇到过各种各样的极端情况，和各种朋友一起玩，所以这对我来说已经是第二天性了。你总是可以通过在工作中实践来学得更好。

The number of ‘doing’ iterations drives the learning curve
“实践”的次数决定了学习曲线

But doing is a subtle thing. Doing encapsulates a lot. For example, let’s say, I want to learn how to run a business. Well, if I start a business where I go in every day and I’m doing the same thing, let’s say I’m running a retail store down the street where I’m stocking the shelves with food and liquor every single day, I’m not going to learn that much because I’m repeating things a lot.
但实践是件微妙的事情。实践包含很多内容。举个例子，假设我想学会如何经营一家公司。好吧，如果我开了一家店，每天都做同样的事情，比如我在街角开了一家零售店，每天都在给货架补充食品和酒水，我不会学到太多东西，因为我重复了很多事情。

So, I’m putting in thousands of hours, but they are thousands of hours doing the same thing. Whereas if I was putting in thousands of iterations, that would be different. So, the learning curve is across iterations [not iterations].
所以，我投入了数千小时，但这些都是在做同一件事的数千小时。而如果我投入的是数千次迭代，那就不一样了。所以，学习曲线是跨越迭代的，而不是单纯的时间积累。

So if I was trying new marketing experiments in the store all the time, I was constantly changing up the inventory, I was constantly changing up the branding and the messaging, I was constantly changing the sign, I was constantly changing the online channels that are used to drive foot traffic in, I was experimenting with being open at different hours, I had the ability to walk around and talk to other store owners and getting their books and figure out how they run their businesses.
所以如果我一直在店里尝试新的营销实验，我会不断更换库存，不断更换品牌和信息传达，不断更换招牌，不断更换用来引流的线上渠道，我会尝试在不同时间段营业，我还能走访其他店主，拿到他们的账本，了解他们是如何经营生意的。

It’s the number of iterations that drives the learning curve. So, the more iterations you can have, the more shots on goal you can have, the faster you’re going to learn. It’s not just about the hours put in.
推动学习曲线的是迭代次数。所以，你能进行的迭代越多，尝试的机会越多，学习得就越快。这不仅仅是投入时间的问题。

If you’re willing to bleed a little every day, you may win big later
如果你愿意每天都付出一点代价，未来可能会获得巨大回报。

It’s actually a combination of the two, but I think just the way we’re built and the way that the world presents itself, the world offers us very easily the opportunity to do the same thing over and over and over again. But really, we’d be better served if we went off and found ways to do new things from scratch.
其实这是两者的结合，但我认为就我们自身的构造和世界的呈现方式而言，世界很容易让我们一遍又一遍地做同样的事情。但实际上，如果我们能跳出来，从零开始寻找做新事物的方法，会更有益处。

And doing something new the first time is painful, because you’re wandering into uncertain territory and high odds are that you will fail. So you just have to get very, very comfortable with frequent small failures.
第一次做新事物是痛苦的，因为你正在进入未知领域，而且很可能会失败。所以你必须非常非常习惯频繁的小失败。

Nassim Taleb talks about this also. He made his fortune, his wealth by being a trader who basically relied upon black swans. Nassim Taleb made money by losing little bits of money every day and then once in a blue moon he would make a lot of money when the unthinkable happened for other people.
纳西姆·塔勒布也谈到过这一点。他通过做交易员积累了财富，基本上依赖于“黑天鹅”事件。纳西姆·塔勒布通过每天亏一点钱赚钱，然后偶尔在别人难以想象的情况下赚大钱。

Whereas most people want to make little bits of money every day and in exchange they’ll tolerate lots of blow-up risk, they’ll tolerate going completely bankrupt.
而大多数人想每天赚一点钱，为此他们愿意承受巨大的爆仓风险，甚至愿意承受完全破产。

We’re not evolved to bleed a little bit every day. If you’re out in the natural environment, and you get a cut and you’re literally bleeding a little bit every day, you will eventually die. You’ll have to stop that cut.
我们并不是进化成每天流一点血的。如果你在自然环境中，身上有伤口每天都在流血，你最终会死。你必须止住那个伤口。

We’re evolved for small victories all the time but that becomes very expensive. That’s where the crowd is. That’s where the herd is. So, if you’re willing to bleed a little bit every day but in exchange you’ll win big later, you will do better.
我们进化成了不断追求小胜利的状态，但这代价非常高昂。人群都聚集在那里，羊群也在那里。所以，如果你愿意每天流一点血，但作为交换，未来你会赢得更大的胜利，你会做得更好。

That is, by the way, entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurs bleed every day.
顺便说一句，这就是创业。创业者每天都在流血。

They’re not making money, they’re losing money, they’re constantly stressed out, all the responsibility is upon them, but when they win they win big. On average they’ll make more.
他们没有赚钱，他们在亏钱，他们不断承受压力，所有责任都落在他们身上，但当他们赢的时候，赢得很大。平均来说，他们会赚得更多。

Embrace Accountability to Get Leverage
拥抱责任以获得杠杆效应

Take risks under your own name and society will reward you with leverage
以自己的名义承担风险，社会将以杠杆回报你

You need accountability to get leverage
你需要承担责任才能获得杠杆

Nivi: Why don’t we jump into accountability, which I thought was pretty interesting and I think you have your own unique take on it. So the first tweet on accountability was, “Embrace accountability and take business risks under your own name. Society will reward you with responsibility, equity, and leverage.”
Nivi：我们为什么不直接谈谈责任感呢？我觉得这很有趣，而且我认为你对此有自己独特的见解。关于责任感的第一条推文是：“拥抱责任感，以自己的名义承担商业风险。社会将以责任、股权和杠杆回报你。”

Naval:  Yeah. So to get rich, you’re going to need leverage. Leverage comes in labor, comes in capital, or it can come through code or media. But most of these, like labor and capital, people have to give to you. For labor, somebody has to follow you. For capital, somebody has to give you money or assets to manage or machines.
Naval：是的。要致富，你需要杠杆。杠杆可以来自劳动、资本，也可以通过代码或媒体实现。但大多数杠杆，比如劳动和资本，必须有人提供。对于劳动，必须有人跟随你；对于资本，必须有人给你钱、资产或机器来管理。

So to get these things, you have to build up credibility and you have to do those under your own name as much as possible, which is risky. So accountability is a double-edged thing. It allows you to take credit when things go well and to bear the brunt of the failure when things go badly.
所以要获得这些东西，你必须建立信誉，并且尽可能以自己的名义去做，这很有风险。所以责任感是一把双刃剑。它让你在事情顺利时获得荣誉，在事情失败时承担主要责任。

Take business risks under your own name
以自己的名义承担商业风险

So in that sense, people who are stamping their names on things aren’t foolish. They’re just confident. Maybe it turns out to be foolish in the end, but if you look at a Kanye or an Oprah or a Trump or an Elon or anyone like that, these people can get rich just off their name because their name is such powerful branding.
所以从这个意义上说，那些在事物上盖自己名字的人并不愚蠢。他们只是自信。也许最终证明是愚蠢的，但如果你看看 Kanye、Oprah、Trump、Elon 或类似的人，这些人仅凭他们的名字就能致富，因为他们的名字是如此强大的品牌。

Regardless of what you think of Trump, you have to realize that the guy was among the best in the world at just branding his name. Why would you go to Trump Casino? Used to be because Trump. Why would you go to a Trump tower? Because of Trump.
无论你如何看待 Trump，你都必须意识到这个人在品牌塑造方面是世界上最顶尖的人之一。你为什么会去 Trump 赌场？过去是因为 Trump。你为什么会去 Trump 大厦？也是因为 Trump。

When it came time to vote, I think that a lot of voters just went in and said, “Trump.” They recognize the name, so the name recognition paid off.
到了投票的时候，我觉得很多选民只是进去然后说，“特朗普”。他们认得这个名字，所以名字的知名度起了作用。

Same thing with Oprah. She puts her brand on something, her name on something and it flies off the shelves, and it’s like an instant validator.
奥普拉也是一样。她把自己的品牌或者名字放在某样东西上，那东西就会迅速脱销，就像是一个即时的认可标志。

These people also take risks for putting their name out there. Obviously Trump is now probably hated by half or more than half of the country and by a big chunk of the world as he sticks his name out there.
这些人也冒着风险把自己的名字暴露出来。显然，特朗普现在可能被全国一半甚至超过一半的人讨厌，世界上也有很大一部分人讨厌他，因为他把自己的名字摆在了那里。

By putting your name out there, you become a celebrity, and fame has many, many downsides. It’s better to be anonymous and rich than to be poor and famous, but even famous and rich has a lot of downsides associated with it. You’re always in the public eye.
把你的名字摆出来，你就成了名人，而名声有很多很多的负面影响。匿名且富有总比贫穷且出名要好，但即使是既出名又富有，也有很多负面影响。你总是处于公众的视线之中。

A well-functioning team has clear accountability for each position
一个运作良好的团队对每个职位都有明确的责任划分。

Accountability is quite important, and when you’re working to build a product or you’re working in a team or you’re working in a business, we constantly have drummed into our heads how important it is to be part of a team. Absolutely agree with that.
责任感非常重要，当你在努力打造一个产品，或者在团队中工作，或者在企业中工作时，我们不断被灌输团队合作的重要性。对此我完全同意。

A lot of our training socially is telling us to not stick our necks out of the crowd. There’s a saying that I hear from our Australian friends that the tall poppy gets cut. Don’t stick your neck out, but I would say that actually a really, really well-functioning team is small and has clear accountability for each of the different portions.
我们在社会上的很多训练都是告诉我们不要在群众中突出自己。我听澳大利亚的朋友们常说一句话：“高个的罂粟花会被砍掉。”不要把脖子伸出来，但我想说的是，一个真正运作良好的团队应该是小而精的，并且对各个不同部分有明确的责任划分。

You can say, “Okay, this person’s responsible for building the product. This person’s responsible for the messaging. This person’s responsible for raising money. This person’s responsible for the pricing strategy and maybe the online advertising.” So if somebody screws up, you know exactly who’s responsible. While at the same time if something goes really well, you also know exactly who’s responsible.
你可以说，“好，这个人负责产品开发，这个人负责信息传递，这个人负责筹资，这个人负责定价策略，也许还有线上广告。”所以如果有人搞砸了，你就知道具体是谁的责任。同时，如果事情进展得非常顺利，你也能准确知道是谁的功劳。

If you have a small team and you have clearly delineated responsibilities, then you can still keep a very high level of accountability. Accountability is really important because when something succeeds or fails, if it fails, everybody points fingers at each other, and if it succeeds, everybody steps forward to take credit.
如果你有一个小团队，并且职责划分清晰，那么你依然可以保持很高的责任感。责任感非常重要，因为当事情成功或失败时，如果失败了，大家会互相指责；如果成功了，大家都会争着认功。

We’ve all had that experience when we were in school and we got a group assignment to do. There were probably a few people in there who did a lot of the work. Then there are a few people who just did a lot of grandstanding or positioning to do the work. We’re all familiar with this from a childhood sense, but it’s sort of uncomfortable to talk about.
我们都有过这样的经历：在学校里接到一个小组作业。通常会有几个人做了大部分的工作。然后还有几个人只是做了很多表面功夫或摆姿态来“做”这项工作。我们从小就熟悉这种情况，但谈论起来总有些尴尬。

People who can fail in public have a lot of power
能够在公众面前失败的人拥有很大的力量。

Clear accountability is important. Without accountability, you don’t have incentives. Without accountability, you can’t build credibility. But you take risk. You take risk of failure. You take risk of humiliation. You take risk of failure under your own name.
明确的责任制很重要。没有责任制，就没有激励。没有责任制，你无法建立信誉。但你必须承担风险。你承担失败的风险。你承担羞辱的风险。你承担以自己名义失败的风险。

Luckily in modern society, there’s no more debtors’ prison and people don’t go to jail or get executed for losing other people’s money, but we’re still socially hard wired to not fail in public under our own names. The people who have the ability to fail in public under their own names actually gain a lot of power .
幸运的是，在现代社会，不再有债务人监狱，人们不会因为亏损别人的钱而入狱或被处决，但我们仍然在社会上被硬性要求不能以自己的名义在公众面前失败。那些有能力以自己名义在公众面前失败的人，实际上获得了很大的力量。

For example, I’ll give a personal anecdote. Up until about 2013, 2014, my public persona was an entirely around startups and investing. Only around 2014, 2015 did I start talking about philosophy and psychological things and broader things.
举个例子，我来说一个个人轶事。直到大约 2013 年、2014 年，我的公众形象完全围绕着创业和投资。只有到了 2014 年、2015 年左右，我才开始谈论哲学、心理学以及更广泛的话题。

It made me a little nervous because I was doing it under my own name. There were definitely people in the industry who sent me messages through the back channel like, “What are you doing? You’re ending your career. This is stupid.”
这让我有点紧张，因为我是用自己的名字在做这件事。行业里确实有人通过私下渠道给我发信息说，“你在干什么？你这是在毁掉你的职业生涯。这很愚蠢。”

I kind of just went with it. I took a risk. Same with crypto. Early on, I took a risk.
我就这样顺其自然地做了。我冒了个险。加密货币也是一样。早期我也冒了险。

But when you put your name out there, you take a risk with certain things. You also get to reap the rewards. You get the benefits.
但当你把自己的名字放出来时，你在某些事情上确实冒了风险。你也能收获回报。你能得到好处。

Take Accountability to Earn Equity
承担责任以获得股权

If you have high accountability, you’re less replaceable
如果你有高度的责任感，你就不容易被替代

Accountability is how you’re going to get equity
责任感是你获得股权的途径

Naval: Accountability is important because that’s how you’re going to get leverage. That’s how you’re going to get credibility. It’s also how you’re going to get equity. You’re going to get a piece of the business.
Naval：责任感很重要，因为这就是你获得杠杆的方式。这也是你获得信誉的方式。它同样是你获得股权的方式。你将获得企业的一部分。

When you’re negotiating with other people, ultimately if someone else is making a decision about how to compensate you, that decision will be based on how replaceable you are. If you have high accountability, that makes you less replaceable. Then they have to give you equity, which is a piece of the upside.
当你与他人谈判时，最终如果是别人决定如何补偿你，这个决定将基于你有多么不可替代。如果你承担高度责任，那会让你更难被替代。这样他们就必须给你股权，也就是未来收益的一部分。

Taking accountability is like taking equity in all your work
承担责任就像是在你所有的工作中持有股权。

Equity itself is a good example because equity is also a risk-based instrument. Equity means you get paid everything after all the people who need guaranteed money are paid back.
股权本身就是一个很好的例子，因为股权也是一种基于风险的工具。股权意味着你在所有需要保证收入的人都拿到钱之后，才能获得报酬。

If you look at the hierarchy of capital in a company, the employees get paid first. They get paid the salary first. In legal [bankruptcy] proceedings, the salaries are sacrosanct. If you’re a board member and the company spends too much money and has back salaries to pay, the government can go after you personally to pay back the salaries. The employees get the most security, but in exchange for that security, they don’t have as much upside.
如果你看一家公司的资本层级，员工是最先拿到工资的。他们首先拿到薪水。在法律（破产）程序中，工资是神圣不可侵犯的。如果你是董事会成员，公司花费过多且拖欠工资，政府可以追究你的个人责任来偿还工资。员工获得了最高的保障，但作为交换，他们的上行空间没有那么大。

Next in line would be the debt holders who are maybe the bankers who lend money to the company for operations and they need to make their fixed coupon every month or every year, but they don’t get much more upside beyond that. They might be making 5, 10, 15, 20, 25% a year, but that’s what their upside is limited to.
接下来是债权人，可能是那些向公司提供运营资金的银行家，他们需要每月或每年获得固定的利息，但除此之外几乎没有更多的收益。他们可能每年赚取 5%、10%、15%、20%、25%的收益，但这就是他们收益的上限。

Finally there are the equity holders. These people are actually going to get most of the upside. Once the debt holders are paid off and the salaries are paid off, whatever remains goes to them.
最后是股权持有者。这些人实际上将获得大部分的收益。一旦债权人和工资都付清，剩下的部分就归他们所有。

But if there isn’t enough money to pay off the salaries and the debt holders, or if there’s just barely enough to pay off the salary and the debt holders, which is what happens with most businesses, most of the times, the equity holders get nothing.
但如果没有足够的钱支付工资和债权人，或者仅仅够支付工资和债权人，这就是大多数企业大多数时候的情况，股权持有者就一分钱也得不到。

The equity holders take on greater risk, but in exchange, they get nearly unlimited upside. You can do the same with all of your work. Essentially, taking accountability for your actions is the same as taking an equity position in all of your work. You’re taking greater downside risk for greater upside.
股权持有者承担更大的风险，但作为交换，他们获得几乎无限的上行空间。你也可以用同样的方式对待你所有的工作。本质上，对自己的行为负责就等同于在你所有的工作中持有股权。你承担更大的下行风险以换取更大的上行收益。

Realize that in modern society, the downside risk is not that large. Even personal bankruptcy can wipe the debts clean in good ecosystems. I’m most familiar with Silicon Valley, but generally people will forgive failures as long as you were honest and made a high integrity effort.
要明白，在现代社会，下行风险并不大。即使是个人破产，在良好的生态系统中也能清除债务。我最熟悉的是硅谷，但一般来说，只要你诚实并且付出了高度诚信的努力，人们通常会原谅失败。

There’s not really that much to fear in terms of failure, and so people should be taking on a lot more accountability than they actually are.
其实失败并没有那么可怕，所以人们应该承担比实际更多的责任。

Nivi:  Is accountability actually fragile or do you really just mean that we’re hardwired not to fail in public, so it just feels like it’s a fragile thing?
Nivi：责任感真的那么脆弱吗？还是你只是想说我们天生不愿意在公众面前失败，所以感觉责任感很脆弱？

Naval:  I think it could actually be fragile. An example of accountability is you’re an airplane pilot. As a captain, you’re taking on accountability for the entire plane.
Naval：我认为责任感确实可能很脆弱。举个例子，假设你是一名飞机驾驶员。作为机长，你承担着整架飞机的责任。

Let’s say that something goes wrong with the aircraft. You can’t later blame it on anyone else. You can’t blame it on the steward or the stewardess. You can’t blame it on the copilot. You’re the captain. You’re responsible for the ship. If you screw up, you crash the ship, and there are immediate consequences.
假如飞机出了问题，你不能事后把责任推给别人。你不能怪空乘人员，也不能怪副驾驶。你是机长，你负责这艘“船”。如果你搞砸了，飞机就会坠毁，后果立刻显现。

In the old days, the captain was expected to go down with the ship. If the ship was sinking, then literally the last person who got to get off was the captain. I think accountability does come with real risks, but we’re talking about a business context.
在过去，船长被期望与船同沉。如果船沉没了，那么最后一个离开船的人通常就是船长。我认为责任确实伴随着真正的风险，但我们这里讨论的是商业环境。

The risk here would be that you would probably be the last one to get your capital back out. You’d be the last one to get paid for your time. The time that you’ve put in, the capital that you’ve put into the company, these are what are at risk.
这里的风险可能是你很可能是最后一个收回资本的人。你将是最后一个因你的时间而获得报酬的人。你投入的时间，你投入公司的资本，这些都是面临风险的。

Even if a business fails and your name’s on it, that’s not as bad as if it turns out to be an integrity issue. Bernie Madoff, for example, Madoff investments, that name is never going to be good again in the investment community. You could be Bernie Madoff’s great-great-great-grandson. You are not going to go into the investment business because he ruined the family name.
即使企业失败了，而你的名字挂在上面，这也不如出现诚信问题那么糟糕。例如伯尼·麦道夫，麦道夫投资，这个名字在投资界永远不会再有好名声。即使你是伯尼·麦道夫的曾曾曾孙，你也不会进入投资行业，因为他毁了家族的名声。

I think these days the accountability risk with a name happens more around integrity, rather than it does around purely economic failure.
我认为如今，名字所带来的责任风险更多是围绕诚信问题，而不是纯粹的经济失败。

Accountability is reputational skin in the game
责任就是声誉上的风险

Nivi:  The big takeaway for me on accountability is that you will be rewarded directly in proportion with your accountability. I also think this is why people like Taleb rail against CEOs who get rewards without accountability.
Nivi：对我来说，关于责任的最大收获是，你的回报将与你承担的责任成正比。我也认为这就是为什么像塔勒布这样的人会抨击那些没有承担责任却获得奖励的 CEO。

Naval:  Yeah. Taleb’s Skin In The Game is required reading. If you want to get anywhere in modern life and understand how modern systems work, then Skin In The Game would be near the top of my list to read.
Naval：是的。塔勒布的《风险之躯》是必读书目。如果你想在现代生活中有所成就，并理解现代系统的运作方式，那么《风险之躯》应该是我推荐阅读的首选之一。

Accountability, skin in the game, these concepts go very closely hand in hand. I think of accountability as reputational skin in the game. It’s putting your personal reputation on the line as skin in the game.
责任和风险之躯，这些概念密切相关。我认为责任就是声誉上的风险。把你的个人声誉作为风险押上，这就是责任。

Accountability is a simple concept. The only part of accountability that may be a little counterintuitive is that we’re currently socially brainwashed to not take on accountability, not in a visible way.
责任是一个简单的概念。责任中唯一可能有点违反直觉的部分是，我们目前在社会上被洗脑，不以明显的方式承担责任。

I think there are ways to take on accountability where every member of a team can take on accountability for their portion. That is how you get a well-functioning team while still putting credits and losses in the correct columns.
我认为有一些方法可以让团队中的每个成员都为自己负责的部分承担责任。这样你就能拥有一个运作良好的团队，同时将功劳和损失归入正确的栏目。

Labor and Capital Are Old Leverage
劳动力和资本是古老的杠杆

Everyone is fighting over labor and capital
每个人都在争夺劳动力和资本

Our brains aren’t evolved to comprehend new forms of leverage
我们的脑袋并没有进化到能够理解新型杠杆的地步

Nivi: Why don’t we talk a little bit about leverage?
Nivi：我们为什么不聊聊杠杆呢？

The first tweet in the storm was a famous quote from Archimedes, which was, “Give me a lever long enough and a place to stand and I will move the Earth.”
风暴中的第一条推文是阿基米德的一句名言：“给我一个足够长的杠杆和一个支点，我就能撬动地球。”

The next tweet was, “Fortunes require leverage. Business leverage comes from capital, people and products with no marginal costs of replication.”
下一条推文是：“财富需要杠杆。商业杠杆来自资本、人才和没有边际复制成本的产品。”

Naval: Leverage is critical. The reason I stuck in Archimedes quote in there is… normally I don’t like putting other people’s quotes in my Twitter. That doesn’t add any value. You can go look up those people’s quotes. But this quote I had to put in there because it’s just so fundamental. I read it when I was very, very young and it had a huge impression on me.
Naval：杠杆作用至关重要。我之所以把阿基米德的那句名言放进去，是因为……通常我不喜欢在推特上引用别人的话，那样没什么价值。你可以自己去查那些人的名言。但这句我必须放进去，因为它太基础了。我很小的时候读到这句话，给我留下了深刻的印象。

We all know what leverage is when we use a seesaw or a lever. We understand how that works physically, but I think what our brains aren’t really well-evolved to comprehend is how much leverage is possible in modern society and what the newest forms of leverage are.

Society overvalues labor leverage

The oldest form of leverage is labor, which is people working for you. Instead of me lifting rocks, I can have 10 people lift rocks. Then just by my guidance on where the rock should go, a lot more rocks get moved than I could do myself. Everybody understands this because we’re evolved to understand the labor form of leverage, so what happens is society overvalues labor as a form of leverage.

This is why your parents are impressed when you get a promotion and you have lots of people working underneath you. This is why when a lot of naive people, when you tell them about your company, they’ll say, “How many people work there?” They’ll use that as a way to establish credibility. They’re trying to measure how much leverage and impact you actually have.

Or when someone starts a movement, they’ll say how many people they have or how big the army is. We just automatically assume that more people is better.

You want the minimum amount of labor that allows you to use the other forms of leverage

I would argue that this is the worst form of leverage that you could possibly use. Managing other people is incredibly messy. It requires tremendous leadership skills. You’re one short hop from a mutiny or getting eaten or torn apart by the mob.

It’s incredibly competed over. Entire civilizations have been destroyed over this fight. For example, communism, Marxism, is all about the battle between capital and labor, das kapital and das labor. It’s kind of a trap.

You really want to stay out of labor-based leverage. You want the minimum amount of people working with you that are going to allow you to use the other forms of leverage, which I would argue are much more interesting.

Capital has been the dominant form of leverage in the last century

The second type of leverage is capital. This one’s a little less hardwired into us because large amounts of money moving around and being saved and being invested in money markets, these are inventions of human beings the in last few hundred to few thousand years. They’re not evolved with us from hundreds of thousands of years.

We understand them a little bit less well. They probably require more intelligence to use correctly, and the ways in which we use them keep changing. Management skills from a hundred years ago might still apply today, but investing in the stock market skills from a hundred years ago probably don’t apply to the same level today.

Capital is a trickier form of leverage to use. It’s more modern. It’s the one that people have used to get fabulously wealthy in the last century. It’s probably been the dominant form of leverage in the last century.

You can see this by who are the richest people. It’s bankers, politicians in corrupt countries who print money, essentially people who move large amounts of money around.

If you look at the top of very large companies, outside of technology companies, in many, many large old companies, the CEO job is really a financial job. They’re really financial asset managers. Sometimes, an asset manager can put a pleasant face on it, so you get a Warren Buffet type.

But deep down, I think we all dislike capital as a form of leverage because it feels unfair. It’s this invisible thing that can be accumulated and passed across generations and suddenly seems to result in people having gargantuan amounts of money with nobody else around them or necessarily sharing in it.

That said, capital is a powerful form of leverage. It can be converted to labor. It can be converted to other things. It’s very surgical, very analytical.

If you are a brilliant investor and give $1 billion and you can make a 30% return with it, whereas anybody else can only make a 20% return, you’re going to get all the money and you’re going to get paid very handsomely for it.

It scales very, very well. If you get good at managing capital, you can manage more and more capital much more easily than you can manage more and more people.

You need specific knowledge and accountability to obtain capital

It is a good form of leverage, but the hard part with capital is how do you obtain it? That’s why I talked about specific knowledge and accountability first.

If you have specific knowledge in a domain and if you’re accountable and you have a good name in that domain, then people are going to give you capital as a form of leverage that you can use to then go get more capital.

Capital also is fairly well understood. I think a lot of the knocks against capitalism come because of the accumulation of capital.

Product and Media Are New Leverage

Create software and media that work for you while you sleep

Product and media are the new leverage

Naval: The most interesting and the most important form of leverage is this idea of products that have no marginal cost of replication. This is the new form of leverage.

This was only invented in the last few hundred years. It got started with the printing press. It accelerated with broadcast media, and now it’s really blown up with the Internet and with coding.

Now, you can multiply your efforts without having to involve other humans and without needing money from other humans.

This podcast is a form of leverage. Long ago, I would have had to sit in a lecture hall and lecture each of you personally. I would have maybe reached a few hundred people and that would have been that.

Then 40 years ago, 30 years ago, I would have to be lucky to get on TV, which is somebody else’s leverage. They would have distorted the message. They would taken the economics out of it or charged me for it. They would have muddled the message, and I would have been lucky to get that form of leverage.

Today, thanks to the Internet, I can buy a cheap microphone, hook it up to a laptop or an iPad, and there you are all listening.

Product leverage is where the new fortunes are made

This newest form of leverage is where all the new fortunes are made, all the new billionaires. The last generation, fortunes were made by capital. That was the Warren Buffets of the world.

But the new generation’s fortunes are all made through code or media. Joe Rogan making 50 to a 100 million bucks a year from his podcast. You’re going to have a PewDiePie. I don’t know how much money he’s rolling in, but he’s bigger than the news. The Fortnite players. Of course Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg and Larry Page and Sergey Brin and Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. That is all code-based leverage.

Combining all three forms of leverage is a magic combination

Now, the beauty is when you combine all of these three. That’s where tech startups really excel, where you take just the minimum, but highest output labor that you can get, which are engineers, and designers, product developers. Then you add in capital. You use that for marketing, advertising, scaling. You add in lots of code and media and podcasts and content to get it all out there.

That is a magic combination, and that’s why you see technology startups explode out of nowhere, use massive leverage and just make huge outsize returns.

Product and media leverage are permissionless

Nivi: Do you want to talk a little bit about permissioned versus permissionless?

Naval: Probably the most interesting thing to keep in mind about the new forms of leverage is they are permissionless. They don’t require somebody else’s permission for you to use them or succeed.

For labor leverage, somebody has to decide to follow you. For capital leverage, somebody has to give you money to invest or to turn into a product.

Coding, writing books, recording podcasts, tweeting, YouTubing, these kinds of things, these are permissionless. You don’t need anyone’s permission to do them, and that’s why they are very egalitarian. They’re great equalizers of leverage.

As much as people may rail on Facebook and YouTube, they’re not going to stop using it because this permissionless leverage, where everyone can be a broadcaster, is just too good.

The same way you can rail upon Apple for having a slightly closed ecosystem in the iPhone, but everyone’s writing apps for it. As long as you can write apps for it, you can get rich or reach users doing that, why not?

The robot army is already here—code lets you tell them what to do

I think of all the forms of leverage, the best one in modern society … This is glib. This is a little overused. This is why I tell people learn to code. It’s that we have this idea that in the future there’s going to be these robots and they’re going to be doing everything.

That may be true, but I would say that the majority of the robot revolution has already happened. The robots are already here and there are way more robots than there are humans, it’s just that we pack them in data centers for heat and efficiency reasons. We put them in servers. They’re inside the computers. All the circuits, it’s robot minds inside that’s doing all the work.

Every great software developer, for example, now has an army of robots working for him at nighttime, while he or she sleeps, after they’ve written the code and it’s just cranking away.

The robot army is already here. The robot revolution has already happened. We’re about halfway through it. We’re just adding in much more of the hardware component these days as we get more comfortable with the idea of autonomous vehicles and autonomous airplanes and autonomous ships and maybe autonomous trucks. There’re delivery bots and Boston Dynamics robots and all that.

But robots who are doing web searching for you, for example, are already here. The ones who are cleaning up your video and audio and transmitting it around the world are already here. The ones who are answering many customer service queries, things that you would have had to call a human for are already here.

An army of robots is already here. It’s very cheaply available. The bottleneck is just figuring out intelligent and interesting things to do to them.

Essentially you can order this army of robots around. The commands have to be issued in a computer language, in a language that they understand.

These robots aren’t very smart. They have to be told very precisely what to do and how to do it. Coding is such a great superpower because now you can speak the language of the robot armies and you can tell them what to do.

Nivi: I think at this point, people are not only commanding the army of robots within servers through code, they’re actually manipulating the movement of trucks, of other people. Just ordering a package on Amazon, you’re manipulating the movement of many people and many robots to get a package delivered to you.

People are doing the same things to build businesses now. There’s the army of robots within servers and then there’s also an army of actual robots and people that are being manipulated through software.

Product Leverage is Egalitarian

The best products tend to be available to everyone

Product leverage is a positive-sum game

Naval: Labor and capital are much less egalitarian, not just in the inputs, but in their outputs.

Let’s say that I need something that humans have to provide like if I want a massage or if I need someone to cook my food. The more of a human element there is in providing that service, the less egalitarian it is. Jeff Bezos probably has much better vacations than most of us because he has lots of humans running around doing whatever he needs to do.

If you look at the output of code and media, Jeff Bezos doesn’t get to watch better movies and TV than we do. Jeff Bezos doesn’t get to even have better computing experience. Google doesn’t give him some premium, special Google account where his searches are better.

It’s the nature of code and media output that the same product is accessible to everybody. It turns into a positive sum game where if Jeff Bezos is consuming the same product as a thousand other people, that product is going to be better than the version that Jeff would consume on his own.

Status goods are limited to a few people

Whereas with other products, that’s not true. If you look at something like buying a Rolex, which is no longer about telling time. It’s a signaling  good. It’s all about showing off, “I have a Rolex.” That’s a zero-sum game.

If everybody in the world is wearing a Rolex, then people don’t want to wear Rolexes anymore because they no longer signal. It’s canceled out the effect.

Rich people do have an advantage in consuming that product. They’ll just price it up until only they can have Rolexes. Then poor people can’t have Rolexes and Rolexes resume their signaling value.

The best products tend to be targeted at the middle class

Something like watching Netflix or using Google or using Facebook or YouTube or even frankly modern day cars. Rich people don’t have better cars. They just have weirder cars.

You can’t drive a Lamborghini on the street at any speed that makes sense for a Lamborghini, so it’s actually a worse car in the street. It just turned into a signaling good at that point. Your sweet spot, where you want to be, is somewhere like a Tesla Model 3 or like a Toyota Corolla which is an amazing car.

A new Toyota Corolla is a really nice car, but because it’s mainstream, the technology has amortized the cost of production over the largest number of consumers possible.

The best products tend to be at the center, at the sweet spot, the middle class, rather than being targeted at the upper class.

Creating wealth with product leads to more ethical wealth

I think one of the things that we don’t necessarily appreciate in modern societies is as the forms of leverage have gone from being human-based, labor-based and being capital-based to being more product and code and media-based, that most of the goods and services that we consume are becoming much more egalitarian in their consumption.

Even food is becoming that way. Food is becoming cheap and abundant, at least in the first world, too much so to our detriment. Jeff Bezos isn’t necessarily eating better food. He’s just eating different food or he’s eating food that’s prepared and served theatrically, so it’s almost like more of again the human element of performance.

But the labor element out of food production has gone down massively. The capital element has gone down massively. Even food production itself has become more technology-oriented, and so the gap between the haves and the have-nots is getting smaller.

If you care about ethics in wealth creation, it is better to create your wealth using code and media as leverage because then those products are equally available to everybody as opposed to trying to create your wealth through labor or capital.

You want to use the product that is used by the most people

What I’m referring to here is scale economies. Technology products and media products have such amazing scale economies that you always want to use the product that is used by the most people. The one that’s used by the most people ends up having the largest budget. There’s no marginal cost of adding another user, and so with the largest budget, you get the highest quality.

The best TV shows are actually not going to be some obscure ones just made for a few rich people. They’re going to be the big budget ones, like the Game of Thrones or the Breaking Bad or Bird Box, where they have massive, massive budgets. They can just use those budgets to get to a certain quality level.

Then rich people, to be different, they have to fly to Sundance and watch a documentary. You and I aren’t going to fly to Sundance because that’s something that bored rich people do to show off. We’re not going to watch a documentary because most of them just aren’t actually even that good.

Again, if you’re wealthy today, for large classes of things, you spend your money on signaling goods to show other people that you’re wealthy, then you try and convert them to status. As opposed to actually consuming the goods for their own sake.

Nivi: People and capital as a form of leverage have a negative externality and code and product have a positive externality attached to them, if I was going to sum up your point.

Capital and labor are becoming permissionless

I think that capital and labor are also starting to become a little more permissionless or at least the permissioning is diffuse because of the Internet. Instead of labor, we have community now, which is a diffused form of labor. For example, Mark Zuckerberg has a billion people doing work for him by using Facebook.

Instead of going to raise capital from someone who’s rich, now we have crowdfunding. You can raise millions and millions of dollars for a charity, for a health problem or for a business. You can do it all online.

Capital and labor are also becoming permissionless, and you don’t need to necessarily do it the old fashioned way, where you have to go around and ask people for permission to use their money or their time.

Pick a Business Model with Leverage

An ideal business model has network effects, low marginal costs and scale economies

Scale economies: the more you produce, the cheaper it gets

Nivi: One more question about leverage. Do you think a choice of business model or a choice of product can also bring a kind of leverage to it?

For example, pursuing a business that has network effects. Pursuing a business that has brand effects. Or other choices of business model that people could manipulate that just give you free leverage.

Naval: Yeah, there’s some really good microeconomic concepts that are important to understand.

One of those is scale economies, which is the more you produce of something the cheaper it gets to make it. That’s something that a lot of businesses have, Basic Economics 101.

You should try and get into a business where making Widget Number 12 is cheaper than making Widget Number 5, and making Widget Number 10,000 is a lot cheaper than the previous ones. This builds up an automatic barrier to entry against competition and getting commoditized. That’s an important one.

Zero marginal cost of reproduction: producing more is free

Another one is, and this is along the same lines, but technology products especially, and media products, have this great quality where they have zero marginal cost of reproduction. Creating another copy of what you just created is free.

When somebody listens to this podcast or watches a YouTube video about this, it doesn’t cost me anything for the next person who shows up. Those zero marginal cost things, they take a while to get going because you make very little money per user, but over time they can really, really add up.

Joe Rogan is working no harder on his current podcast than he was on Podcast number 1, but on Podcast number 1,100 he’s making a million dollars from the podcast whereas for the previous one he probably lost money; for the first one. That’s an example of zero marginal cost.

Network effects: value grows as the square of the customers

Then, the most subtle but the most important is this idea of network effects. It comes from computer networking. Bob Metcalfe, who created Ethernet, famously coined Metcalfe’s Law, which is the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of nodes in the network.

If a network of size 10 would have a value of a 100, a network of a size 100 would have a value of 10,000. It’s not just 10 times more, it’s 100 times more, because of the square; the difference is the square.

You want to be in a network effects business, assuming you’re not number two. If you’re number one in network effect business, you win everything. Example: if you look at Facebook, your friends and family social networking protocol. Who’s their competitor? Nobody, because they won everything through network effects. Which is why when people say, “Well, I can just switch away from Facebook,” they don’t realize that network effects create natural monopolies. They’re very, very powerful things.

Network effect businesses are natural monopolies

One of the dirty secrets of Silicon Valley is that a lot of the winning businesses are natural monopolies.  Even ride-sharing tends towards one winner-take-all system.

Uber will always have better economics than Lyft, as long as it’s moving more drivers and more riders around. Something like Google, there’s basically only one viable search engine. I do like DuckDuckGo, privacy reasons, but they’re just always gonna be behind because of network effects. Twitter: where else would you go for microblogging? Even YouTube has weak network effects, but they’re still powerful enough that there’s really no number two site that you go to, to consume your video on a regular basis. It even turns out in e-tail, Amazon Prime and kind of the convenience of stored credit cards and information creates a powerful network effect.

In a network effect, each new user adds value to the existing users

What is a network effect? Let’s just define it precisely. A network effect is when each additional user adds value to the existing user base. Your users themselves are creating some value for the existing users.

The classic example that I think everybody can understand is, language. Let’s say that there’s 100 people living in the community and speak 10 different languages, and each person just speaks one of those 10. Well, you’re having to translate all the time; it’s incredibly painful. But if all 100 of you spoke the same language, it would add tremendous value.

The way that community will play out is, 10 people start off speaking 10 languages, and let’s say one extra person learns English. Well, now all of a sudden, 11 people know English, so the next person comes in to learn a new language is probably going to chose English. At some point, let’s say English gets to 20 or 25 people, it’s done. It’s just going to own the entire language marketplace, and the rest of the languages will get competed out.

Which is why, long-term, the entire world is probably going to end up speaking English and Chinese. China’s closed off on the Internet, but the Internet itself is a great leveler, and people who want to communicate on the Internet are forced to speak English because the largest community of people on the Internet speaks English.

I always feel bad for my colleagues who grew up speaking foreign languages in foreign countries, because you don’t have access to so many books; so many books just haven’t been translated into other languages. If you only spoke French, or you only spoke German, or you only spoke Hindi, for example, you would be at a severe disadvantage in a technical education.

Invariably, if you go and get a technical education, you have to learn English just because you have to read these books that have this data that has not been translated. Languages are probably the oldest example of network effect.

Money is another example. We should all probably be using the same money, except for the fact that geographic and regulatory boundaries have created these artificial islands of money. But even then, the world tends to use a single currency as the reserve currency at most times; currently, the US dollar.

Zero marginal cost businesses can pivot into network effect businesses

Network effects are a very powerful concept, and when you’re picking a business model, it’s a really good idea to pick a model where you can benefit from network effects, low marginal costs, and scale economies; and these tend to go together.

Anything that has zero marginal costs of production obviously has scale economies, and things that have zero marginal costs of reproduction very often tend to have network effects, because it doesn’t cost you anything more to stamp out the thing. So then you can just create little hooks for users to add value to each other.

You should always be thinking about how your users, your customers, can add value to each other because that is the ultimate form of leverage. You’re at the beach in the Bahamas or you’re sleeping at night and your customers are adding value to each other.

Example: From Laborer to Entrepreneur

From low to high specific knowledge, accountability and leverage

Laborers get paid hourly and have low accountability

Naval: The tweetstorm is very abstract. It’s deliberately meant to be broadly applicable to all kinds of different domains and disciplines and time periods and places. But sometimes it’s hard to work without a concrete example. So let’s go concrete for a minute.

Look at the real estate business. You could start at the bottom, let’s say you’re a day laborer. You come in, you fix people’s houses. Someone orders you around, tells you, “Break that piece of rock. Sand that piece of wood. Put that thing over there.”

There’s just all these menial jobs that go on, on a construction site. If you’re working one of those jobs, unless you’re a skilled trade, say, a carpenter or electrician, you don’t really have specific knowledge.

Even a carpenter or an electrician is not that specific because other people can be trained how to do it. You can be replaced. You get paid your $15, $20, $25, $50, if you’re really lucky, $75 an hour, but that’s about it.

You don’t have any leverage other than from the tools that you’re using. If you’re driving a bulldozer that’s better than doing it with your hands. A day laborer in India makes a lot less because they have no tool leverage.

You don’t have much accountability. You’re a faceless cog in a construction crew and the owner of the house or the buyer of the house doesn’t know or care that you worked on it.

General contractors get equity, but they’re also taking risk

One step up from that, you might have a contractor, like a general contractor who someone hires to come and fix and repair and build up their house. That general contractor is taking accountability; they’re taking responsibility.

Now let’s say they got paid $250,000 for the job. Sorry, I’m using Bay Area prices, so maybe I’ll go rest of the world prices, $100,000 for the job to fix up a house, and it actually costs the general contractor, all said and done, $70,000. That contractor’s going to pocket that remaining $30,000.

They got the upside. They got the equity but they’re also taking accountability and risk. If the project runs over and there’s losses, then they eat the losses. But you see, just the accountability gives them some form of additional potential income.

Then, they also have labor leverage because they have a bunch of people working for them. But it  probably tops out right there.

Property developers pocket the profit by applying capital leverage

You can go one level above that and you can look at a property developer. This might be someone who is a contractor who did a bunch of houses, did a really good job, then decided to go into business for themselves and they go around looking for beaten down properties that have potential.

They buy them, they either raise money from investors or front it themselves, they fix the place up, and then they sell it for twice what they bought it for. Maybe they only put in 20% more, so it’s a healthy profit.

So now a developer like that takes on more accountability, has more risk. They have more specific knowledge because now you have to know: which neighborhoods are worth buying in. Which lots are actually good or which lots are bad. What makes or breaks a specific property. You have to imagine the finished house that’s going to be there, even when the property itself might look really bad right now.

There’s more specific knowledge, there’s more accountability and risk, and now you also have capital leverage because you’re also putting in money into the project. But conceivably, you could buy a piece of land or a broken-down house for $200,000 and turn it into a million dollar mansion and pocket all the difference.

Architects, large developers and REITs are even higher in the stack

One level beyond that might be a famous architect or a developer, where just having your name on a property, because you’ve done so many great properties, increases its value.

One level up from that, you might be a person who decides, well, I understand real estate, and I now know enough of the dynamics of real estate that rather than just build and flip my own properties or improve my own properties, I’m gonna be a massive developer. I’m going to build entire communities.

Now another person might say, “I like that leverage, but I don’t want to manage all these people. I want to do it more through capital. So I’m gonna start a real estate investment trust.” That requires specific knowledge not just about investing in real estate and building real estate, but it also requires specific knowledge about the financial markets, and the capital markets, and how real estate trusts operate.

Real estate tech companies apply the maximum leverage

One level beyond that might be somebody who says, “Actually, I want to bring the maximum leverage to bear in this market, and the maximum specific knowledge.” That person would say, “Well, I understand real estate, and I understand everything from basic housing construction, to building properties and selling them, to how real estate markets move and thrive, and I also understand the technology business. I understand how to recruit developers, how to write code and how to build good product, and I understand how to raise money from venture capitalists and how to return it and how all of that works.”

Obviously not a single person may know this. You may pull a team together to do it where each have different skill sets, but that combined entity would have specific knowledge in technology and in real estate.

It would have massive accountability because that company’s name would be a very high risk, high reward effort attached to the whole thing, and people would devote their lives to it and take on significant risk.

It would have leverage in code with lots of developers. It would have capital with investors putting money in and the founder’s own capital. It would have labor of some of the highest quality labor that you can find, which is high quality engineers and designers and marketers who are working on the company.

Then you may end up with a Trulia or a RedFin or a Zillow kind of company, and then the upside could potentially be in the billions of dollars, or the hundreds of millions of dollars.

As you layer in more and more kinds of knowledge that can only be gained on the job and aren’t common knowledge, and you layer in more and more accountability and risk-taking, and you layer in more and more great people working on it and more and more capital on it, and more and more code and media on it, you keep expanding the scope of the opportunity all the way from the day-laborer, who might just literally be scrappling on the ground with their hands, all the way up to somebody who started a real estate tech company and then took it public.

Judgment Is the Decisive Skill

In an age of nearly infinite leverage, judgment is the most important skill

In an age of infinite leverage, judgment becomes the most important skill

Nivi:  We spoke about specific knowledge, we talked about accountability, we talked about leverage. The last skill that Naval talks about in his tweetstorm is judgment, where he says, that “Leverage is a force multiplier for your judgment.”

Naval: We are now living in an age of nearly infinite leverage, and all the great fortunes are created through leverage. Your first job is to go and obtain leverage, and you can obtain leverage through permission by getting people to work for you, or by raising capital.

Or you can get leverage permissionlessly by learning how to code or becoming good communicator and podcasting, broadcasting, creating videos, writing, etc.

That’s how you get leverage, but once you have leverage, what do you do with it? Well, the first part of your career’s spent hustling to get leverage. Once you have the leverage, then you wanna slow down a bit, because your judgment really matters.

It’s like you’ve gone from  steering your sailboat around to now you’re steering an ocean liner or a tanker. You have a lot more at risk, but you have a lot more to gain as well. You’re carrying a much higher payload. In an age of infinite leverage, judgment becomes the most important skill.

Warren Buffett is so wealthy now because of his judgment. Even if you were to take away all of Warren’s money, tomorrow, investors would come out of the woodwork and hand him a $100 billion because they know his judgment is so good, and they would give him a big chunk of that $100 billion to invest.

Everything else you do is setting you up to apply judgment

Ultimately, everything else that you do is actually setting you up to apply your judgment. One of the big things that people rail on is CEO pay. For sure there’s crony capitalism that goes on where these CEOs control their boards and the boards give them too much money.

But, there are certain CEOs who definitely earned their keep because their judgment is better. If you’re steering a big ship, if you’re steering Google or Apple, and your judgment is 10 or 20 percent better than the next person’s, society will literally pay you hundreds of millions of dollars more, because you’re steering a $100 billion ship.

If you’re on course 10 or 20 percent of the time more often than the other person, the compounding results on that hundreds of billions of dollars you’re managing will be so large that your CEO pay will be dwarfed in comparison.

Demonstrated judgment, credibility around the judgment, is so critical. Warren Buffett wins here because he has massive credibility. He’s been highly accountable. He’s been right over and over in the public domain. He’s built a reputation for very high integrity, so you can trust him.

A person like that, people will throw infinite leverage behind him because of his judgment. Nobody asks him how hard he works; nobody asks him when he wakes up or when he goes to sleep. They’re like, “Warren, just do your thing.”

Judgment, especially demonstrated judgment, with high accountability, clear track record, is critical.

Judgment is knowing the long-term consequences of your actions

Nivi: Let’s define judgment. I would define it as knowing the long-term effects of your decisions, or  being able to predict the long-term effects of your decisions.

Naval: It’s funny. My definition of wisdom is knowing the long term consequences of your actions, so they’re not all that different. Wisdom is just judgment on a personal domain.

Wisdom applied to external problems I think is judgment. They’re highly linked. But, yes, it’s knowing the long term consequences of your actions and then making the right decision to capitalize on that.

Without experience, judgment is often less than useless

Judgment is very hard to build up. This is where both intellect and experience come in play.

There are many problems with the so-called intellectuals in the ivory tower, but one of the reasons why Nassim Taleb rails against them is because they have no skin in the game. They have no real-world experience, so they just apply purely intellect.

Intellect without any experience is often worse than useless because you get the confidence that the intellect gives you, and you get some of the credibility, but because you had no skin in the game, and you had no real experience, and no real accountability, you’re just throwing darts.

The real world is always far, far more complex than we can intellectualize. Especially all the interesting, fast-moving edge domains and problems, you can’t get there without experience. If you are smart and you iterate fast, it’s not even you put 10,000 hours into something, but you take 10,000 tries at something.

The people with the best judgment are among the least emotional

If you are smart and you have a lot of quick iterations, and you try to keep your emotions out of it, the people with the best judgment are actually among the least emotional. A lot of the best investors are considered almost robotic in that regard, but I wouldn’t be surprised if even the best entrepreneurs often come across as unemotional.

There is sort of this archetype of the passionate entrepreneur, and yeah, they have to care about what they’re doing, but they also have to see very clearly what’s actually happening. The thing that prevents you from seeing what’s actually happening are your emotions. Our emotions are constantly clouding our judgment, and in investing, or in running companies, or in building products, or being an entrepreneur, emotions really get in the way.

Emotions are what prevent you from seeing what’s actually happening, until you can no longer resist the truth of what’s happening, until it becomes too sudden, and then you’re forced into suffering; which is sort of a breaking of this fantasy that you had put together.

Nivi:  To try and connect some of these concepts, I would say that, first, you’re accountable for your judgment. Judgment is the exercise of wisdom. Wisdom comes from experience; and that experience can be accelerated through short iterations.

Top investors often sound like philosophers

Naval: And the reason why a lot of the top investors, a lot of the value investors, like if you read Jeremy Grantham, or you read Warren Buffet, or you read up on Michael Burry, these people sound like philosophers, or they are philosophers, or they’re reading a lot of history books or science books.

Like what are they doing, shouldn’t they be reading investment books. No. Investment books are the worst place to learn about investment, because investment is a real-world activity that is highly multi-variate, all the advantages are always being competed away. It’s always on the cutting-edge.

What you actually just need is very, very broad-based judgment and thinking. The best way to do that is to study everything, including a lot of philosophy. Philosophy also makes you more stoic, makes you less emotional, and so you make better decisions; you have better judgment.

The more outraged someone is, the worse their judgment

One simple thing is I see … I go out on Twitter and it seems like half of Twitter is outraged at something at all times. You can go within someone’s Twitter feed and get at least some semblance of what it must be like to be in their head all the time.

The more outraged somebody is, I guarantee you, the worse their judgment is. If someone’s constantly tweeting political outrage, and just see like an angry person getting into fights, you don’t want to hand this person the keys to your car, let alone the keys to your company.

Set an Aspirational Hourly Rate

Outsource tasks that cost less than your hourly rate

Set and enforce an aspirational hourly rate

Nivi: We covered the skills you need to get rich. They included specific knowledge, accountability, leverage, judgment and life-long learning. Let’s talk about the importance of working hard and valuing your time.

Naval: No one is going to value you more than you value you. Set a high personal hourly rate, and stick to it. When I was young, I decided I was worth a lot more than the market thought I was worth. And I started treating myself that way.

Factor your time into every decision. Say you value your time at $100 an hour. If you decide to spend an hour driving across town to get something, you’re effectively throwing away $100. Are you going to do that?

Say you buy something from Amazon and they screw it up. Is it worth your time to return it? Is it worth the mental hassle? Keep in mind that you will have less time for work, including mentally high-output work. Do you want to use that time running errands and solving little problems? Or do you want to save it for the big stuff?

The great scientists were terrible at managing their home lives. None of them had an organized room, or made social events on time, or sent their thank-you cards.

You can’t penny pinch your way to wealth

You can spend your life however you want. But if you want to get rich, it has to be your top priority. It has to come before anything else, which means you can’t penny-pinch. This is what people don’t understand.

You can penny-pinch your way to basic sustenance. You can keep expenses low and maybe retire early. That’s perfectly valid. But we’re here to talk about wealth creation. If you’re going to create wealth, it has to be your number-one, overwhelming priority.

My aspirational rate was $5,000/hr

Fast-forward to your wealthy self and pick an intermediate hourly rate. Before I had any real money and you could hire me, I set an aspirational rate of $5,000 an hour.

Of course, I still ended up doing stupid things like arguing with the electrician or returning the broken speaker. But I shouldn’t have. And I did a lot less of it my friends. I would make a theatrical show out of throwing something in the trash or giving it to Salvation Army, rather than returning it or trying to fix it.

I would argue with girlfriends, “I don’t do that. That’s not a problem that I solve.” I still argue that today with my wife and with my mother, when she hands me little to-do’s. I say, “I would rather hire you an assistant.” This was true even when I didn’t have money.

If you can outsource something for less than your hourly rate, do it

Another way to think about this: If you can outsource something—or not do something—for less than your hourly rate, outsource it or don’t do it. If you can hire someone to do it for less than your hourly rate, hire them. That includes things like cooking. You may want to make your own healthy, home-cooked meals. But if you can outsource it, do that instead.

People say, “What about the joy of life? What about getting it right, just your way?” Sure, you can do that. But you’re not going to be wealthy, because you’ve made something else a priority.

Paul Graham said it well for Y Combinator startups. He said you should be working on your product and getting product-market fit, and you should be exercising and eating healthy. That’s about it. That’s all you have time for while you’re on this mission.

Your hourly rate should seem absurdly high

Set a very high aspirational hourly rate for yourself, and stick to it. It should seem and feel absurdly high. If it doesn’t, it’s not high enough. Whatever you pick, my advice is to raise it.

For the longest time, I used $5,000 an hour. If you extrapolate that out as an annual salary, it’s multiple millions of dollars per year. I actually think I’ve beaten it, which is interesting given that I’m not the hardest worker. I work through bursts of energy when I’m motivated to work on something.

Work As Hard As You Can

Even though what you work on and who you work with are more important

Work as hard as you can

Naval: Let’s talk about hard work. There’s a battle that happens on Twitter a lot. Should you work hard or should you not? David Heinemeier Hansson says, “It’s like you’re slave-driving people.” Keith Rabois says, “No, all the great founders worked their fingers to the bone.”

They’re talking past each other.

First of all, they’re talking about two different things. David is talking about employees and a lifestyle business. If you’re doing that, your number one priority is not getting wealthy. You have a job, a family and also your life.

Keith is talking about the Olympics of startups. He’s talking about the person going for the gold medal and trying to build a multi-billion dollar public company. That person has to get everything right. They have to have great judgment. They have to pick the right thing to work on. They have to recruit the right team. They have to work crazy hard. They’re engaged in a competitive sprint.

If getting wealthy is your goal, you’re going to have to work as hard as you can. But hard work is no substitute for who you work with and what you work on. Those are the most important things.

What you work on and who you work with are more important

Marc Andreessen came up with the concept of the “product-market fit.” I would expand that to “product-market-founder fit,” taking into account how well a founder is personally suited to the business. The combination of the three should be your overwhelming goal.

You can save a lot of time by picking the right area to work in. Picking the right people to work with is the next most important piece. Third comes how hard you work. They are like three legs of a stool. If you shortchange any one of them, the whole stool is going to fall. You can’t easily pick one over the other.

When you’re building a business, or a career, first figure out: “What should I be doing? Where is a market emerging? What’s a product I can build that I’m excited to work on, where I have specific knowledge?”

No matter how high your bar is, raise it

Second, surround yourself with the best people possible. If there’s someone greater out there to work with, go work with them. When people ask for advice about choosing the right startup to join, I say, “Pick the one that’s going to have the best alumni network for you in the future.” Look at the PayPal mafia—they worked with a bunch of geniuses, so they all got rich. Pick the people with the highest intelligence, energy and integrity that you can find.

And no matter how high your bar is, raise it.

Finally, once you’ve picked the right thing to work on and the right people, work as hard as you can.

Nobody really works 80 hours a week

This is where the mythology gets a little crazy. People who say they work 80-hour weeks, or even 120-hour weeks, often are just status signaling. It’s showing off. Nobody really works 80 to 120 hours a week at high output, with mental clarity. Your brain breaks down. You won’t have good ideas.

The way people tend to work most effectively, especially in knowledge work, is to sprint as hard as they can while they feel inspired to work, and then rest. They take long breaks.

It’s more like a lion hunting and less like a marathoner running. You sprint and then you rest. You reassess and then you try again. You end up building a marathon of sprints.

Inspiration is perishable

Inspiration is perishable. When you have inspiration, act on it right then and there.

If I’m inspired to write a blog post or publish a tweetstorm, I should do it right away. Otherwise, it’s not going to get out there. I won’t come back to it. Inspiration is a beautiful and powerful thing. When you have it, seize it.

Impatience with actions, patience with results

People talk about impatience. When do you know to be impatient? When do you know to be patient? My glib tweet on this was: “Impatience with actions, patience with results.” I think that’s a good philosophy for life.

Anything you have to do, get it done. Why wait? You’re not getting any younger.

You don’t want to spend your life waiting in line. You don’t want to spend it traveling back and forth. You don’t want to spend it doing things that aren’t part of your mission.

When you do these things, do them as quickly as you can and with your full attention so you do them well. Then be patient with the results because you’re dealing with complex systems and a lot of people.

It takes a long time for markets to adopt products. It takes time for people to get comfortable working with each other. It takes time for great products to emerge as you polish away.

Impatience with actions, patience with results.

If I discover a problem in one of my businesses, I won’t sleep until the resolution is at least in motion. If I’m on the board of a company, I’ll call the CEO. If I’m running the company, I’ll call my reports. If I’m responsible, I’ll get on it, right then and there, and solve it.

If I don’t solve a problem the moment it happens—or if I don’t move towards solving it—I have no peace. I have no rest. I have no happiness until the problem is solved. So I solve it as quickly as possible. I literally won’t sleep until it’s solved—maybe that’s just a personal characteristic. But it’s worked out well in business.

Be Too Busy to ‘Do Coffee’

Ruthlessly decline meetings

Be too busy to ‘do coffee’ while keeping an uncluttered calendar

Naval: Another tweet was: “You should be too busy to ‘do coffee,’ while still keeping an uncluttered calendar.”

People who know me know I’m famous for simultaneously doing two things.

First, I keep a very clean calendar. I have almost no meetings on it. When some people see my calendar, they almost weep.

Second, I’m busy all the time. I’m always doing something. It’s usually work-related. It’s whatever high-impact thing that needs to be done, that I’m most inspired to do.

The only way to do that is to constantly, and ruthlessly, decline meetings.

People want to “do coffee” and build relationships. That’s fine early in your career, when you’re still exploring. But later in your career—when you’re exploiting, and there are more things coming at you than you have time for—you have to ruthlessly cut meetings out of your life.

Ruthlessly cut meetings

If someone wants a meeting, see if they will do a call instead. If they want to call, see if they will email instead. If they want to email, see if they will text instead. And you probably should ignore most text messages—unless they’re true emergencies.

You have to be utterly ruthless about dodging meetings. When you do meetings, make them walking meetings. Do standing meetings. Keep them short, actionable and small. Nothing is getting done in a meeting with eight people around a conference table. You are literally dying one hour at a time.

Nivi: “Doing coffee” reminds me of an old quote, I think from Steve Jobs, when someone asked him why Apple didn’t come to a convention. His response was something like, “Because we wouldn’t be here working.”

Naval: I used to have a tough time turning people down for meetings. Now I just tell them outright, “I don’t do non-transactional meetings. I don’t do meetings without a strict agenda. I don’t do meetings unless we absolutely have to.”

Nivi used to do this. When people asked us for get-to-know-you meetings, he would say, “We don’t do meetings unless it’s life-and-death urgent.” The person has to respond, “Yeah, it’s life-and-death urgent” or there’s no meeting.

People will meet with you when you have proof of work

Busy people will take your meeting when you have something important or valuable. But you have to come with a proper calling card. It should be: “Here’s what I’ve done. Here’s what I can show you. Let’s meet if this is useful to you, and I’ll be respectful of your time.”

You have to build up credibility. For example, when a tech investor looks at a startup, the first thing they want to see is evidence of product progress. They don’t just want to see a slide deck. Product progress is the entrepreneur’s resume. It’s an unfake-able resume.

You have to do the work. To use a crypto analogy, you have to have proof of work. If you have that and you truly have something interesting, then you shouldn’t hesitate to put it together in an email and send it. Even then, when asking for a meeting, you want to be actionable.

Free your time and mind

If you think you’re going to “make it” by networking and attending a bunch of meetings, you’re probably wrong. Networking can be important early in your career. And you can get serendipitous with meetings. But the odds are pretty low.

When you meet people hoping for that lucky break, you’re relying on Type One luck, which is blind luck, and Type Two luck, which is hustle luck.

But you’re not getting Type Three or Type Four luck, which are the better kinds. This is where you spend time developing a reputation and working on something. You develop a unique point of view and are able to spot opportunities that others can’t.

A busy calendar and a busy mind will destroy your ability to do great things in this world. If you want to do great things—whether you’re a musician or entrepreneur or investor—you need free time and a free mind.

Keep Redefining What You Do

Become the best in the world at what you do

Keep redefining what you do until you’re the best at what you do

Nivi: We talked about the importance of working hard and valuing your time. Next, there are a few tweets on the topic of working for the long-term. The first tweet is: “Become the best in the world at what you do. Keep redefining what you do until this is true.”

Naval: If you really want to get paid in this world, you want to be number one at whatever you do. It can be niche—that’s the point. You can literally get paid for just being you.

Some of the more successful people in the world are that way. Oprah gets paid for being Oprah. Joe Rogan gets paid for being Joe Rogan. They’re being authentic to themselves.

You want to be number one. And you want to keep changing what you do until you’re number one. You can’t just pick something arbitrary. You can’t say, “I’m going to be the fastest runner in the world,” and now you have to beat Usain Bolt. That’s too hard of a problem.

Keep changing your objective until it arrives at your specific knowledge, skill sets, position, capabilities, location and interests. Your objective and skills should converge to make you number one.

When you’re searching for what to do, you have two different foci to keep in mind. One is, “I want to be the best at what I do.” The second is, “What I do is flexible, so that I’m the best at it.”

You want to arrive at a comfortable place where you feel, “This is something I can be amazing at, while still being authentic to who I am.”

It’s going to be a long journey. But now you know how to think about it.

Find founder-product-market fit

The most important thing for any company is to find product-market fit. But the most important thing for any entrepreneur is to find founder-product-market fit, where you are naturally inclined to to build the right product for a market. That’s a three-foci problem. You have to make all three work at once.

If you want to be successful in life, you have to get comfortable managing multi-variate problems and multiple-objective functions at once. This is one of those cases where you have to map at least two or three at once.

Escape Competition Through Authenticity

Nobody can compete with you on being you

Competition will trap you in a lesser game

Nivi: Let’s discuss your tweet: “Escape competition through authenticity.” It sounds like part of this is a search for who you are.

Naval: It’s both a search and a recognition. Sometimes when we search our egos, we want to be something that we’re not. Our friends and family are actually better at telling us who we are. Looking back at what we’ve done is a better indicator of who we are.

Peter Thiel talks a lot about how competition is besides the point. It’s counterproductive. We’re highly memetic creatures. We copy everybody around us. We copy our desires from them.

If everyone around me is a great artist, I want to be an artist. If everyone around me is a great businessperson, I want to be a businessperson. If everybody around me is a social activist, I want to be a social activist. That’s where my self-esteem will come from.

You have to be careful when you get caught up in status games. You end up competing over things that aren’t worth competing over.

Peter Thiel talks about how he was going to be a law clerk because everybody at law school wanted to clerk for a Supreme Court justice or some famous judge. He got rejected, and that’s what made him go into business. It helped him break out of a lesser game and into a greater game.

Sometimes you get trapped in the wrong game because you’re competing. The best way to escape competition—to get away from the specter of competition, which is not just stressful and nerve-wracking but also will drive you to the wrong answer—is to be authentic to yourself.

No one can compete with you on being you

If you are building and marketing something that’s an extension of who you are, no one can compete with you. Who’s going to compete with Joe Rogan or Scott Adams? It’s impossible. Is somebody else going write a better Dilbert? No. Is someone going to compete with Bill Watterson and create a better Calvin and Hobbes? No.

Artist are, by definition, authentic. Entrepreneurs are authentic, too. Who’s going to be Elon Musk? Who’s going to be Jack Dorsey? These people are authentic, and the businesses and products they create are authentic to their desires and means.

If somebody else came along and started launching rockets, I don’t think it would faze Elon one bit. He’s still going to get to Mars. Because that’s his mission, insane as it seems. He’s going to accomplish it.

Authenticity naturally gets you away from competition. Does it mean that you want to be authentic to the point where there’s no product-market fit? It may turn out that you’re the best juggler on a unicycle. But maybe there isn’t much of a market for that, even with YouTube videos. So you have to adjust until you find product-market fit.

At least lean towards authenticity, towards getting away from competition. Competition leads to copy-catting and playing the completely wrong game.

In entrepreneurship, the masses are never right

In entrepreneurship, the masses are never right. If the masses knew how to build great things and create great wealth, we’d all be rich by now.

When you see a lot of competition, sometimes that indicates the masses have already arrived. It’s already competed over too much. Or it’s the wrong trend to begin with.

On the other hand, if the whole market is empty, that can be a warning indicator. It can indicate you’ve gone too authentic and should focus more on the product-market part of founder-product-market fit.

There’s a balance you have to find. Generally, people will make the mistake of paying too much attention to the competition. The great founders tend to be authentic iconoclasts.

Combine your vocation and avocation

Nivi: Do you think one way of getting to authenticity is by finding five or six various skills you already do and stacking them on top of each other, maybe not even in any purposeful way? If you are expressing who you are, you’re going to be expressing all of these skills anyway.

Naval: If you are successful, in the long-term you’ll find you’re almost doing all of your hobbies for a living, no matter what they are. As Robert Frost said, “my goal in life is to unite my avocation with my vocation.” That’s really where life is going to lead you anyway.

You’re right about the skill stack. Everyone has multiple skills. We aren’t one-dimensional creatures, even though that’s how we portray ourselves in online profiles to get employed. You meet somebody and they say, “I’m a banker.” Or, “I’m a bartender. Or “I’m a barber.”

Specialize in being you

But people are multivariate. They have a lot of skills. One banker might be good at finance. Another one might be good at sales. A third one might be good at macroeconomic trends and have a feel for markets. Another one might be really good at picking individual stocks. Another might be good at maintaining relationships, rather than selling new relationships. Everyone’s going to have various niches. And you’re going to have multiple niches. It’s not going to be just one.

As you go through your career, you’ll find you gravitate towards the things you’re good at, which by definition are the things you enjoy doing. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be good at them. You wouldn’t have put in the time.

Other people will push you towards the things you’re good at, too. Because your smart bosses, co-workers and investors will realize you’re world-class in this one thing. And you can recruit people to help you with other things.

Ideally, you want to end up specializing in being you.

Play Stupid Games, Win Stupid Prizes

Competition will blind you to greater games

Businesses that seem like they’re in direct competition really aren’t

Nivi: When you’re being authentic, you don’t mind competition that much. It pisses you off and inspires some fear, jealousy and other emotions. But you don’t really mind because you’re oriented towards the goal and the mission. Worst-case, you might get some ideas from them. And often there are ways to work with the competition in a positive way that ends up increasing the size of the market for you.

Naval: It depends on the nature of the business. The best Silicon Valley tech industry businesses tend to be winner-take-all. When you see competition, it can make you fly into a rage. Because it really does endanger everything you’ve built.

If I’m opening a restaurant and a more interesting version of the same restaurant opens in a different town, that’s fantastic. I’m going to copy what’s working and drop what’s not working. So it depends on the nature of the business.

Often, businesses that seem to be in direct competition really aren’t. They end up adjacent or slightly different. You’re one step away from a completely different business, and sometimes you need to take that step. You’re not going to take it if you’re busy fighting over a booby prize.

You’re playing a stupid game. You’re going to win a stupid prize. It’s not obvious right now because you’re blinded by competition. But three years from now, it’ll be obvious.

My first company got caught in the wrong game

One of my first startups was Epinions, an online product review site that was independent of Amazon. That space eventually turned into TripAdvisor and Yelp, which is where we should have gone.

We should have done more local reviews. A review of a scarce item like a local restaurant is more valuable than one of an item like a camera that has 1,000 reviews on Amazon.

Before we could get there, we got caught up in the comparison-shopping game. We merged with DealTime and competed with a bunch of price-comparison engines—mySimon, PriceGrabber, NexTag and Bizrate, which became Shopzilla. We were caught in fierce competition with each other.

That whole space went to zero because Amazon won e-tail completely. There was no need for price comparison. Everyone just went to Amazon.

We got the booby prize because we were caught up in competition with a bunch of our peers. We should have been looking at what the consumer really wanted and being authentic to ourselves, which was reviews, not price comparison. We should have gone further into esoteric items where customers had less data and wanted reviews more badly.

If we stayed authentic to ourselves, we would have done better.

Eventually You Will Get What You Deserve

On a long enough timescale, you will get paid

On a long enough time scale, you will get paid

Nivi: We’re talking about working for the long-term. The next tweet on that topic: “Apply specific knowledge, with leverage, and eventually you will get what you deserve.”

I would add: Apply judgment, apply accountability, and apply the skill of reading.

Naval: This one is a glib way of saying, “It takes time.” Once you have all of the pieces in place, there’s still an indeterminate amount of time you have to put in. And if you’re counting, you’ll run out of patience before it arrives.

You have to make sure you give these things time. Life is long.

Charlie Munger had a line on this. Somebody asked him about making money. He said what the questioner actually was asking was, “How can I become like you, except faster?”

Everybody wants it immediately. But the world is an efficient place. Immediate doesn’t work. You have to put in the time. You have to put in the hours. You have to put yourself in that position with specific knowledge, accountability, leverage and an authentic skill-set in order to be the best in the world at what you do.

And then you have to enjoy it and keep doing it and doing it and doing it. Don’t keep track. Don’t keep count. Because if you do, you will run out of time.

Looking back on my career, the people who I identified as brilliant and hardworking two decades ago are all successful now, almost without exception. On a long enough timescale, you will get paid.

But it can easily be 10 or 20 years. Sometimes it’s five. If it’s five, or three, and it’s a friend of yours who got there, it can drive you insane. But those are exceptions. And for every winner, there are multiple failures.

One thing that’s important in entrepreneurship: You just have to be right once. You get many, many shots on goal. You can take a shot on goal every three to five years, maybe every 10 at the slowest. Or once every year at the fastest, depending on how you’re iterating with startups. But you only have to be right once.

What are you really good at, that the market values?

Nivi: Your eventual outcome will be equal to something like the distinctiveness of your specific knowledge; times how much leverage you can apply to that knowledge; times how often your judgment is correct; times how singularly accountable you are for the outcome; times how much society values what you’re doing. Then you compound that with how long you can keep doing it and how long you can keep improving it through reading and learning.

Naval: That’s a really good way to summarize it. It’s worth trying to sketch that equation out.

That said, people try to apply mathematics to what is really philosophy. I’ve seen this happen, where I say one thing and then I say another thing that seems contradictory if you treat it as math. But it’s obviously in a different context.

People will say, “You say, ‘Desire is suffering.’” You know, the Buddhist saying. “And then you ‘All greatness comes from suffering.’ So does that mean all greatness comes from desire?” This isn’t math. You can’t just carry variables around and form absolute logical outputs. You have to know when to apply things.

One can’t get too analytical about it.

It’s what a physicist would call “false precision.” When you take two made-up estimates and multiply them together, you get four degrees of precision. Those decimal points don’t actually count. You don’t have that data. You don’t have that knowledge. The more estimated variables you have, the greater the error in the model.

Adding more complexity to your decision-making process gets you a worse answer. You’re better off picking the single biggest thing or two. Ask yourself: What am I really good at, according to observation and people I trust, that the market values?

Those two variables alone are probably good enough. If you’re good at it, you’ll keep it up. You’ll develop the judgment. If you’re good at it and you like to do it, eventually people will give you the resources and you won’t be afraid to take on accountability. So the other pieces will fall into place.

Product-market fit is inevitable if you’re doing something you love and the market wants it.

Reject Most Advice

Most advice is people giving you their winning lottery ticket numbers

The best founders listen to everyone but make up their own mind

Nivi: One of the tweets from the cutting-room floor was: “Avoid people who got rich quickly. They’re just giving you their winning lottery ticket numbers.”

Naval: This is generally true of most advice. It goes back to Scott Adams—systems not goals. If you ask a successful person what worked for them, they often read out the exact set of things that worked for them, which might not apply to you. They’re just reading you their winning lottery ticket numbers.

It’s a little glib. There is something to be learned, but you can’t take their exact circumstance and map it onto yours. The best founders I know read and listen to everyone. But then they ignore everyone and make up their own mind.

They have their own internal model of how to apply things to their situation. And they do not hesitate to discard information. If you survey enough people, all of the advice will cancel to zero.

You have to have your own point of view. When something is sent your way, you have to quickly decide: Is it true? Is it true outside of the context of how that person applied it? Is it true in my context? And then, Do I want to apply it?

You have to reject most advice. But you have to listen to enough of it, and read enough of it, to know what to reject and what to accept.

Even in this podcast, you should examine everything. If something doesn’t feel true to you, put it down. Set it aside. If too many things seem untrue, delete this podcast.

Advice offers anecdotes to recall later, when you get your own experience

Nivi: I think the most dangerous part of taking advice is that the person who gave it to you isn’t going to be around to tell you when it doesn’t apply any more.

Naval: I view the purpose of advice a little differently than most people. I view it as helping me have anecdotes and maxims that I can recall when I have my own direct experience and say, “Ah, that’s what that person meant.”

Ninety percent of my tweets are maxims that become mental hooks to remind me when I’m in that situation again.

Like, “Oh, I’m the one who tweeted, ‘If you can’t see yourself working with someone for life, then don’t work with them for a day.’” As soon as I know I’m not going to be working with someone 10 years from now, then I have to start extricating myself from that relationship or investing less effort in it.

I use tweets to compress my own learnings. Your brain space is finite. You have finite neurons. You can think of these as pointers, addresses, mnemonics to help you remember deep-seated principles where you have the underlying experience to back it up.

If you don’t have the underlying experience, then it reads like a collection of quotes. It’s cool. It’s inspirational for a moment. Maybe you make a nice poster out of it. But then you forget it and move on.

These are compact ways for you to recall your own knowledge.

A Calm Mind, a Fit Body, a House Full of Love

When you’re finally wealthy, you’ll realize it wasn’t what you were seeking in the first place

When you’re wealthy, you’ll realize it wasn’t what you were seeking

Nivi: The last tweet on the topic of working for the long-term is: “When you’re finally wealthy, you’ll realize it wasn’t what you were seeking in the first place. But that’s for another day.”

Naval: That’s a multi-hour topic in and of itself. First of all, I thought it was a really clever way to end the whole thing. It disarms a whole set of people who say, “What’s the point of getting rich?” There are a lot of people who like to virtue signal against the idea of wealth creation or making money.

It’s also true. Yes, money will solve all your money problems. But it doesn’t get you everywhere.

The first thing you realize when you’ve made a bunch of money is that you’re still the same person. If you’re happy, you’re happy. If you’re unhappy, you’re unhappy. If you’re calm and fulfilled and peaceful, you’re still that same person. I know lots of very rich people who are extremely out of shape. I know lots of rich people who have really bad family lives. I know lots of rich people who are internally a mess.

A calm mind, a fit body and a house full of love must be earned

I would lean on another tweet that I put out. When I think back on it, I think it’s my favorite tweet. It’s not necessarily the most insightful. It’s not necessarily the most helpful. It’s not even the one I think about the most. But when I look at it, there’s such a certain truth in there that it resonates. And that is: “A fit body, a calm mind, a house full of love. These things cannot be bought—they must be earned.”

Even if you have all the money in the world, you can’t have those three things. Jeff Bezos still has to work out. He still has to work on his marriage. And his internal mental state still very much won’t be controlled by external events. It’s going to be based on how calm and peaceful he is inside.

So I think those three things—your health, your mental health and your close relationships—are things you have to cultivate. They can bring you a lot more peace and happiness than any amount of money ever will.

Practical advice for a calmer internal state

How to get there is a tweetstorm I’ve been working on. I have probably 100 tweets on it. It’s very hard to say anything on the topic without getting attacked from 50 different directions, especially these days on Twitter. So I’ve been hesitant to do it. I want to target it for a very specific kind of person.

There’s a bunch of people who don’t believe working on your internal state is useful. They’re too focused on the external. And that’s fine, there’s nothing wrong with that. That’s who the “How to Get Rich” tweetstorm is for. There’s a bunch of people who believe the only thing worth working on is complete liberation. Like, you become the Buddha. They’ll attack anything in the middle as being useless. That’s fine, too. But most people aren’t there.

I want to create a tweetstorm that offers practical advice for everyday people who want a calmer internal state. A set of understandings, realizations, half-truths and truths, that if you were to imbibe them properly—and, again, these are pointers to ideas you already have and experiences you already have—that if you keep these top of mind, slowly but steadily it will help you with certain realizations that will lead you to a calmer internal state. That’s what I want to work on.

Fitness is another big one, I’m just not the expert there. There are plenty of good people on Twitter that who are better at fitness than me.

A lot of divorces happen over money, a lot of battles happen over internal anger

I think a loving household and relationships actually fall naturally out of the other things. If you have a calm mind and you’ve already made money, you should have good relationships. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t. A lot of divorces happen over money. Unfortunately, that’s just the reality of it. Having money removes that part of it.

A lot of external battles happen because your internal state is not good. When you’re naturally internally peaceful you’re going to pick fewer fights. You’re going to be more loving without expecting anything in return. That will take care of things on the external-relationship front.

Nivi: To summarize: Money solves your money problems. Money buys you freedom in the material world. And money lets you not do the things you don’t want to do.

Naval: Yeah. To me the ultimate purpose of money is so you don’t have to be in a specific place, at a specific time, doing anything you don’t want to do.

There Are No Get Rich Quick Schemes

Get rich quick schemes are just someone else getting rich off you

There are no get rich quick schemes

Nivi: We skipped one tweet because I wanted to cover all of the tweets on the topic of the long-term. The tweet we skipped: “There are no get rich quick schemes. That’s just someone else getting rich off you.”

Naval: This goes back to the world being an efficient place. If there’s an easy way to get rich, it’s already been exploited. There are a lot of people who will sell you ideas and schemes on how to make money. But they’re always selling you some $79.95 course or some audiobook or seminar.

Which is fine. Everyone needs to eat. People need to make a living. They might actually have really good tips. If they’re giving you actionable, high-quality advice that acknowledges it’s a difficult journey and will take a lot of time, then I think it’s realistic.

But if they’re selling you some get rich quick scheme—whether it’s crypto or whether it’s an online business or seminar—they’re just making money off you. That’s their get rich quick scheme. It’s not necessarily going to work for you.

We don’t have ads because it would ruin our credibility

One of the things about this whole tweetstorm and podcast is that we don’t have ads. We don’t charge for anything. We don’t sell anything. Not because I don’t want to make more money—it’s always nice to make more money; we’re doing work here—but because it would completely destroy the credibility of the enterprise. If I say, “I know how to get rich, and I’m going to sell that to you,” then it ruins it.

When I was young, one of my favorite books on the topic was “How To Get Rich,” by Felix Dennis, the founder of Maxim Magazine. He had a lot of crazy stuff in there. But he had some really good insights too.

Whenever I read something by him or by GoDaddy founder Bob Parsons or Andrew Carnegie—people who are already very wealthy, and they clearly made their wealth in other fields, not by selling the how-to-get-rich line—they have a credibility. You just trust them.

They’re not trying to make money off of you. They’re obviously trying to win some status and some ego—you always have to have a motivation for doing something. But at least that’s a cleaner reason and why they’re probably not lying. They’re probably not fooling you. They’re not snowing you.

Every founder has to lie to every employee

At some level every founder has to lie to every employee of the company they have. They have to convince them, “It’s better for you to work for me than to do what I did and go work for yourself.”

I’ve always had a hard time with that.

The only honest way to do this, in my opinion, is to tell the entrepreneurs I recruit: “You’re going to be entrepreneurial in this company, and the day you’re ready to start your own next thing, I’m going to support you. I’m never going to get in the way of you starting a company. But this can be a good place for you to learn how to build a good team and build a good culture; how to find product-market fit; how to perfect your skills; and to meet some amazing people while you figure out exactly what it is you’re going to do. Because positioning, timing and deliberation are very important when starting a company.”

What I’ve never been able to do is to look them in the face and say, “You must be at your desk by 8 a.m.” Because I’m not going to be at my desk by 8 a.m. I want my freedom. I’ve never been able to say to them, “You’re great at being a director today, and you’ll be a VP tomorrow,” putting them into that cold career path track. Because I don’t believe in it myself.

Anyone giving advice on how to get rich should have made their money elsewhere

If anyone is giving advice on how to get rich and they’re also making money off of it, they should have made their money elsewhere. You don’t want to learn how to be fit from a fat person. You don’t want to learn how to be happy from a depressed person. So, you don’t want to learn how to be rich from a poor person. But you also don’t want to learn how to be rich from somebody who makes their money by telling people how to be rich. It’s suspect.

Nivi: Any time you see somebody who’s gotten rich following some guru’s advice on getting rich, remember that in any random process, if you run it long enough and if enough people participate in it, you will always get every single possible outcome with probability one.

Naval: There’s a lot of random error in there. This is why you have to absolutely and completely ignore business journalists and economist academics when they talk about private companies.

I won’t name names, but when a famous economist rails on Bitcoin, or when a business journalist attacks the latest company that’s IPO’ing, it’s complete nonsense. Those people have never built anything. They’re professional critics. They don’t know anything about making money. All they know is how to criticize and get pageviews. And you’re literally becoming dumber by reading them. You’re burning neurons.

I’ll leave you with a quote from Nassim Taleb that I liked. He said, “To become a philosopher king, start with being a king, not being a philosopher.”

Nivi: I’m glad you brought up Taleb, because I was going to finish this by saying: remember the title of his first book, “Fooled By Randomness.”

Naval: One of the reasons we’re a little vague in this podcast is because we’re trying to lay down principles that are timeless, as opposed to giving you the winning lottery ticket numbers from yesterday.

Productize Yourself

Figure out what you’re uniquely good at, and apply as much leverage as possible

Figure out what you’re uniquely good at and apply as much leverage as possible 

Nivi: You summarized this entire tweetstorm with two words: “Productize yourself.”

Naval: Productize has specific knowledge and leverage. Yourself has uniqueness and accountability. Yourself also has specific knowledge. So you can combine all of these pieces into these two words.

If you’re looking towards the long-term, you should ask yourself, “Is this authentic to me? Is it myself that I’m projecting?” And then, “Am I productizing it? Am I scaling it? Am I scaling with labor or capital or code or media?” It’s a very handy, simple mnemonic.

What is this podcast? This is a podcast called Naval. I’m literally productizing myself with a podcast.

Nivi: You want to figure out what you’re uniquely good at—or what you uniquely are— and apply as much leverage as possible. So making money isn’t even something you do. It’s not a skill. It’s who you are, stamped out a million times.

Find hobbies that make you rich, fit and creative

Naval: Making money should be a function of your identity and what you like to do. Another tweet I really liked was, “Find three hobbies: One that makes you money, one that keeps you fit, and one that makes you creative.”

I would change that slightly. I would say: One that makes you money, one that makes you fit, and one that makes you smarter. So in my case, my hobbies would be reading and making money, as I love working with startups, investing in them, brainstorming them, starting them. I love the ideation and initial creation phase around startups.

On the hobby that keeps you fit, I don’t really have one. The closest thing I have is yoga, but that’s where I sort of fell apart. I think people who, early in life, discover something like surfing or swimming or tennis or some kind of a sport they continue doing throughout most of their life are very lucky, because they found a hobby that will make them fit.

Accountability Means Letting People Criticize You

You have to stick your neck out and be willing to fail publicly

Accountability means letting people criticize you

Nivi: We finished discussing the tweetstorm. We’re going to spend some time on Q&A and discussing tweets that didn’t make it into the “How to Get Rich” tweetstorm. My first question: What are some common failures or things people typically do wrong when they try to apply this advice?

Naval: A lot of people don’t understand what specific knowledge is or how to “obtain” it. People don’t understand what accountability entails. They think accountability means being successfully accountable. No—it means you have to stick your neck out and fail publicly. You have to be willing to let people criticize you.

One of the reasons I’m less active on Twitter lately is because every tweet summons an army of nitpickers and haters. It gets exhausting. You have to learn to ignore them, or you won’t survive on Twitter.

A lot of people try to reconcile this by asking, “Should I quit my 9-to-5 job or not?” That can be a hard decision. You don’t need to go to that extreme. You can start applying accountability, leverage and specific knowledge within your existing career. You don’t necessarily need to fork off and do something else completely different.

The most interesting parts should be the ones you disagree with

People will use my advice as a way to agree and disagree with their existing biases. They’ll say, “I agree with that part,” and, “That part you’re completely wrong.” The most interesting tweets should be the ones you disagree with—because clearly I’ve proven I know a few things. If you disagree with it, maybe that’s an area where you can improve your thinking. I improve my thinking all the time.

In this tweetstorm I put down the minimum-viable principles. I shared only a small slice of what I’ve learned about how to make money; because 90% of it is suspect.

I put down the bedrock, the stuff I’m sure about. I have not yet seen a tweet successfully contradicting anything in this tweetstorm that would cause me to say, “I got that one wrong.”

Get the free leverage that’s available in tech

Some people will say, “This only applies to tech entrepreneurs.” I disagree. The real estate example was a good one in that regard.

Technology drives leverage—so I’m going to push you in a tech direction to get that free leverage. Obviously, this message is being delivered through the Internet, so it’s going to have a pro-Internet bias.

Don’t refuse to do things just because others can’t do them

Some people believe it’s unfair to do anything with the opportunities they have because others don’t have the same opportunities. With a defeatist attitude like that, why even get out of bed in the morning? Ninety percent of people are dead.

Many people live on a dollar or less a day. Do you? No. You play the hand you’re dealt to the best of your ability. Then you can take the winnings—the pot from that hand—and do whatever you want with it to fix the world.

But if you refuse to do things just because others can’t do them, you are living in denial. It’s an excuse to do nothing.

Realize your philanthropic vision by running a business

Others believe wealth creation is fundamentally at odds with an environmentally healthy planet. They view it as a giant zero-sum game. That’s a false narrative, too. Elon Musk is not playing a zero-sum game with the environment; there are plenty of entrepreneurs like him.

There is a word environmentalists love: sustainability. If nothing else, for-profit businesses are financially sustainable. You can do a B Corporation, which has a dual mission.

Many non-profit efforts would be better off as for-profit companies. They wouldn’t have to beg for grants. They would be financially sustainable. Some great founders realize their philanthropic visions by running a business.

We Should Eventually Be Working for Ourselves

But we will have to make sacrifices and take on more risk

This advice is for anybody who wants to be entrepreneurial

Nivi: Who is this advice targeted to? Is it for my Lyft driver? Is it for an Internet entrepreneur? Is it for somebody who wants to start a YouTube channel?

Naval: Because it comes from someone who’s steeped in Silicon Valley and tech companies, it’s always going to have a bias towards that.

But I think it’s good for anybody who wants to be entrepreneurial. Anybody who wants to control their own life. Anybody who wants to deterministically and reliably improve their ability to create wealth over time, is patient, and is looking at the long haul.

If you’re 80 years old, retired and running out of energy, it’s probably best to stay retired. But there are 80-year-olds who have a lot of energy, who want to do new things and live for the future.

Obviously this can apply very easily to a young person. I would say 9 or 10 years old and up.

Midlife can be the most fruitful time to apply this advice

The most difficult one is probably midlife. When we’re in our 30s, 40s and 50s, we already have a lot invested. We have a lot of obligations. Those are the years we’re earning; people are relying on us. We don’t want to change, because we don’t want to admit defeat.

But that’s when it actually can be the most fruitful. It may be the most difficult pivot: You have a 9-to-5 job; you have a family relying on you.

It may seem like the things in this podcast are far too idealistic, but maybe it can inform your weekend projects. Maybe it can inform your approach to education; for example, if you’re taking an online course at night. Maybe it can inform what roles you take on at your current company, because they move you closer and closer to points of leverage, points of judgment or points where you’re naturally talented, and you’re able to be more authentic. It might cause you to take on more accountability.

Even if applied piecemeal, these principles can guide you—regardless of what stage of life you are in, short of retirement. If you’re retired, test them to see if they’re true and then teach them to your kids or grandkids.

There are many different ways to participate. It should apply to almost everybody who has a complete body, sound mind, and is looking to work.

Look up the value chain to find leverage

Nivi: One way to apply this advice is to look at who is getting leverage off of the work that you’re doing. Look up the value chain—at who’s above you and who’s above them—and see how they are taking advantage of the time and work you’re doing and how they’re applying leverage.

People naturally do this because they want to move up the corporate ladder; but that’s mostly about managing other people. You want to manage more capital, products, media and community.

People think about moving up the ladder in their organization. But they don’t often think about moving to a different organization or creating their own company to get more leverage. 

You will do better in a small organization

Naval: In general, ceteris paribus—fancy Latin words for “all other things equal”—you will do better in a smaller organization than a larger one.

You will have more accountability, and your work will be more visible. You’re more likely to be able to try different things, which can help you discover the thing you are uniquely good at. People will be more likely to give you leverage through battlefield promotions. You’ll have more flexibility. There will be more authenticity in how the company operates.

Here is a good progression for a career: Start in a large company and progressively move to smaller and smaller ones. It’s very hard to go from a small company to a larger company. Larger companies tend to be more about politics than merit; they’re more stable but less innovative.

The goal is that we are all working for ourselves

The long-term goal is that we are all wealthy and working for ourselves. The people working for us are essentially robots. Today that’s software robots executing code in data centers. Tomorrow it could be delivery bots, flying bots and mechanical bots—and drones—that are carrying things around. 

This goes back to the idea that the best relationships are peer relationships. If there’s someone above you, that’s someone to learn from. If you’re not learning from them and improving, nobody should be above you.

If there’s somebody below you, it’s because you’re teaching them and enabling them. If you’re not doing that, then get a robot; you don’t need a human below you.

This is utopian and still a long way off, but in the not-too-distant future anybody who wants to work for themself will be able to do it.

You may have to make sacrifices and take on more risk. You may have to take on more accountability and live with less steady income. But more and more I think younger people are realizing that if they’re going to work, they’re going to work for themselves.

Being Ethical Is Long-Term Greedy

If you cut fair deals, you will get paid in the long run

Ethics isn’t something you study; it’s something you do

Nivi: In the “How to Get Rich” tweetstorm you listed things you suggest people study, like programming, sales, reading, writing and arithmetic. One of the items that ended up on the cutting-room floor was ethics, which you also suggest people study.

Naval: I was going to put that out as a concession to people who believe making money is evil and that the only way to make it is to be evil. But then I realized ethics is not necessarily something you study. It’s something you think about—and something you do.

Everyone has a personal moral code. Where we get our moral code differs for everybody. It’s not like I can point you to a textbook. I can point you to some Roman or Greek text, but that’s not suddenly going to make you ethical.

There’s the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Or there’s Nassim Taleb’s Silver Rule, which is, “Don’t do unto others what you don’t want them doing unto you. ”

Trust leads to compounding relationships

Once you’ve been in business long enough, you will realize how much of it is about trust. It’s about trust because you want to compound interest. You want to work with trustworthy people for long periods of time without having to reevaluate every discussion or constantly look over your shoulder.

Over time you will gravitate to working with certain kinds of people. Similarly, those people will gravitate to working with other ethical people.

Being ethical attracts other long-term players

Acting ethically turns out to be a selfish imperative. You want to be ethical because it attracts other long-term players in the network. They want to do business with ethical people.

If you build a reputation for being ethical, people eventually will pay you just to do deals through you. Your involvement will validate deals and ensure they get done; because you wouldn’t be involved with low-quality stuff.

In the long-run, being ethical pays off—but it’s the very long run. In the short-run, being unethical pays off, which is why so many people go for it. It’s short-term greedy.

Being ethical is long-term greedy

You can be ethical simply because you’re long-term greedy. I can even outline a framework for different parts of ethics just based on the idea of long-term selfishness.

For example, you want to be honest because it leaves you with a clear mind. You don’t want two threads running in your head, one with the lies you tell —and now have to keep track of—and the other with the truth. If you are honest, you only have to think about one thing at a time, which frees up mental energy and makes you a clearer thinker.

Also, by being honest you’re rejecting people who only want to hear pretty lies. You force those people out of your network. Sometimes it’s painful, especially with friends and family. But over the long-term you create room for the people who like you exactly the way that you are. That is a selfish reason to be honest.

If you cut fair deals, you will get paid in the long run

Negotiations offer another good example. If you’re the kind of person who always tries to get the best deal for yourself, you will win a lot of early deals and it will feel very good.

On the other hand, a few people will recognize that you’re always scrabbling and not acting fairly, and they will tend to avoid you. Over time those are the people who end up being the dealmakers in the network. People go to them for a fair shake or to figure out what’s fair.

If you cut people fair deals, you won’t get paid in the short-term. But over the long-term, everybody will want to deal with you. You end up being a market hub. You have more information. You have trust. You have a reputation. And people end up doing deals through you in the long-run.

A lot of wisdom involves realizing long-term consequences of your actions. The longer your time horizon, the wiser you’re going to seem to everybody around you.

Envy Can Be Useful, or It Can Eat You Alive

Envy can give you a powerful boost, or it can eat you alive

Suffering through the wrong thing can motivate you to find the right thing

Nivi: Do you want to tell us about jobs you had growing up and the one that kicked off your fanatical obsession with creating wealth?

Naval: This gets a little personal, and I don’t want to humble-brag. There was a thread going around Twitter—Name Five Jobs You’ve Held—and every rich person on there was signaling how they’ve held normal jobs. I don’t want to play that game.

I’ve had menial jobs. There are people who had it worse than me and people who had it better than me.

At one point in college I was washing dishes in the school cafeteria and said, “F this. I hate this. I can’t do this anymore.” I sweet-talked may way into a teaching assistant job for a computer science professor, even though I was completely unqualified. The job forced me to learn computer algorithms, so I could TA the rest of the course.

So my desire to learn computer algorithms came out of the suffering I experienced washing dishes—not that there’s anything wrong with washing dishes; it just wasn’t for me.

I had an active mind. I wanted to make money and earn a living through mental activities, not through physical activities. Sometimes it takes suffering through the wrong thing to motivate you to find the right thing.

Being a lawyer was not what I was meant to do

Back in the day I had a prestigious internship at a big New York City law firm. I basically got fired for surfing Usenet.

This was before the Internet was a big thing. Usenet hosted newsgroups, and it was the only the only thing keeping me from being completely bored. I was an overpaid intern wearing a suit and tie. I got to hang out in the conference room and make photocopies when lawyers needed them.

I was bored out of my skull. This was pre-iPhone (thank God for Steve Jobs for saving us all from unending boredom). I used to read The Wall Street Journal or anything I could get my hands on. I would’ve read the back of a brochure to keep from going insane, because listening to a bunch of corporate lawyers discuss how to optimize details of a contract is really dull.

They wanted me to sit there quietly and not read the paper. They got mad and said, “That’s rude. That’s misbehavior.”

I got called up and reprimanded a bunch of times. I was finally terminated—sent home in shame from my prestigious internship, destroying my chance to go to law school.

I was unhappy… for all of an hour. Ultimately, it’s one of the best things that ever happened to me. Otherwise, I would have ended up a lawyer. Not that I have anything against lawyers; it’s just not what I was meant to do.

Envy can be useful or it can eat you alive

Nivi: You mentioned a catering job that kicked off your obsession with wealth.

Naval: That was an envy thing. When I was in high school, I needed a job to pay for my first semester of college.

It was the summer of 1990 or 1991. This was the Bush Senior recession—if anyone listening was alive back then to remember it—so it was actually really hard to get a job.

I ended up working for a catering company serving Indian food. One day, I had to serve at a birthday party for a kid in my school. So I was out there serving food and drinks to all of my classmates. That was incredibly embarrassing. I wanted to hide away and die right there.

But you know what? It’s all part of the plan. It’s all part of the motivation. If  that didn’t happen, I probably wouldn’t be as motivated or as successful. It’s all fine. It was definitely a strong motivator.

In that sense, envy can be useful. Envy also can eat you alive if you let it follow you around your entire life. But there are points in your life when it can be a powerful booster rocket.

Principal-Agent Problem: Act Like an Owner

If you think and act like an owner, it’s only a matter of time until you become an owner

A principal is an owner; an agent is an employee

Nivi: We spoke earlier about picking a business model that has leverage from scale economies, network effects and zero marginal cost of replication. There were a few other ideas on the cutting-room floor that I want to go through with you. The first one is the principal-agent problem.

Naval: So mental models are all the rage. Everyone’s trying to become smarter by adopting mental models. I think mental models are interesting, but I don’t think explicitly in terms of mental-model checklists. I know Charlie Munger does, but that’s just not how I think.

Instead, I tend to focus on the few lessons I’ve learned over and over in life that I think are incredibly important and seem to apply almost universally. One that keeps coming up from microeconomics—because as we’ve established, macroeconomics is not really worth spending time on—is what’s called the principal-agent problem.

In this case it’s a principal, who is a person; rather than a principle that you would follow. A principal is an owner. An agent works for the owner, so you can think of an agent as an employee. The difference between a founder and an employee is the difference between a principal and an agent.

A principal’s incentives are different than an agent’s incentives

I can summarize the principal-agent problem with a famous quote attributed to Napoleon or Julius Caesar:

“If you want it done, Go. If not, Send.”

Which is to say: If you want to do something right, do it yourself; because other people just don’t care enough.

Now, the principal-agent problem pops up everywhere. In microeconomics, they try to characterize it this way: The principal’s incentives are different than the agent’s incentives, so the owner of the business wants what is best for the business and will make the most money. The agent generally wants whatever will look good to the principal, or might make them the most friends in the neighborhood or in the business, or might make them personally the most money.

You see this a lot with hired-gun CEOs running public companies, where the ownership of the public company is distributed so widely that there’s no principal remaining. Nobody owns more than 1% of the company. The CEO takes charge, stuffs the board with their buddies and then starts issuing themself low-price stock options, or doing a lot of stock buybacks because their compensation is based directly tied to the stock price.

If you can work on incentives, don’t work on anything else

Agents have a way of hacking systems. This is what make incentive design so difficult. As Charlie Munger says, if you could be working on incentives, don’t work on anything else.

Almost all human behavior can be explained by incentives. The study of signaling is seeing what people do despite what they say. People are much more honest with their actions than they are with their words. You have to get the incentives right to get people to behave correctly. It’s a very difficult problem because people aren’t coin-operated. The good ones are not just looking for money—they’re also looking for things like status and meaning in what they do.

As a business owner you are always going to be dealing with the principal-agent problem. You’re always going to be trying to figure out: How do I make this person think like me? How do I incent them? How do I give them founder mentality?

Only founders can fully appreciate the importance of a founder mentality and just how difficult and gnarly principal-agent problem is.

When you do deals, it’s better to have the same incentives

If you are a principal, you want to spend a lot of your time thinking about this problem. You want to be generous with your top lieutenants—in terms of ownership and incentives—even if they don’t necessarily realize it; because over time they will and you want them to be aligned with you.

When you do business deals, it’s better to have an aligned partnership where you both have the same incentives than a partnership where you have the advantage in the deal. Because eventually the other person will figure it and the partnership will fall apart. Either way, it’s not going to be one of those things that you can invest in and enjoy the benefits of compound interest over decades. 

If you’re an employee, your most important job is to think like a principal

Finally, if you’re in a role where you’re an agent—you’re an employee—then your most important job is to think like a principal. The more you can think like a principal, the better off you’re going to be long-term. Train yourself how to think like a principal, and eventually you will become a principal. If you align yourself with a good principal, they will promote you or empower you or give you accountability or leverage that may be way out of proportion to your relatively menial role.

I’m always impressed by founders who promote young people through the ranks and allow them to skip multiple levels despite their lack of experience. Invariably it happens because this agent—who’s way deep down in the organization—thinks like a principal. 

If you can hack your way through the principal-agent problem, you’ll probably solve half of what it takes to run a company.

Nivi: The reason I asked about this one first is because I feel like I never see the principal-agent problem in my work. I tend to work in small teams where everybody is highly economically aligned, and the people have been filtered for a commitment to the mission, and everybody else who doesn’t work out moves on to another role elsewhere.

Naval: These are all heuristics that you have designed to avoid having to deal with the single biggest problem in management.

Deal with small firms to avoid the principal-agent problem

Another example of a heuristic that helps you route around the principal-agent problem is to deal with the smallest firms possible. For example, when I hire a lawyer or a banker or even an accountant to work on my deals, I’ve become very cognizant about the size of the firm. Bigger firms—all other things being equal—are generally worse than small ones.

Yes, the big firm has more experience. Yes, they have more people. Yes, they have a bigger brand. But you’ll find the principal and the agent are highly separated. Very often the principal will sell you and convince you to work with the firm, but then all the work will be done by an agent who simply doesn’t care as much. You end up getting substandard service.

I prefer to work with boutiques. My ideal law firm is a law firm of one. My ideal banker is a solo banker. Now, you’re making other sacrifices and trade-offs in terms of that person’s resources—and you are betting big on that person. But you’ve got one throat to choke. There’s no one else to point fingers at; there’s nowhere to run. The accountability is extremely high.

If you are an agent, the best way to operate is to ask, “What would the founder do?” If you think like the owner and you act like the owner, it’s only a matter of time until you become the owner.

Kelly Criterion: Avoid Ruin

Don’t ruin your reputation or get wiped to zero

Don’t bet everything on one big gamble

Nivi: Let’s chat about the Kelly criterion.

Naval: The Kelly criterion is a popularized mathematical formulation of a simple concept. The simple concept is: Don’t risk everything. Stay out of jail. Don’t bet everything on one big gamble. Be careful how much you bet each time, so you don’t lose the whole kitty.

If you’re a gambler, the Kelly criterion mathematically formulates how much you should wager per hand, even if you have an edge—because even when you have an edge, you can still lose. Let’s say you have 51-to-49 edge. Every gambler knows not to bet the whole kitty on that 51-to-49 edge—because you could lose everything and won’t get to come back to the average.

Nassim Taleb famously talks about ergodicity, which is a fancy word for a simple concept: What is true for 100 people on average isn’t the same as one person averaging that same thing 100 times.

Ruining your reputation is the same as getting wiped to zero

The easiest way to see that is with Russian roulette. Say six people play Russian roulette one time each, and each winner gets $1 billion. One person ends up dead and five people get $1 billion. Compare that to one person playing Russian roulette six times with the same gun. They are never going to end up a billionaire—they will be dead and worth zero. So risk-taking—especially when the averages that are calculated across large populations—is not always rational.

The Kelly criterion helps you avoid ruin. The number one way people get ruined in modern business is not by betting too much; it’s by cutting corners and doing unethical or downright illegal things. Ending up in an orange jumpsuit in prison or having a reputation ruined is the same as getting wiped to zero—so never do those things.

Schelling Point: Cooperating Without Communicating

People who can’t communicate can cooperate by anticipating the other person’s actions

Use social norms to cooperate when you can’t communicate

Nivi: Let’s talk about Schelling points.

Naval: The Schelling point is a game theory concept made famous by Thomas Schelling in his book, The Strategy of Conflict, which I recommend.

It’s about multiplayer games where people respond based on what they think the other person’s response will be. He came up with a mathematical formalization to answer: How do you get people who cannot communicate with each other to coordinate?

Suppose I want to meet with you, but I don’t tell you where or when to meet. You also want to meet with me, but we can’t communicate. That sounds like an impossible problem to solve—we can’t do it. But not quite.

You can use social norms to converge on a Schelling point. I know you’re rational and educated. And you know I’m rational and educated. We’re both going to start thinking.

When will we meet? If we have to pick an arbitrary date, we’ll probably pick New Year’s Eve. What time will we meet? Midnight or 12:01 a.m. Where will we meet? If we’re Americans, the big meeting spot is probably New York City, the most important city. Where in New York City will we meet? Probably under the clock at Grand Central Station. Maybe you end up at the Empire State Building, but not likely.

You can find Schelling points in business, art and politics

There are many games—whether it’s business or art or politics—where you can find a Schelling point. So you can cooperate with the other person, even when you can’t communicate.

Here’s a simple example: Suppose two companies are competing heavily and hold an oligopoly. Let’s say the price fluctuates between $8 and $12 for whatever the service is. Don’t be surprised if they converge on $10 without ever talking to each other.

Turn Short-Term Games Into Long-Term Games

Improve your leverage by turning short-term relationships into long-term ones

Pareto optimal solutions require a trade-off to improve any criterion

Nivi: Do you want to talk about Pareto optimal?

Naval: Pareto optimal is another concept from game theory, along with Pareto superior.

Pareto superior means something is better in some ways while being equal or better in other ways. It’s not worse in any way. This is an important concept when you’re negotiating. If you can make a solution Pareto superior to where it was before, you will always do that.

Pareto optimal is when the solution is the best it can possibly be and you can’t change it without making it worse in at least one dimension. There is a hard trade-off from this point forward.

These are important concepts to understand when you’re involved in a big negotiation.

Negotiations are won by whoever cares less

I generally say, though: “Negotiations are won by whoever cares less.” Negotiation is about not wanting it too badly. If you want something too badly, the other person can extract more value from you.

If someone is taking advantage of you in a negotiation, your best option is to turn it from a short-term game into a long-term game. Try to make it a repeat game. Try to bring reputation into the negotiation. Try to include other people who may want to play games with this person in the future.

An example of a high-cost, low-information single-move game is having your house renovated.

Contractors are notorious for overbooking, ripping people off, and being unaccountable. I’m sure contractors have their own side to it: “The homeowner has unreasonable demands.” “We found problems.” “The homeowner doesn’t want to pay for it.” “They don’t understand; they’re low-information buyers.”

It’s an expensive transaction. Historically it’s been very hard to find good contractors; and the contractor has little information on the homeowner.

Convert single-move games to multi-move games

So you try to go through friends. You try to find people with good reputations. You’re converting an expensive single-move game with a high probability of cheating on both sides into a multi-move game.

One way to do that is to say: “Actually, I need two different projects done. The first project we’ll do together, and based on that I’ll decide if we do the second project.”

Another way is to say: “I’m going to do this project with you, and I have three friends who want projects done who are waiting to see the outcome of this project.”

Another way is to write a Yelp or Thumbtack review—especially if the contractor  operates within a community and wants to protect their reputation in that community.

These are all ways to turn a single-move game into a longer term game and get past a position of poor negotiating leverage and poor information.

Compounding Relationships Make Life Easier

Life gets a lot easier when you know someone’s got your back

Mutual trust makes it easy to do business

Relationships offer a good example of compound interest. Once you’ve been in a good relationship with somebody for a while—whether it’s business or romantic—life gets a lot easier because you know that person’s got your back. You don’t have to keep questioning.

If I’m doing a deal with someone I’ve worked with for 20 years and there is mutual trust, we don’t have to read the legal contracts. Maybe we don’t even need to create legal contracts; maybe we can do it with a handshake. That kind of trust makes it very easy to do business.

If Nivi and I start another company and things aren’t working out, I know we’re both going to be extremely reasonable about deciding what to do—how to exit or shut it down. Or if we’re scaling it, how to bring in new people. We have mutual trust, and that allows us to start businesses more easily and compounds the effect.

The most under-recognized reason startups fail is because the founders fall apart.

A startup is so difficult to pull off, so removing potential friction points between founders can be the difference between success and failure.

It’s better to have a few compounding relationships than many shallow ones

Nivi: There are a couple of non-intuitive things about compounding. The first is that most of the benefits come at the end, so you may not see huge benefits up front.

Sam Altman wrote, “I always want it to be a project that, if successful, will make the rest of my career look like a footnote.” Again, most of the benefits of compounding come at the end.

Another thing that’s non-intuitive about compounding: It’s better to have a few deep compounding relationships than many shallow, non-compounding relationships.

It takes just as much effort to create a small business as a large one

Naval: One thing about business that people don’t realize: it takes just as much effort to create a small business as it does to create a large one.

Whether you’re Elon Musk or the guy running three Italian restaurants in town, you’re working 80 hours a week; you’re sweating bullets; you’re hiring and firing people; you’re trying to balance the books; it’s highly stressful; and it takes years and years of your life.

In one case, you get companies worth $50-$100 billion and everyone’s adulation. In the other, you might make a little bit of money and you’ve got some nice restaurants. So think big.

Price Discrimination: Charge Some People More

You can charge people for extras based on their propensity to pay

Price discrimination is a technique for charging certain people more

Nivi: Are there any other microeconomic concepts, outside of zero marginal cost of replication and scale economies, that are important to understand?

Naval: Price discrimination is important. It means you can charge people based on their propensity to pay.

Now, you can’t charge people different amounts just because you don’t like them. You have to offer them something extra. But it has to be something rich people care about.

Business-class seats routinely cost five or 10 times more than economy seats. But it costs the airline much less—maybe two or three times more than a standard seat—to provide perks like wider seats, more legroom and free drinks.

Rich people and large enterprises are willing to pay more

Price discrimination works because rich people are willing to pay more. You just have to give them the extra little things they need to signal they’re rich or that little bit of comfort they want.

A lot of enterprise software companies use price discrimination, especially with freemium products. The free or low-price version will do almost everything you want. But if you want the version that’s extra secure or hosted on your site or has multiple-user administration so the IT person can monitor everything, you’ll find yourself paying 10 or 100 times more.

Consumer Surplus: Getting More Than You Paid For

People are willing to pay more than what companies charge

Consumer surplus is the extra value you get when you pay less than you were willing

Naval: Consumer surplus and producer surplus are important concepts. Consumer surplus is the excess value you get from something when you pay less than you were willing to pay.

I get a lot of joy out of my morning Starbucks coffee. Obviously I’ve made some money. So if my coffee cost $20, I would pay it.

But Starbucks doesn’t know that. They can’t price the coffee at $20 just for me, because they’re selling the exact same product to others. So I’m getting a lot of consumer surplus out of the coffee.

All businesses generate consumer surplus. It’s a good thing to keep in mind when someone’s harping on about how evil companies are. Amazon might be a trillion-dollar company, but I’ll bet they’re generating trillions of dollars in consumer surplus through people’s willingness to pay for convenience. A lot of people are willing to pay more than what Amazon charges.

Net Present Value: What Future Income Is Worth Today

See what future income is worth today by applying a discount to its future value

Figure out what future income is worth today by applying a discount rate

Nivi: Let’s talk about net present value (NPV).

Naval: Net present value is when you say, “That stream of payments I’m going to get in the future—what’s it worth today?”

Here’s a common example: You’re joining a startup and getting stock options, and the founder says, “This company is going to be worth $1 billion, and I’m giving you 0.1% of the company; therefore, you’re getting $1 million worth of stock.”

The founder is negotiating based on what it’s going to be worth in the future. You have to figure out what it’s worth today by applying a discount rate, or an interest rate, that accounts for the massive risk startups face.

You’ll end up with the amount the company is actually worth today. That’s the price at which a venture capitalist would invest in the company.

If the founder recently raised a round at a $10 million valuation, then the company’s only worth 1% of what the founder says it will be worth. So your $1 million package is actually worth $10,000. You should get very comfortable doing rough net present value calculations in your head.

Externalities: Calculating the Hidden Costs of Products

Externalities let you account for the true cost of products by including hidden costs

Nivi: What’s a mispriced externality? You mentioned it on a previous episode.

Naval: An externality is where there’s an additional cost imposed by whatever product is being produced or consumed, that’s not accounted for in the price of the product. This can happen for many reasons. Sometimes you can fix it by putting the cost back into the price.

Some of the most ardent critics of capitalism argue it’s destroying the environment. If you throw away capitalism because it’s destroying the environment, then guess what—we’re all headed back to pre-industrial times. That’s not going to be a good thing.

Pricing externalities properly is more effective than feel-good measures

Because the environment is finite and precious, we have to price it properly and fold that back into the cost of products and services.

If people are wasting water, releasing hydrocarbons into the atmosphere or polluting in other ways, society should charge them what it costs to clean up the pollution and return the environment to a pristine state. Perhaps that price has to be very, very, very high.

If you raise the price high enough, you’ll knock out pollution. That’s much better than feel-good measures like banning plastic bags or restricting showers during a drought.

Properly pricing externalities can save resources in a tremendous way

California likes to run declarations and ads to scare people into avoiding showers during droughts. It would be better to raise the price of fresh water. The average consumer might pay a few pennies more for a shower, but the almond farmers—who consume a lot of water—will cut back; and almond farming may move to a part of the country where water is more abundant.

Properly pricing externalities can save resources in a tremendous way. It’s a good framework to use when you want to do things like save the environment, rather than doing feel-good things that won’t actually amount to anything.

Bonus: Finding Time to Invest in Yourself

If you have to work a “normal job,” take on accountability to build your specific knowledge

Nivi: A common question we get: “How do I find the time to start investing in myself? I have a job.”

You have to rent your time to get started

In one of the tweets from the cutting room floor, you wrote: “You will need to rent your time to get started. This is only acceptable when you are learning and saving. Preferably in a business where society does not yet know how to train people and apprenticeship is the only model.”

Naval: Try to learn something that people haven’t quite figured out how to teach yet. That can happen if you’re working in a new and quickly expanding field. It’s also common in fields that are circumstantial—where the details matter and it’s always moving. Investing is one of those fields; so is entrepreneurship.

Chief of staff for a founder is one of the most coveted jobs for young people starting out in Silicon Valley. The brightest kids will follow an entrepreneur around and do whatever he or she needs them to do. 

In many cases, the person is way overqualified. Someone with multiple graduate degrees might be running the CEO’s laundry because that’s the most important thing at the moment.

At the same time, that person gets to attend the most important meetings. They are privy to all the stress and theatrics, the fundraising decks and the innovation—knowledge that can only come from being in the room.

Coming out of college, Warren Buffett wanted to work for Benjamin Graham to learn to be a value investor. Buffett offered to work for free, and Graham responded, “You’re overpriced.” What that means is you have to make sacrifices to take on an apprenticeship. 

Find the part of the job with the steepest learning curve

If can’t learn in an apprenticeship model because you need to make money, try to be innovative in the context of your job. Take on new challenges and responsibilities. Find the part of the job with the steepest learning curve.

You want to avoid repetitive drudgery—that’s just biding time until your job is automated away.  

If you’re a barista at the coffee shop, figure out how to make connections with the customers. Figure out how to innovate the service you offer and delight the customer. Managers, founders and owners will take notice.

Develop a founder mentality

The hardest thing for any founder is finding employees with a founder mentality. This is a fancy way of saying they care enough. 

People will say, “Well, I’m not the founder. I’m not being paid enough to care.” Actually, you are: The knowledge and skills you gain by developing a founder mentality set you up to be a founder down the line; that’s your compensation. 

You can get a lot out of almost any position. You just have to put a lot into it.

Accountability is something you can take on immediately

Nivi: We’ve discussed accountability, judgment, specific knowledge and leverage. If I’m working a “normal” job, is specific knowledge the one I should focus on? 

Naval: Judgment takes experience. It takes a lot of time to build up. You have to put yourself in positions where you can exercise judgment. That’ll come from taking on accountability.

Leverage is something that society gives you after you’ve demonstrated judgment. You can get it faster by learning high-leverage skills like coding or working with the media. These are permissionless leverage. This is why I encourage people to learn to code or produce media, even if it’s just nights and weekends. 

So, judgment and leverage tend to come later. Accountability is something you can take on immediately. You can say, “Hey, I’ll take charge of this thing that nobody wants to take charge of.” When you take on accountability, you’re also publicly putting your neck on the chopping block—so you have to deliver. 

You build specific knowledge by taking accountability for things that other people don’t know how to do. Perhaps they’re things you enjoy doing or are naturally inclined towards doing anyway.

If you work in a factory, the hardest thing may be raising capital to keep the factory running. Maybe that’s what the owner is always stressed out about.

You might notice this and think, “I’m good at balancing my checkbook and have a good head for numbers; but I haven’t raised money before.” You offer to help and become the owner’s sidekick solving their fundraising problem. If you have a natural aptitude and take on accountability, you can put yourself in a position to learn quickly. Before long, you’ll become the heir apparent.

Early on, find things that interest you and allow you to take on accountability. Don’t worry about short-term compensation. Compensation comes when you’re tired of waiting for it and have given up on it. This is the way the whole system works. 

If you take on accountability and solve problems on the edge of knowledge that others can’t solve, people will line up behind you. The leverage will come.

Specific knowledge can be timely or timeless

There are two forms of specific knowledge: timely and timeless. 

If you become a world-class expert in machine learning just as it takes off and you got there through genuine intellectual interest, you’re going to do really well. But 20 years from now, machine learning may be second hat; the world may have moved on to something else. That’s timely knowledge.

If you’re good at persuading people, it’s probably a skill you picked up early on in life. It’s always going to apply, because persuading people is always going to be valuable. That’s timeless knowledge.

Now, persuasion is a generic skill—it’s probably not enough to build a career on. You need to combine it in a skill stack, as Scott Adams writes. You might combine persuasion with accounting and an understanding of semiconductor production lines. Now you can become the best semiconductor salesperson and, later on, the best semiconductor company CEO.

Timeless specific knowledge usually can’t be taught, and it sticks with you forever. Timely specific knowledge comes and goes; but it tends to have a fairly long shelf life.

Technology is a good place to find those timely skills sets. If you can bring in a more generic specialized knowledge skill set from the outside, then you’ve got gold.

Technology is an intellectual frontier for gaining specific knowledge

Nivi: There were a couple other tweets from the cutting-room floor on this topic. The first: “The technology industry is a great place to acquire specific knowledge. The frontier is always moving forward. If you are genuinely intellectually curious, you will acquire the knowledge ahead of others.”

Naval: Danny Hillis famously said technology is everything that doesn’t work yet. Technology is around us everywhere. The spoon was technology once; fire was technology once. When we figured out how to make them work, they disappeared in the background and became part of our everyday lives. 

Technology is, by definition, the intellectual frontier. It’s taking things from science and culture that we have not figured out how to mass produce or create efficiently and figuring out how to commercialize it and make it available to everybody.

Technology will always be a great field where you can pick up specific knowledge that is valuable to society.

If you don’t have accountability, do something different

Nivi: Here’s another tweet from the cutting-room floor related to accountability: “Companies don’t know how to measure outputs, so they measure inputs instead. Work in a way that your outputs are visible and measurable. If you don’t have accountability, do something different.”

Naval: The entire structure of rewarding people comes from the agricultural and industrial ages, when inputs and outputs matched up closely. The amount of hours you put into doing something was a reliable proxy for what kind of output you’d get. 

Today, it’s extremely nonlinear. One good investment decision can make a company $10 million or $100 million. One good product feature can be the difference between product-market fit and complete failure.

As a result, judgment and accountability matter much more. Often the best engineers aren’t the hardest workers. Sometimes they don’t work very hard at all, but they dependably ship that one critical product at just the right time. It’s similar to the salesperson who closes the huge deal that makes the company’s numbers for the quarter.

People need to be able to tell what role you had in the company’s success. That doesn’t mean stomping all over your team—people are extremely sensitive to others taking too much credit. You always want to be giving out credit. Smart people will know who was responsible.

Some jobs are too removed from the customer for this type of accountability. You’re just a cog in a machine.  

Consulting is a good example. As a consultant, your ideas are delivered through someone else within the organization. You may not have visibility to the top people; you may be hidden behind a screen. That’s a trade-off you’re making in exchange for your independence.

You’ll develop thick-skin if you take on accountability

When you have accountability, you get a lot more credit when things go right. Of course, the downside is you get hurt a lot more when things go wrong. When you stick your neck out, you have to be willing to be blamed, sacrificed and even attacked.

If you’re the kind of person who thrives in a high-accountability environment, you’re going to end up thick-skinned over time. You’re going to get hurt a lot. People are going to attack you if you fail.

Scale your specific knowledge with apprentices

Nivi: Once you get some specific knowledge, you can scale it by training your own apprentices and outsourcing tasks to them.

Naval: For example, I made good investments and figured out the venture business. I could have kept doing that and making money. Instead, I co-founded Spearhead to train up-and-coming founders to become angels and venture investors. We give them a checkbook to start investing.

It’s an apprenticeship model. They come to us with deals they’re looking at, and we help them think it through. This model is more scalable than my personal investing.

Specific knowledge comes on the job, not in a classroom

At Spearhead we lead classes teaching founders about investing, and we also hold office hours to discuss specific deals they bring.

It turns out the classes and talks we lead are largely worthless. You can give all the generic advice people need in about an hour. After that, the advice gets so circumstantial that it essentially cancels to zero. But the office hours are incredibly useful. 

This reinforces the notion that investing is one of those skills that can only be learned on the job. When you find a skill like that, you’re dealing with specific knowledge.

Another good indicator of specific knowledge is when someone can’t give a straight answer to the question: “What do you do every day?” Or you get an answer along the lines of, “Every day is different based on what’s going on.”

The thing is so complicated and dependent upon circumstances that it can’t be boiled down into a textbook form.

Nivi: The mafia figured out this apprenticeship model a long time ago. The best way to end up running one of the families was to become the driver for the Don.

Naval: Tony Soprano was a businessman who had to enforce his own contracts. That’s a very complicated business.

This transcript has been edited for clarity.