Naval Ravikant: The Philosopher Who Rewired How MFM Thinks About Wealth
Naval Ravikant has never appeared on My First Million. This is worth noting because his ideas have appeared on nearly every episode.
He is quoted more often than most guests. His frameworks structure how Sam Parr and Shaan Puri analyze businesses, evaluate founders, and think about what wealth actually is. Yet he has no episode page, no guest bio, no intro music. He is the show’s most influential person precisely because his influence is ambient rather than direct. Naval does not show up in the MFM universe as a character. He shows up as the operating system.
The distinction matters because it tells you something about how ideas travel. The most durable frameworks do not need the person who created them to be in the room. They become the room.
The Epinions Origin Story
Every Naval narrative begins with Epinions, but people tend to tell the wrong version. The popular telling is a success story about resilience. The more accurate version is a revenge story about leverage.
Naval co-founded Epinions in the late 1990s. The VCs pushed him out. The company eventually merged with Shopping.com, which sold to eBay. Naval got nothing. As Shaan explained on the podcast, the experience was formative in a way that transcended disappointment: “Naval’s now like this wise, sage, billionaire type of dude, but he was kind of like an angry, vengeful dude when he started Epinions. The VCs kicked him out of the company. He got screwed by his own VCs.” [[the-1-most-underrated-quality-in-an-entrepreneur|The #1 Most Underrated Quality in an Entrepreneur]]
What happened next is the sequence that Sam Parr and Shaan Puri find instructive. Naval did not merely recover. He built a system designed to ensure that what happened to him could never happen to other founders.
He publicly sued his investors, which in Silicon Valley at the time was roughly equivalent to burning your own house down. Then he started VentureHacks, a blog that decoded the term sheets and contract clauses that VCs used to maintain information asymmetry. As Shaan recounted, Naval’s thesis was blunt: “Dude, I didn’t know how to read these term sheets and I didn’t know what these contracts meant and they just kept telling me the dangerous words, ‘Oh don’t worry, it’s all standard.’ There’s nothing more dangerous than when a lawyer or a VC tells you this is standard.” [[the-1-most-underrated-quality-in-an-entrepreneur|The #1 Most Underrated Quality in an Entrepreneur]]
VentureHacks became required reading for a generation of founders navigating fundraising. And from that content emerged AngelList, a platform that restructured how startups raise money and how individuals participate in venture investing. The company has since facilitated billions of dollars in startup funding.
A grudge became a blog. The blog became a business. The business became a platform that changed an industry. This is the arc that MFM keeps returning to, because it is the purest case study of the concept Naval himself named: productize-yourself.
The Tweetstorm That Became a Worldview
In 2018, Naval published a tweetstorm titled “How to Get Rich (Without Getting Lucky).” It was 40 tweets long. It has since generated more MFM content than most actual interviews.
The core idea is deceptively simple: find your specific knowledge, apply leverage, and package the result. Specific knowledge is what you know that cannot be easily taught, usually because you acquired it by following genuine curiosity rather than a syllabus. Leverage comes in three forms: code, content (media), and capital. The product is you, scaled beyond your direct involvement.
When Shaan recorded his solo episode How to Get Rich (Without Luck), the entire framework was Naval’s architecture. The four money-making skills Shaan outlined — selling, making, designing, and hunting — are an extension of Naval’s thesis about specific knowledge. The three leverage paths Shaan named — code, content, capital — are Naval’s taxonomy verbatim. And the patience principle Shaan described was attributed directly: “The phrase I heard that I love best comes from Naval. He said, ‘Be impatient with action and patient with results.’ That combination — impatient with action, patient with results — is a killer, unbeatable combination.”
The phrase has become something close to a mantra on the show. It resolves a paradox that entrepreneurs struggle with constantly: how to be simultaneously urgent and patient. The answer, per Naval, is to apply urgency to inputs and patience to outputs. Work frantically today. Measure results over years.
The Leverage Framework
Naval’s taxonomy of leverage — code, media, capital, and labor — appears across MFM episodes the way gravity appears in physics. It is the force that explains why certain business models compound while others plateau.
Code is the purest form: write software once, deploy it infinitely, marginal cost approaching zero. Media scales similarly. A podcast episode or a tweet reaches its audience whether that audience is one thousand or one million. The work is identical either way.
Capital is leverage for those who have already accumulated resources. Labor is the oldest form but the least scalable.
The insight Naval added, which Sam and Shaan reference repeatedly, is that the modern leverage paths — code and media — are “permissionless.” You do not need anyone’s approval to write software or publish content. The old leverage paths — capital and labor — require someone to give you money or agree to work for you. The new paths require only effort and an internet connection.
This framework is the lens through which MFM evaluates every business model discussed on the show. When Nick Huber raised $40 million from 320 investors for his Self Storage empire, with 96 percent of the capital coming from his Twitter following, Sam and Shaan saw Naval’s framework in action. Content leverage generated capital leverage, which funded a boring business that generated cash flow. Neither strategy alone would have produced the outcome. The combination is what Naval’s framework predicts.
The Quiet Advisor
Naval’s influence on the MFM ecosystem extends beyond ideas published for mass consumption. He operates as a quiet force in the background of Silicon Valley deal flow, naming companies, writing first checks, and dispensing advice that travels through the network by word of mouth.
When Siqi Chen was building Runway, a finance software company, Naval was the one who told him not to call it CFO.ai. “Don’t call it AI. It’s going to be dated in like two years. Everything’s going to be called AI. You should just call it Runway and you should get the .com.” Naval wrote the first check. The company is now a well-known fintech brand. Silicon Valley OG Shares Crazy Stories
Shaan’s subsequent reflection on the anecdote is revealing. He described Clubhouse in its early days as essentially “the Naval app” and admitted that when Naval launched Airchat, he used it strategically despite knowing the app probably would not succeed: “I was like, I’m going to be on this for two months. I’m going to be a power user for exactly two months and I’m going to hang out with Naval.” The calculus was straightforward. Access to Naval’s thinking was worth more than the time invested in a mediocre social app.
Rick Marini, a Silicon Valley veteran who appeared on the show, spoke about Naval with the familiarity of someone who had watched the evolution from insider to guru over two decades. “Naval was always really cerebral, incredibly smart, one of the smartest guys in Silicon Valley and that’s a very high bar. He’s definitely gone more the guru thing. He was someone that early days inspired me for angel investing and crypto.” When Marini asked Naval about the future price of Bitcoin years ago, Naval’s answer was a single word and a timeline: “A million. Before we die.” How Two Straight Guys Bought Grindr
Tim Ferriss, another friend of the show, described Naval’s investing integrity in a story that has circulated through the MFM community. A young developer with a trivial Facebook app received a term sheet from Naval when he was too naive to know what a term sheet was. Years later, the developer looked back at the document and realized it was remarkably fair. “He could have taken advantage of me and I didn’t know anything. It was incredibly founder friendly and fair.” The First Time Tim Ferriss Met Naval
Ferriss also articulated a principle he borrowed from Naval that captures the investor’s approach to relationships: “If you’re not going to work with someone for a lifetime, don’t work with them for five minutes.” Talking to Tim Ferriss About His Podcast
The Sardonic Wit
Naval is not exclusively the sage. He has a sardonic edge that surfaces in MFM stories as a counterpoint to the philosophical persona.
Ankur Nagpal, who sold a company for a significant sum, posted a flight points hack on Twitter and found himself on the receiving end of Naval’s sense of humor. As Ankur told Sam: “Naval destroyed me on Twitter. I posted some point hack and he’s like, ‘I thought you sold a company,’ ratioed the hell out of me.” How to Retire with Millions
The joke works because it contains a philosophy. Naval’s view, which pervades MFM’s thinking about wealth, is that the point of getting rich is to stop optimizing for small gains. The flight points hack is not financially irrational. It is philosophically inconsistent with the purpose of wealth, which is to buy back your time and attention from trivial calculations.
This connects to Naval’s definition of retirement, which Sam and Shaan have referenced on multiple occasions: you are retired when you stop sacrificing today for some imagined tomorrow. When the work itself becomes the reward, you have reached the endpoint. The definition has nothing to do with age or net worth. It is about the relationship between effort and meaning.
Chips on Shoulders, Chips in Pockets
MFM has explored the psychology of successful entrepreneurs at length, and Naval’s origin story is the canonical example of what Josh Wolf calls “chips on shoulders equals chips in pockets.” The phrase means that founders with deep, unresolved grievances often build the most consequential companies.
The Epinions wound drove Naval to create VentureHacks, which drove him to build AngelList. The revenge was productive because it was channeled into infrastructure. Naval did not merely complain about the system that screwed him. He built an alternative system that made the old one partially obsolete.
Sam and Shaan treat this pattern as an investment signal. As Shaan explained: “If you have in your diligence checklist, ‘Is this company a form of deep revenge?’ The answer is yes, cut the check.” He placed Naval alongside Travis Kalanick, Palmer Luckey, and Elon Musk as founders whose rage at being wronged generated asymmetric returns for everyone around them. [[the-1-most-underrated-quality-in-an-entrepreneur|The #1 Most Underrated Quality in an Entrepreneur]]
The pattern suggests something uncomfortable about motivation. Clean motives — wanting to help people, wanting to solve an interesting problem — are admirable. Messy motives — wanting revenge, wanting to prove someone wrong — are often more durable. Naval’s career is a case study in converting the second type into outcomes that look like the first.
The MFM Operating System
If you listen to enough My First Million, you start to notice the load-bearing ideas. The concepts that recur not because the hosts are repeating themselves, but because they have internalized a way of thinking that keeps generating the same conclusions from different starting points.
Nearly all of those load-bearing ideas trace back to Naval.
The notion that specific knowledge cannot be taught but can be cultivated through genuine curiosity. The taxonomy of leverage that explains why some businesses scale and others plateau. The principle that wealth is a learnable skill rather than a function of luck or inheritance. The distinction between renting your time and owning equity. The framework of productize-yourself that ties all of these together.
Even the psychology of the show — the emphasis on high-agency behavior, the skepticism of credentials, the preference for action over analysis — carries Naval’s fingerprints. His influence on MFM is not a chapter in the podcast’s story. It is the grammar of the story itself.
Sam Lessin’s phrase captures the investment case for people like Naval: the revenge business is a green flag. But the more interesting observation is what happens after the revenge succeeds. Naval built AngelList to fix the system that wronged him. Then he moved beyond the system entirely, into philosophy, happiness research, and the kind of thinking that makes a person like Tim Ferriss describe him as “Jedi level” and “Siddhartha meets Forrest Gump.”
The progression matters. Mercenary to missionary to artist. Rage to reform to reflection. The tweetstorm about getting rich was written by someone who had already gotten rich and was now interested in something else. That something else — the question of whether wealth can coexist with contentment — became the Almanack of Naval Ravikant, a book he did not write but that was assembled from his public statements by Eric Jorgenson.
The book has become one of the most commonly recommended resources on the podcast. It is the rare business book that spends significant time arguing that business is not the point.
FAQ
Has Naval Ravikant been on My First Million?
No. Naval has never appeared as a guest on the podcast, but he is one of the most frequently referenced figures across the show’s entire catalog. His frameworks on leverage, specific knowledge, and wealth creation form the intellectual foundation for many of the concepts Sam and Shaan discuss.
What is Naval Ravikant’s “How to Get Rich” tweetstorm?
A series of 40 tweets published in 2018 outlining Naval’s philosophy on wealth creation. The core thesis: identify your specific knowledge, apply leverage (code, media, capital), and build equity rather than renting your time. The tweetstorm became the basis for a widely shared podcast series and later the Almanack of Naval Ravikant. It is the source material for several MFM frameworks including productize-yourself.
What is the Almanack of Naval Ravikant?
A book compiled by Eric Jorgenson from Naval’s public interviews, tweets, and essays. It covers both wealth creation and happiness. The hosts have recommended it as essential reading on multiple occasions.
What is AngelList?
The platform Naval co-founded that democratized angel investing and startup fundraising. It grew out of VentureHacks, a blog Naval started after being pushed out of Epinions by his VCs. AngelList has facilitated billions of dollars in startup funding and fundamentally changed how founders and investors connect.
What does Naval mean by “specific knowledge”?
Knowledge that cannot be easily trained or commoditized. It usually develops from following genuine curiosity rather than a formal curriculum. On MFM, Shaan has described it as “what feels like play to you but looks like work to everyone else.” It is the individual input that, when combined with leverage, creates outsized returns.
Sources and Episodes
- [[the-1-most-underrated-quality-in-an-entrepreneur|The #1 Most Underrated Quality in an Entrepreneur]] — Naval’s Epinions origin story, VentureHacks to AngelList, revenge businesses as investor signal
- How to Get Rich (Without Luck) — Shaan’s solo episode built on Naval’s leverage and specific knowledge framework; “be impatient with action, patient with results”
- How Two Straight Guys Bought Grindr — Rick Marini on Naval as angel investing mentor; Bitcoin prediction; pre-guru Naval
- Silicon Valley OG Shares Crazy Stories — Naval naming Runway, writing first checks, the “Naval app” era of Clubhouse and Airchat
- How to Retire with Millions — Ankur Nagpal ratioed by Naval on Twitter; wealth philosophy
- Talking to Tim Ferriss About His Podcast — Ferriss on Naval’s relationship principle: “If you’re not going to work with someone for a lifetime, don’t work with them for five minutes”
- The First Time Tim Ferriss Met Naval — Ferriss recounting Naval’s integrity on term sheets; “Jedi level” angel investor; curiosity beyond business
See Also
- productize-yourself — The foundational concept from Naval’s tweetstorm, explored as a standalone MFM article
- leverage — Naval’s taxonomy of code, media, capital, and labor
- high-agency — The entrepreneurial mindset Naval embodies and the show celebrates
- angellist — The platform Naval built from the wreckage of Epinions
- tim-ferriss — Close friend of Naval, frequent MFM guest
- james-currier — Angel investing pioneer in Naval’s orbit, discussed alongside Naval on the show
- how-to-get-rich — MFM’s wealth-building frameworks, heavily influenced by Naval’s thinking
- boring-businesses — The MFM thesis on unglamorous wealth, which applies Naval’s leverage framework to physical businesses
- 1000-true-fans — A complementary framework about building leverage through small, dedicated audiences