Loading video...

Video Failed to Load

There was a problem loading this video. This could be due to a temporary network issue or the video might be unavailable.

Naval Ravikant: “Human creativity is non-linear” “The right idea can be worth almost infinitely more than the wrong idea. And so it’s only a small number of innovators that are needed to really drive any endeavor you can imagine…. Assembling a small number of the right people to interact... with each other will drive everything.” Naval continues: “Every revolution - whether it’s scientific, political, technological, or physical - is driven by a small number of like-minded people who are at the cutting edge of thought, getting together and brainstorming with each other.” This is as true of the Founding Founders as it is of many of the great companies in Silicon Valley. Naval argues: “You just need to figure out how to get a small number of very innovative people in the same idea space together and cooperating with each other to create the next round of institutions… A few dozen, a few hundred, a few thousand people can come up with the right ideas that will completely change things for everybody.” Video source: Balaji Naval (2024)show more

Startup Archive

157,756 subscribers

13,722 views • 1 year ago •via X (Twitter)

Science & Technology News & Politics Education

Anya Rossi• Live Now

Private livecam show

8 Comments

Startup Archive1 year ago

Watch the full interview with Naval Ravikant on the @thenetworkstate podcast here:

Startup Archive1 year ago

Want even more startup insights from the world's best founders? Join the 10,000+ founders who read our free newsletter here:

Squibler_1 year ago

Where creativity meets opportunity—watch your ideas work for you. 💡 Try Squibler for free and start turning dreams into results today! 🚀

SaaS Growth Strategies1 year ago

Basically, you need to find a few great leaders with the same thought level, and they can lead any big change, build a business, or revolutionise things.

Almas | PuneDAO | almas.offline1 year ago

This completely feels like how @ZuGramaIndia version 1 has taken shape. Still Version 1 inputs are work in progress. Although excited & can't wait for Version 2😄

Mykhailo Sorochuk1 year ago

Totally agree! The right mix of innovative minds can spark real change.

VB1 year ago

@Oneeyed57765910

Tibo on Tech1 year ago

One truly great idea can have a ripple effect far beyond anything incremental improvements can achieve

Related Videos

Eileen isn’t afraid of the Irish Flag anymore as long as it’s used for LGBTQLMNOP or any other woke agenda. Meanwhile her true leftism comes out with her intolerance to other people’s views and opinions. Senator Sharon Keogan is one of a small number of people in the Oireachtas who represents a large cohort of the Irish people.

Eileen isn’t afraid of the Irish Flag anymore as long as it’s used for LGBTQLMNOP or any other woke agenda. Meanwhile her true leftism comes out with her intolerance to other people’s views and opinions. Senator Sharon Keogan is one of a small number of people in the Oireachtas who represents a large cohort of the Irish people.

Elaine Mullally ☘️

28,113 views • 4 months ago

Naval Ravikant on the importance of following your intellectual obsessions “If I look back on my life, almost everything great that I’ve managed to pull off - great by my own definition, not the world’s definition - has come from following my own natural intellectual obsessions.” Naval continues: “If you can get obsessed over something, dive into it, and just let yourself go and learn everything about it with no motivation other than you just want to know the answer… you can figure it out to a detail that other people don’t.” He gives the examples of Bryan Johnson’s obsession with not aging or Balaji Srinivasan’s obsession with the Network State. He believes it’s the foundation for all so-called ‘self-improvement’ and ‘success’: “[It] really just comes from letting you be yourself, follow the things you really want to follow. Figure out the things you really want to figure out - not worrying about what other people want or think - and you’ll find yourself in the same place at the end, no matter which route you take.” Source: Balaji Naval (Sep 2024)

Naval Ravikant on the importance of following your intellectual obsessions “If I look back on my life, almost everything great that I’ve managed to pull off - great by my own definition, not the world’s definition - has come from following my own natural intellectual obsessions.” Naval continues: “If you can get obsessed over something, dive into it, and just let yourself go and learn everything about it with no motivation other than you just want to know the answer… you can figure it out to a detail that other people don’t.” He gives the examples of Bryan Johnson’s obsession with not aging or Balaji Srinivasan’s obsession with the Network State. He believes it’s the foundation for all so-called ‘self-improvement’ and ‘success’: “[It] really just comes from letting you be yourself, follow the things you really want to follow. Figure out the things you really want to figure out - not worrying about what other people want or think - and you’ll find yourself in the same place at the end, no matter which route you take.” Source: Balaji Naval (Sep 2024)

Startup Archive

17,720 views • 15 days ago

Naval Ravikant: “The future will be almost all startups” “I firmly believe that the efficient size of a company is shrinking very rapidly, and so the future will be almost all startups.” In the clip below from a 2012 interview, Naval speculates that information technology will reverse the centralizing force of economies of scale following the Industrial Revolution. “I think the contract work trend is going to increase, and I think the size of your average company is going to decrease. I think we’re going to see more and more billion dollar businesses built by four or five people, and it’ll stay at that.” He doesn’t think we’ll see many more companies like Facebook or Google with tens of thousands of employees: “I think any entrepreneur worth their salt could today build Facebook with a few hundred people… Facebook and Google are in the situation that large companies end up in where the founders know that 80% of the people are not really needed, they just don’t know which 80%.”

Naval Ravikant: “The future will be almost all startups” “I firmly believe that the efficient size of a company is shrinking very rapidly, and so the future will be almost all startups.” In the clip below from a 2012 interview, Naval speculates that information technology will reverse the centralizing force of economies of scale following the Industrial Revolution. “I think the contract work trend is going to increase, and I think the size of your average company is going to decrease. I think we’re going to see more and more billion dollar businesses built by four or five people, and it’ll stay at that.” He doesn’t think we’ll see many more companies like Facebook or Google with tens of thousands of employees: “I think any entrepreneur worth their salt could today build Facebook with a few hundred people… Facebook and Google are in the situation that large companies end up in where the founders know that 80% of the people are not really needed, they just don’t know which 80%.”

Startup Archive

210,303 views • 7 months ago

Sanders: I think the reason this Epstein business has gotten so much interest from everybody—there is a growing sense that you have a small number of elite very, very rich people who hang out with each other, who really see themselves as above the law.

Sanders: I think the reason this Epstein business has gotten so much interest from everybody—there is a growing sense that you have a small number of elite very, very rich people who hang out with each other, who really see themselves as above the law.

Acyn

475,845 views • 6 months ago

.Keith Rabois: Most companies hire ammunition when they really need barrels. "Most companies raise money, and then they hire a lot of people. And then the CEO, almost without exception, gets frustrated because they've hired a lot of people, their burn rate has increased, and they don't feel like more is getting accomplished per unit of time. The fundamental driver of this is the number of people that can independently drive an initiative from inception to success is very limited within most companies. If you hire more people without expanding the number of what I call 'barrels,' that can drive ideas from inception to success, all you're doing is stacking people behind the same initiatives." The ratio of barrels to ammunition is what determines the number of important things a company can pursue simultaneously.

.Keith Rabois: Most companies hire ammunition when they really need barrels. "Most companies raise money, and then they hire a lot of people. And then the CEO, almost without exception, gets frustrated because they've hired a lot of people, their burn rate has increased, and they don't feel like more is getting accomplished per unit of time. The fundamental driver of this is the number of people that can independently drive an initiative from inception to success is very limited within most companies. If you hire more people without expanding the number of what I call 'barrels,' that can drive ideas from inception to success, all you're doing is stacking people behind the same initiatives." The ratio of barrels to ammunition is what determines the number of important things a company can pursue simultaneously.

Lenny Rachitsky

70,576 views • 4 months ago

Sam Altman on why you shouldn’t track absolute user growth in the early days of a startup “Nothing but a great product will save you; you can get everything else right and it still won’t work.” He points out that almost all startup founders get the following wrong: “It is more important to have a small number of users that love you than a lot of users that like you… Eventually what you want of course is a lot of users that really love your product, but that’s almost impossible to do.” In practice, you have two choices: Deep and Narrow: “You have a small number of users that really love you and then find out how to find more and more of those users and broaden the appeal of the product.” Shallow and Wide: “You can have a lot of people that sort of use the product once or twice and kind of like it and try to figure out how to get them more engaged over time.” “With high confidence, I can say that you want to start with a small number of users that really love you. Almost all great companies have products that start this way.” He argues that a good indicator of users loving your product is retention and frequency of use: “In fact, I think this is so important that you actually shouldn’t track absolute growth in number of users in the early days of a startup. You should just track how often they’re using it… That’s a good early indicator of users that love you—better still is them spontaneously telling their friends to buy your product.” Follow Startup Archive for more tactical startup advice!

Sam Altman on why you shouldn’t track absolute user growth in the early days of a startup “Nothing but a great product will save you; you can get everything else right and it still won’t work.” He points out that almost all startup founders get the following wrong: “It is more important to have a small number of users that love you than a lot of users that like you… Eventually what you want of course is a lot of users that really love your product, but that’s almost impossible to do.” In practice, you have two choices: Deep and Narrow: “You have a small number of users that really love you and then find out how to find more and more of those users and broaden the appeal of the product.” Shallow and Wide: “You can have a lot of people that sort of use the product once or twice and kind of like it and try to figure out how to get them more engaged over time.” “With high confidence, I can say that you want to start with a small number of users that really love you. Almost all great companies have products that start this way.” He argues that a good indicator of users loving your product is retention and frequency of use: “In fact, I think this is so important that you actually shouldn’t track absolute growth in number of users in the early days of a startup. You should just track how often they’re using it… That’s a good early indicator of users that love you—better still is them spontaneously telling their friends to buy your product.” Follow Startup Archive for more tactical startup advice!

Startup Archive

565,812 views • 2 years ago

Elon Musk: The cumulative voice of the people should decide what's newsworthy. “In times past, we didn't have the technology for this, so the only way to learn news was for it to be filtered through a small number of news organizations and then to be printed in newspapers or broadcast. There wasn't really any way that people could speak to each other or communicate with each other. But now there is, because people can be online. I'm a big believer in citizen journalism being actually way better. At first, citizen journalism may sound like, well, doesn't that mean just a whole bunch of amateurs are doing journalism? No, actually, it's way better because if you have actual experts in the field saying things that's way better than a journalist, if you have people who are actually at the event, live. Look at the attempted assassination of President Trump, people actually at the event live, doing video, people are reporting it. That's the kind of thing that is actually far better information than filtering it through a small number of publications, which ends up being controlled by maybe five editors-in-chief. There's like five people that control the news. And even though there are multiple newspapers, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, a few others, they decide what is newsworthy. But that should not be how it works. It should be the voice of the people, the cumulative voice of the people should decide what is newsworthy.” Philadelphia, October 18, 2024

Elon Musk: The cumulative voice of the people should decide what's newsworthy. “In times past, we didn't have the technology for this, so the only way to learn news was for it to be filtered through a small number of news organizations and then to be printed in newspapers or broadcast. There wasn't really any way that people could speak to each other or communicate with each other. But now there is, because people can be online. I'm a big believer in citizen journalism being actually way better. At first, citizen journalism may sound like, well, doesn't that mean just a whole bunch of amateurs are doing journalism? No, actually, it's way better because if you have actual experts in the field saying things that's way better than a journalist, if you have people who are actually at the event, live. Look at the attempted assassination of President Trump, people actually at the event live, doing video, people are reporting it. That's the kind of thing that is actually far better information than filtering it through a small number of publications, which ends up being controlled by maybe five editors-in-chief. There's like five people that control the news. And even though there are multiple newspapers, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, a few others, they decide what is newsworthy. But that should not be how it works. It should be the voice of the people, the cumulative voice of the people should decide what is newsworthy.” Philadelphia, October 18, 2024

ELON CLIPS

20,819,970 views • 1 year ago

Steve Jobs: “There’s a tremendous amount of craftsmanship between a great idea and a great product” Steve recounts: “One of the things that really hurt Apple was, after I left, John Sculley got a very serious disease. And that disease—I’ve seen other people get it too—is the disease of thinking that a really great idea is 90% of the work.” But that’s never the case. As Steve explains, a product idea never turns out as originally conceived because you learn a lot from the details of building it, and there are always tradeoffs you have to make. “There’s a tremendous amount of craftsmanship between a great idea and a great product… and it’s that process that is the magic.” He compares a team working hard on something they’re passionate about to a rock tumbler: “It's through the team--through a group of incredibly talented people--bumping up against each other, having arguments, having fights sometimes, making some noise, and working together... they polish each other and polish the ideas. And what comes out are these really beautiful stones.”

Steve Jobs: “There’s a tremendous amount of craftsmanship between a great idea and a great product” Steve recounts: “One of the things that really hurt Apple was, after I left, John Sculley got a very serious disease. And that disease—I’ve seen other people get it too—is the disease of thinking that a really great idea is 90% of the work.” But that’s never the case. As Steve explains, a product idea never turns out as originally conceived because you learn a lot from the details of building it, and there are always tradeoffs you have to make. “There’s a tremendous amount of craftsmanship between a great idea and a great product… and it’s that process that is the magic.” He compares a team working hard on something they’re passionate about to a rock tumbler: “It's through the team--through a group of incredibly talented people--bumping up against each other, having arguments, having fights sometimes, making some noise, and working together... they polish each other and polish the ideas. And what comes out are these really beautiful stones.”

Startup Archive

125,580 views • 2 years ago

Palmer Luckey on why he likes to keep his teams small: "You see these natural themes emerge over and over again, across societies and across history. It’s these groups of a certain size." "Look at the Founding Fathers—I’m trying to keep every business unit as close to that size as I can." "People are tribal, people work well with a certain number of people. There’s only so many people you can have very high trust in, where you trust they’re truly doing things for the right reason." Source: Palmer Luckey on a16z crypto with Chris Dixon

Palmer Luckey on why he likes to keep his teams small: "You see these natural themes emerge over and over again, across societies and across history. It’s these groups of a certain size." "Look at the Founding Fathers—I’m trying to keep every business unit as close to that size as I can." "People are tribal, people work well with a certain number of people. There’s only so many people you can have very high trust in, where you trust they’re truly doing things for the right reason." Source: Palmer Luckey on a16z crypto with Chris Dixon

a16z

40,845 views • 6 months ago

Churchill, Manitoba is home to about 800 people. For a few weeks each year, it’s home to the same number of polar bears. Here’s what it’s like living in the polar bear capital of the world

Churchill, Manitoba is home to about 800 people. For a few weeks each year, it’s home to the same number of polar bears. Here’s what it’s like living in the polar bear capital of the world

National Geographic

206,552 views • 3 years ago

🚨NAVAL: "The left is a set of people who hate market outcomes: whether in evolution, genetics, nature, or capitalism. They don't want inequality in their religion. They want everyone to have equal outcomes no matter what. On the right, people just want to be left alone. It's people who don't like the left. The right is inherently disorganized, they don't form institutions or networks, they're busy with their jobs, they're not ideological. It's hard to define the right." Naval breaks down why this moment is so powerful because right now the idea of a "right" is becoming more crystalized, as the "right" is finally motivated enough to organize and fix issues as a whole, rather than stay working on their own individual issues.

🚨NAVAL: "The left is a set of people who hate market outcomes: whether in evolution, genetics, nature, or capitalism. They don't want inequality in their religion. They want everyone to have equal outcomes no matter what. On the right, people just want to be left alone. It's people who don't like the left. The right is inherently disorganized, they don't form institutions or networks, they're busy with their jobs, they're not ideological. It's hard to define the right." Naval breaks down why this moment is so powerful because right now the idea of a "right" is becoming more crystalized, as the "right" is finally motivated enough to organize and fix issues as a whole, rather than stay working on their own individual issues.

Autism Capital 🧩

582,747 views • 1 year ago

We actually took a walk around that area a few weeks back, along with our Ministry of Detail clipboard. For one of the boxes we had to queue for a good while as there were so many people wanting a photograph with it. The conditions of the boxes varied but very few were in a reasonable state. Clearly right that the number of times people experience a place should factor in to prioritisation of their maintenance. It makes us think of other “civic facades” like airport arrival terminals and train stations - often the first impression you get of a place.

We actually took a walk around that area a few weeks back, along with our Ministry of Detail clipboard. For one of the boxes we had to queue for a good while as there were so many people wanting a photograph with it. The conditions of the boxes varied but very few were in a reasonable state. Clearly right that the number of times people experience a place should factor in to prioritisation of their maintenance. It makes us think of other “civic facades” like airport arrival terminals and train stations - often the first impression you get of a place.

quibble

91,754 views • 2 months ago

Travis Kalanick says founders should date ideas before committing to them: "I have lots of ideas all the time. I'm an idea factory. But other people have great ideas, too." "I like to say, you go out on a date with the idea. Was it a good date? Did it go well? How did you and the idea get along?" "Who you are is going to be a big part of which idea works for you... Be in touch with who you are, and then when the right idea comes your way, you just know." travis kalanick w/ David Senra

Travis Kalanick says founders should date ideas before committing to them: "I have lots of ideas all the time. I'm an idea factory. But other people have great ideas, too." "I like to say, you go out on a date with the idea. Was it a good date? Did it go well? How did you and the idea get along?" "Who you are is going to be a big part of which idea works for you... Be in touch with who you are, and then when the right idea comes your way, you just know." travis kalanick w/ David Senra

a16z

97,245 views • 8 days ago

Tens of thousands of Romanians (with the number is rapidly growing) have taken to the streets of Bucharest right now. People are chanting "Europe, we belong!" and, as heard in the video, a chant that roughly translates to "Russia, Romania will never be yours!".

Tens of thousands of Romanians (with the number is rapidly growing) have taken to the streets of Bucharest right now. People are chanting "Europe, we belong!" and, as heard in the video, a chant that roughly translates to "Russia, Romania will never be yours!".

Daractenus

129,313 views • 1 year ago

Share this if you want to save the world "You know, there are prophets that say the world will come to an end in the Middle East. You know that, right?" "It will be a massive war in the world. We call it Gogumagog" "All the nations of the world united in the beginning, Esav and Ishmael will fight with each other." "Meaning Christians and Muslims will kill each other, which we see as it is right now." "It's written in a book of Zachary 14. You can read it that 2/3 of the people in the world will died in minutes" "This will be the plague with which Hashem will strike all the people that have organized against Jerusalem. Each one's flesh will melt away while he is standing on his feet. Each one's eyes will melt away in their sockets, and each one's tongue will melt away in their mouths" "That does correspond to the things that happen in nuclearHolocaust and the like"

Share this if you want to save the world "You know, there are prophets that say the world will come to an end in the Middle East. You know that, right?" "It will be a massive war in the world. We call it Gogumagog" "All the nations of the world united in the beginning, Esav and Ishmael will fight with each other." "Meaning Christians and Muslims will kill each other, which we see as it is right now." "It's written in a book of Zachary 14. You can read it that 2/3 of the people in the world will died in minutes" "This will be the plague with which Hashem will strike all the people that have organized against Jerusalem. Each one's flesh will melt away while he is standing on his feet. Each one's eyes will melt away in their sockets, and each one's tongue will melt away in their mouths" "That does correspond to the things that happen in nuclearHolocaust and the like"

Seethroughitall

38,326 views • 1 year ago

Have you ever wondered why Mahatma Gandhi placed such emphasis on khadi? Why did he frame the entire freedom struggle around the concept of khadi? And why did he only wear khadi? Because khadi is not just a cloth. Khadi is the expression of the people of India. It is the imagination, it is the sentiment, it is the productive force of the people of India. It is the expression of the people of India. Whichever state you go to, you will find different fabrics, and you will find that all these fabrics represent the people. When the people of Assam give you gamcha, they are not just giving you a piece of cloth; they are giving you a piece of their history, their tradition, their imagination. It's the same with people from other states. These fabrics are beautiful, but when you see these fabrics closely, you will find that each one of them has thousands of little threads embracing each other. All threads are equal. The threads cannot protect you or keep you warm, but when they come together as a fabric, they can keep you warm, protect you, and they can express what you have in your heart. In the same way, our nation is also a fabric. A fabric made up of 1.4 billion people, and the fabric is woven together by votes. The idea that every thread, every person in the union of India is equal - that disturbs my friends in RSS. They are happy to see the fabric, but they cannot stand the idea that every single person in our fabric, in our country, is equal. : LoP Shri Rahul Gandhi in LokSabha

Have you ever wondered why Mahatma Gandhi placed such emphasis on khadi? Why did he frame the entire freedom struggle around the concept of khadi? And why did he only wear khadi? Because khadi is not just a cloth. Khadi is the expression of the people of India. It is the imagination, it is the sentiment, it is the productive force of the people of India. It is the expression of the people of India. Whichever state you go to, you will find different fabrics, and you will find that all these fabrics represent the people. When the people of Assam give you gamcha, they are not just giving you a piece of cloth; they are giving you a piece of their history, their tradition, their imagination. It's the same with people from other states. These fabrics are beautiful, but when you see these fabrics closely, you will find that each one of them has thousands of little threads embracing each other. All threads are equal. The threads cannot protect you or keep you warm, but when they come together as a fabric, they can keep you warm, protect you, and they can express what you have in your heart. In the same way, our nation is also a fabric. A fabric made up of 1.4 billion people, and the fabric is woven together by votes. The idea that every thread, every person in the union of India is equal - that disturbs my friends in RSS. They are happy to see the fabric, but they cannot stand the idea that every single person in our fabric, in our country, is equal. : LoP Shri Rahul Gandhi in LokSabha

Congress

13,788 views • 8 months ago

Jeff Bezos: “People who are right a lot change their mind a lot” “Because of AI, new technologies, and all the dynamism in the world, so many things are changing — and they’re changing rapidly,” Jeff observes. The best solution he’s found for dealing with this rapid change is “thinking long-term” because it forces you to ask yourself, “What are the points of stability?” and “What is not going to change?” He continues: “One of the things that changes very slowly is customer needs. So you can build a strategy around customer needs. That will have durability.” When building Amazon, for example, Jeff built the company around the customer needs of fast delivery, low prices, and vast selection. “The technologies will change. Your competitive set will change. Everything will change, except those customer needs,” Jeff argues. And it’s this idea that is behind Jeff’s core idea of “Be stubborn on the vision, and flexible on the details.” He explains: “You have to be [flexible on the details] because the world is changing and so you change your mind. I’ve noticed that people who are right a lot change their mind a lot. People who are wrong a lot are very stubborn on the details.” Source: Reuters (Oct 2025)

Jeff Bezos: “People who are right a lot change their mind a lot” “Because of AI, new technologies, and all the dynamism in the world, so many things are changing — and they’re changing rapidly,” Jeff observes. The best solution he’s found for dealing with this rapid change is “thinking long-term” because it forces you to ask yourself, “What are the points of stability?” and “What is not going to change?” He continues: “One of the things that changes very slowly is customer needs. So you can build a strategy around customer needs. That will have durability.” When building Amazon, for example, Jeff built the company around the customer needs of fast delivery, low prices, and vast selection. “The technologies will change. Your competitive set will change. Everything will change, except those customer needs,” Jeff argues. And it’s this idea that is behind Jeff’s core idea of “Be stubborn on the vision, and flexible on the details.” He explains: “You have to be [flexible on the details] because the world is changing and so you change your mind. I’ve noticed that people who are right a lot change their mind a lot. People who are wrong a lot are very stubborn on the details.” Source: Reuters (Oct 2025)

Startup Archive

100,684 views • 2 months ago