I think the most valuable advice in getting rich is from people who are moderately rich.
Advice from people who aren’t rich is stupid.
Advice from billionaires seems irrelevant because their circumstances are so exceptional.
How did the friend of a friend make $20million ... there’s an interesting question.
I could give you advice on how to not get rich.... just make what are in hindsight a constant flow of wrong decisions about things that could have led to financial gain. I’m an expert at that.
He was pushed out of the startup he co-founded (Epinions) and walked away with very little. He then sued the the VCs [1], leading to an out-of-court settlement, and used that settlement money to start AngelList.
So he went from being not-rich 10 years ago, to being very rich now due to his success with AngelList and related investments.
I think the advice he shares in this post is consistent with how he's built his own success. Both Naval and his brother, Kamal, have long been writing and speaking about concepts like stoicism, mindfulness and other techniques for developing good judgement and emotional health, so it's likely these ideas were imparted via their family and have influenced their thinking for a long time.
My guess: looking at his investment track record, Naval is probably quite rich (8-9 figures) and he spends a lot of his time dealing with other pretty rich people, both successful founders and other rich investors. Just a guess though.
Investor in Uber, Twitter, Postmates, Yammer, and about 60 others. Wouldn’t surprise me if that’s a fraction of the total. Not to mention cofounding AngelList. I doubt he’s scraping by :)
I think the most valuable advice in getting rich is from people who are moderately rich.
Advice from people who aren’t rich is stupid.
Advice from billionaires seems irrelevant because their circumstances are so exceptional.
How did the friend of a friend make $20million ... there’s an interesting question.
I could give you advice on how to not get rich.... just make what are in hindsight a constant flow of wrong decisions about things that could have led to financial gain. I’m an expert at that.