The Angel Philosopher Naval Ravikant on Reading, Making Decisions, Habits, and the Purpose of Life

[Music] Hey, it's Shane Parrish, and welcome to a new episode of The Knowledge Project, where we deconstruct actionable strategies that you can use to make better decisions, learn new things, and live a better life. This time around, we have the amazing Naval Ravikant. Naval is the CEO and co-founder of AngelList; he's invested in more than 100 companies, including Uber, Twitter, Yammer, and so many others.

Don't worry, we're not going to talk about early-stage investing. Naval involves an incredibly deep thinker who challenges the status quo on so many things. He's thought deeply about stuff that's near and dear to us, like reading habits, decision-making, and life. Just a heads up, this is the longest podcast I've ever done; our conversation lasted over two hours. If you're like me, you're going to take a lot of notes. A complete list of books and sites mentioned is available in the show notes at Farnam Street blog.com slash podcast. That's FarnamStreetBlog.com slash podcast. A transcript is available for members of our Learning Tribe. If you want to join, head on over to FarnamStreetBlog.com slash tribe. In addition to transcripts, we have the world's best online reading group and a host of other goodies.

Without further ado, here's Naval.

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Naval, welcome to the show! I am so excited to get to talk to you today and, you know, ask you a whole bunch of questions that I have on my mind.

Oh, thanks for having me! I'm excited to be here. I've been a longtime fan of your work.

Thank you! Let's get started with something simple. Can you tell me a little bit about what you do?

It's actually not that simple. I have a hard time saying what I do. My day job is that I am CEO of AngelList, the company that I started almost seven years ago now. AngelList is sort of this platform for startups in the tech industry. We help entrepreneurs raise money, we help entrepreneurs recruit talent into their startups, and we also help people find jobs in startups.

Now, recently we acquired Product Hunt, so we also help companies launch to customers. It's basically a one-stop shop for the early-stage tech ecosystem. Whether you're raising money or you're investing money, we're the largest online platform for that. Whether you're recruiting talent or whether you're being recruited, we're the largest online platform for startup recruiting. Then, whether you're looking for a new product to try out or looking for customers for your product, we're also the largest online platform for launching that.

So it's sort of become this bigger thing, and that's sort of my day job. But I'm also involved in a bunch of other things. I mean, I’ve invested in about 200 companies, I'm an advisor to a bunch, and a bunch of boards. Occasionally, I belong to Twitter. I'm also a small partner in a cryptocurrency fund because I'm really into these coins: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Monero, and so forth. And I'm always cooking up something!

You always have a bunch of side projects! How do you keep track of that all? Like, what does your typical day look like?

Well, that's the good part: I don't have a typical day, nor do I want a typical day. You know, if there is a typical day, I'm usually inside my office at...