billdinh

[Rohit @rohit4verse]

>be Naval Ravikant
>spawn in New Delhi
>poor immigrant family
>father leaves shortly after they land in Queens, New York
>mother works menial jobs by day, night school after
>age 9, alone in a country you don't understand
>no friends
>no safety net
>no connections
>the library becomes your entire world

>get into Stuyvesant High School
>yes, that Stuyvesant
>the public school that produced four Nobel laureates
>one entrance exam changes the trajectory of your life
>go from blue collar to white collar in a single move
>graduate and land Dartmouth
>double major
>computer science and economics
>pay your way through by washing dishes, delivering newspapers, tutoring, fixing computers

>move to Silicon Valley with nothing but a degree and a bet on yourself
>join @Home Network
>watch a $20 billion company go to zero in the dot-com crash
>work on Intrinsic Graphics
>the thing that eventually becomes Google Earth
>co-found Epinions in 1999
>a consumer review site before Yelp and TripAdvisor existed
>raise $45 million in venture capital
>get screwed by your own co-founder and VCs
>they hide the company's real value during a merger
>the company IPOs at $750 million
>you walk away with $0
>not a typo
>zero

>sue Benchmark Capital and August Capital
>everyone in Silicon Valley calls you radioactive
>one VC tells the press you'll never work in the valley again
>settle the case
>learn the game from the inside out
>instead of quitting, you decide to rewrite the rules

>start Venture Hacks in 2007
>a blog that tears the veil off VC term sheets
>give founders the playbook that VCs never wanted them to have
>launch a $20 million fund called Hit Forge
>back Twitter before anyone cares
>back Uber before anyone believes
>back Stack Overflow, Notion, Postmates, Opendoor, Yammer

>turn Venture Hacks into AngelList in 2010
>50 angel investors
>$80 million committed in year one
>100 new startups signing up per day
>build the https://t.co/WLqfUQ0o7R for founders and investors
>do what LinkedIn tried and failed to do
>actually get people to transact

>realize US securities law is blocking everything
>fly to Washington DC
>spend six months lobbying Congress
>rally 5,000 investors and entrepreneurs for an online petition
>call in 100 favors
>get the JOBS Act signed into law by Barack Obama in 2012
>single-handedly open startup investing to ordinary Americans
>the entire equity crowdfunding industry exists because of this

>AngelList hits $4 billion valuation
>over $3.5 billion invested through the platform
>200+ unicorns funded
>spin off Product Hunt, Republic, CoinList
>companies like Neuralink and Rippling get backed through your Spearhead fund

>co-found MetaStable Capital in 2014
>a crypto hedge fund backed by Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia
>bet on Bitcoin and Ethereum before it's fashionable
>earn a penny on every Uber ride taken on the planet
>invest in 200+ companies across your career

>drop a 40-tweet storm on May 31, 2018
>"How to Get Rich (without getting lucky)"
>it goes more viral than most product launches
>turns into a podcast series, then a global movement
>Eric Jorgenson compiles your tweets and interviews into The Almanack of Naval Ravikant
>it becomes a perennial bestseller
>you didn't even write the book
>your ideas were so good someone else did it for you

>go on Joe Rogan, Tim Ferriss, Shane Parrish, Chris Williamson
>every episode becomes a top-10 all-time listen
>millions of people re-read your tweets like scripture
>you become the most quoted man on the internet who isn't dead

>launch Airchat in 2023
>voice-first social media with AI transcription
>because you think text-only platforms made us forget humans can get along

>here is what Naval actually taught the world
>you're not going to get rich renting out your time
>own equity or stay a renter forever
>specific knowledge is the stuff that feels like play to you but looks like work to others
>leverage is a force multiplier for your judgment
>code and media are permissionless leverage
>you don't need anyone's approval
>10,000 iterations is not 10,000 repetitions
>one is mastery, the other is a treadmill
>if you can't decide, the answer is no
>when two choices look equal, pick the harder one short term
>stress is an inability to decide what's important
>desire is a contract you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want
>inspiration is perishable
>act on it immediately
>the three big decisions: what you do, where you live, who you're with
>people spend years optimizing careers but pick partners and cities on autopilot

>not optimizing for wealth
>optimizing for sovereignty
>win the game fast enough that you get to stop playing

[darkzodchi @zodchiii]

me questioning my past 5 years of decisions after reading

[Brad @BradleyKellard]

In 2013, Nassim Taleb gave a 1-hour masterclass on Antifragile and how the world really works.

He broke down how:
• Small failures save systems
• Big success hides fragility
• Forecasting is dangerous
• Time exposes lies

12 lessons from Taleb on surviving uncertainty:

[DAN KOE @thedankoe]

https://t.co/7l7Jef99QZ

[DAN KOE @thedankoe]

https://t.co/FGLYHaRhRq

[Naval @naval]

Founders cannot outsource recruiting.

“Recruiting is the most important thing because you need creativity; you need motivated people. Ideally, the early people are all geniuses. They’re self-managing, low-ego, hardworking, highly competent, builders, technical—maybe one or two sellers—but you can’t watch everything. You can’t micromanage everything.

The early people are the DNA of the company. When you outsource recruiting, when you have other people hiring and interviewing and making hiring decisions without your direct involvement and veto, that’s a sad day. That’s the day that the company’s no longer being driven directly by you.

There’s now a fly-by-wire element in between. There’s some mechanical linkage going through another human, often at a distance. And other people are not going to have the same level of selectivity that you will as a founder.

The important size at which a company starts changing is not some arbitrary number, like 20 or 30 or 40. It’s the point at which the founder is not directly recruiting and managing everyone. The moment that there are middle layers of management, then you are somewhat disconnected from the company, and your ability to directly drive a product team that can take the company from zero to one goes away.

So we really cannot outsource recruiting. People think you can. They hire recruiters, for example. Maybe you can outsource a little bit of sourcing, but I would even argue that’s difficult. The reason recruiting is so, so, so important—and a lot of it is obvious, I’ll skip the obvious reasons—but one non-obvious reason is that the best people truly only want to work with the best people.

Working with anyone who’s not at their level is a cognitive load upon them. And the more people they’re surrounded by who are not as good as they are, the more keenly they’re aware that they belong somewhere else, or they should be doing their own thing.

The best teams are mutually motivated. They reinforce each other. Everyone’s trying to impress each other.

One good test is when you’re recruiting a new person, you should be able to say to them, “Walk into that room where the rest of the team is sitting. Take anyone you want—pick them at random—pull them aside for 30 minutes, and interview them. And if you aren’t impressed by them, don’t join.”

When you do that test, you will instinctively flinch at the idea of them interviewing randomly a certain person that’s kind of in the back of your mind. That’s the person you need to let go. Because that’s the person keeping you from having this high-functioning team that all wants to impress each other.”

[Naval @naval]

Crypto is…

Desperate gamblers chasing their first bag.

Investors funding the buildout of the global casino.

Bankers hypnotizing the masses to collect their vig.

…all meaningless and ephemeral without the cypherpunks, who defend the dream of encrypted and unstoppable cash.

[vitalik.eth @VitalikButerin]

The importance of full-stack openness and verifiability

(including applications, operating systems, hardware, and bio)

https://t.co/FRb3V4TK6U

[vitalik.eth @VitalikButerin]

Low-risk defi can be for Ethereum what search was for Google

https://t.co/6xIxCrOToQ

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

https://t.co/Mg0oHBVoxf

[Jihoz.ron @Jihoz_Axie]

Axie's revenge arc. Why an MMO?

Eve online already showed us a model for workable player-driven economies and we've been blessed to have discussions with @HilmarVeigar and the team over the past years.

Some key principles that we have in mind for the economy:

• Player-Driven Production and Markets: Players engage in specialized professions, producing goods and resources essential to others, creating the need for markets.
• Resource Scarcity and Distribution: Scarce and unevenly distributed resources encourage exploration, territorial control, and trade.
• Destruction as a Sink: Warfare between guilds leads to asset destruction, driving production and balancing resource accumulation. War is emotional and drives consumptive spending.
• Social Coordination: Large guild coordination and meaningful conflicts with real losses keep players engaged, supported by strong social structures and opportunities for learning after defeat.

[Axie Infinity @AxieInfinity]

INTRODUCING ATIA’S LEGACY — THE AXIE MMO

Lunacia was once a place where gods roamed the land, flew through the clouds, and swam the seas. After centuries of war, Lunacia is ripe for rebuilding.

Testers wanted 👇

📝 : https://t.co/1mu9gzQFEr

First play-test: Summer ‘25

More Details 🧵👇

[Naval @naval]

There’s no safety argument for keeping old AI models closed (especially when trained on public data), now that they’ve been surpassed by other open models.

[billdinh @billdinh_ron]

@MAytumur @CryptoTony__ He just cut it by technical analysis.

[Naval @naval]

Much of investing is avoiding FOMO buying and panic selling.

[Tim Cook @tim_cook]

Steve saw the world not just as it was, but as it could be. His vision continues to inspire us to push boundaries and create the future. Today, on his 70th birthday, we honor his legacy and his enduring impact.

[Jihoz.ron @Jihoz_Axie]

sunday reflections:

- i am working behind the scenes to influence the long term institutional adoption of ethereum and value of eth as this is the primary constraint holding back consumer applications and fundamentals

- people are dramatically under-estimating the likelihood and implications of humanity unlocking artificial general intelligence in the coming 3 years

- defi is stuck in the mud. needs a perfect storm of rising onchain speculation, lowered interest rates, and token buybacks fueled by fee switches to start a virtuous flywheel again

- it’s bullish that people are disgusted with celebrity and political memecoins. your capital is a vote

- keep the drama to a healthy level of ronin. i prefer not to intervene and play police. ronin is open. grow up and work together or embrace the theatre. freedom is responsibility.

- people are returning to ponzinomics in web3 gaming. that’s normal. why do people only call out web3 gaming for sustainability issues when almost all web3 yield relies on unsustainable flywheels to kickstart network effects? the key is expectation management and what you end up doing with the network that’s formed

[billdinh @billdinh_ron]

@benbybit You reacted immediately and handled well against FUD. Stay safe!

[billdinh @billdinh_ron]

@cz_binance @MakeItAQuote

[Nassim Nicholas Taleb @nntaleb]

Reframing Christoper's excellent study in terms of much much of life's results ARE NOT explained by IQ test results.
By now the matter should be closed.