#191 Naval Ravikant (A Guide to Wealth and Happiness)

**David Senra** (0:00)
I want to tell you about a one-time only limited event that I don't think you're going to want to miss. I am doing a live show with Patrick O'Shaughnessy from the Invest Like the Best podcast in New York City on October 19th. Patrick has interviewed over 300 of the world's best investors and founders for his podcast. I've read over 300 biographies of history's greatest entrepreneurs for my podcast. We'll be talking about what we learned from seven years of podcasting, sharing our favorite ideas and stories, and doing a live Q&A. There will also be special event-only swag. If you live in New York City, I think it's a no-brainer. But if not, I think it's a great excuse to fly in. I've already heard from a bunch of people that bought tickets, they're flying in from other cities. Some people are flying in from other countries. That's setting the bar really high, so I will have at least four shots of espresso or four energy drinks before or during the show so we can make it a night that you'll never forget. If you're interested in attending this unique live event, I will leave a link down below. I highly recommend you get your tickets today, and I hope I get to see you in New York on October 19th. I grew up in a single-parent household with my mom working, going to school, and raising my brother and me as latchkey kids. We were very self-sufficient from a very early age. There was a lot of hardship, but everyone goes through hardship. It did help me in a number of ways.
We were poor immigrants. My family split up.
My mother uniquely provided, against the background of hardship, unconditional and unfailing love.
If you have nothing in your life, but you have at least one person that loves you unconditionally, it'll do wonders for your self-esteem.
The library was my after-school center. After school, I would go straight to the library and hang out until they closed. I spent a lot of time reading. My only real friends were books.
Books make for great friends because the best thinkers of the last few thousand years tell you they're nuggets of wisdom.
My first job was with an illegal catering company in the back of a van delivering Indian food when I was 15
When I was younger, I had a paper route and I washed dishes in the cafeteria.
I was a totally unknown kid in New York City from a nothing family, an immigrants trying to survive situation.
Then I passed the test to get into Stuyvesant High School. That saved my life because once I had the Stuyvesant brand, I got into an Ivy League college, which led me into tech.
Stuyvesant is one of those intelligence lottery situations where you can break in with instant validation.
I studied economics and computer science. I thought I was gonna be a PhD in economics. Today, I'm an investor, in addition to being the founder and chairman of AngelList.
I was born poor and miserable. I am now pretty well off and I'm very happy.
I worked at those.
I learned a few things and some principles. I try to lay them out in a timeless manner where you can figure it out for yourself. Because at the end of the day, I can't quite teach anything. I can only inspire you and maybe give you a few hooks so you can remember.
That was an excerpt from the book that I'm gonna talk to you about today, which is The Almanack of Naval Ravikant. Mostly in Naval's words, it was put together by Eric Jorgenson and there is a forward written by Tim Ferriss.
Okay, so as you know, normally for this podcast, I read biographies. This book isn't technically a biography, although we did get a brief bio of Naval. So normally a book like this would be a bonus episode. I am gonna number this because I think I've done out of what? We're almost at 200 episodes. I think I have 10 bonus episodes and they're not numbered. So it's really hard to reference back to them. So I'm gonna number this one. So it's easy to reference in the future. And the reason that I wanted to read this book is because, well, two reasons. One, I've been heavily influenced by Naval's ideas and I've actually applied a lot of his ideas to this podcast. But two, specifically this idea that he has, that fine work that feels like play, that idea repeats over and over again in these biographies as we're studying the founders from the history of entrepreneurship. But most recently, I mean, you could say, I'm just gonna list some of the people that I feel applied that idea, fine work that feels like play. It's very, very hard to compete with somebody. If you, what you're doing, it feels like work to you and it feels like play to them. You could say Henry Ford had that, Thomas Edison, David Ogilvy definitely had it, Joe Colum, the guy that founded Trader Joe's, Albert Einstein, Phil Knight, both Cesar Ritz and Auguste Ascafier.