Airchat

.@naval on Finding Technical Co-founders

Join the conversation: air.chat/naval/cofounder

"It's getting harder and harder because these days those people just go and start their own company. So what do you bring to the table that a good technical co-founder would not have? That's number one.

And that would either mean you have some particular deep insight and relationships into a market and you have capital because you've got to bring a lot to the table because you're not creating the product anymore.

Or secondly, you have to have a relationship that's pre-existing. You worked together before at some company or you've gone to school together. Outside of those cases, it's incredibly hard to recruit a quality technical co-founder. And I'm not even sure you're in a position to start a company.

This is why so many companies come out of universities or come out of the Bay Area because there you're just very likely to have business founders and technical founders next to each other. The business founders at least have enough technical experience that they can properly evaluate the technical co-founder.

And then the business founder has to hustle and raise money, recruit people, have a vision, have a customer base, have a market ready to go, and have proven themselves. And now lots and lots of other things to balance out the skills a technical founder brings to the table.

There are now more successful cases of solo technical founders starting companies than there are of solo non-technical founders starting companies.

So it is an uphill climb. I'm not going to sugarcoat it for you.”

.@naval on Gaining Specific Knowledge

Join the conversation: air.chat/naval/knowledge

“Read the absolute smartest people and don’t fill your brain with anything else.

And then, don’t just view this as information that you have to memorize and regurgitate.

Really try to understand the core points and form a cohesive framework in your head of whether what they’re talking about is true or not and how it all fits together.

The point of reading is to learn, inquire, understand, comprehend, not to memorize, absorb, regurgitate, parrot, or anything of the sort.”

Nicolas (Nico) on the importance of patience in the process:

View the full conversation here: air.chat/Nicolas/post/f…

"Learn to be patient in the growth process of anything. Organic growth takes a long time but it's steadier and more stable than anything that's quick and in the moment. This is not a universal thing but I think just patience is the understanding of natural rhythms and the more you study nature the more patient you become."

.@dengdengspams and Money On Everything Happens for a Reason:

Join the conversation: air.chat/money/post/e19…

“Do you believe everything happens for a reason? Why or why not?

In retrospect, you can say things happen for a reason because you cannot be where you are right now if not for past events.

Being monkeys that are very good at creating stories, everyone seems to think that happens. And there's also an aspect where if you know what you want or roughly what you want, you kind of just get there naturally. And the environment's kind of primed. The environment's there, but your brain's kind of primed to identify those opportunities and to capitalize on them, right? So there's that aspect of it too.

But I mean, everything happens for a reason because we decide there is, right? We give things a reason we exist.

We give life meaning because we choose to. So there's that aspect of it as well. And then I just recommend rejecting any questions that society asks itself as a whole.”

.@naval On Building Products:

Join the conversation: air.chat/naval/post/b36…

"When building a product, you want to take the minimal steps through the idea maze and not hesitate to step back at any point in time."