1. Seek Wealth, Not Money or Status

Wealth is assets that earn while you sleep

Wealth buys your freedom

Money is how we transfer wealth

Status is your rank in the social hierarchy

Status is a very old game (zero sum game)

People creating wealth will always be attacked by people playing status games

2. Make Abundance for the World

Ethical wealth creation makes abundance for the world

Everyone can be rich

3. Free Markets Are Intrinsic to Humans

Too many takers and not enough makers will plunge a society into ruin

4. Making Money Isn’t About Luck

Wealth stacks up one chip at a time, not all at once

We’re talking about getting wealthy so you can retire, so you have your freedom. Not retire in the sense that you don’t do anything. But in the sense that you don’t have to be any place you don’t want to be, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do, you can wake up when you want, you can sleep when you want, you don’t have a boss. That’s freedom.

We’re talking about enough wealth to get to freedom. Especially thanks to the Internet these days, though, opportunities are massively abundant. I, in fact, have too many ways to make money, I don’t have enough time. I have opportunities pouring out of my ears and the thing I keep running out of is time.

There’s just so many ways to create wealth, to create products, to create businesses, to create opportunities, and to, as a byproduct, get paid by society that I can’t even handle it all.

5. Make Luck Your Destiny

Build your character in a way so luck becomes deterministic.

But I would say your character, your reputation, these are things that you can build that then will let you take up advantage of opportunities that other people may characterize as lucky but you know that it wasn’t luck.

“you can’t be normal and expect abnormal returns.”

6. You Won’t Get Rich Renting Out Your Time

You must own equity to gain your financial freedom

You want a career where your inputs don’t match your outputs

7. Live Below Your Means for Freedom

People living far below their means enjoy a freedom that people busy upgrading their lifestyles just can’t fathom.

Ideally, you’ll make your money in discrete lumps (over time)

8. Give Society What It Doesn’t Know How to Get

Society will pay you for creating what it wants, but doesn’t know how to get, and delivering it at scale.

Figure out what product you can provide and then figure out how to scale it

9. The Internet Has Massively Broadened Career Possibilities

The Internet allows you to scale any niche obsession

10. Play Long-term Games With Long-term People

Pick an industry where you can play long-term games with long-term people. All returns in life come from compound interest over many turns of the game.

Long-term players make each other rich

Returns come from compound interest in iterated games

11. Pick Partners With Intelligence, Energy and Integrity

Motivation has to come intrinsically

When I was younger, I used to try and talk people into things. I had this idea that you could sell someone into doing something. But you can’t. You can’t keep them motivated. You can get them inspired initially. It might work if you’re a king like Henry V, and you’re trying to get them to just charge into battle, and then they’ll figure it out.

But if you’re trying to keep someone motivated for the long-term, that motivation has to come intrinsically. You can’t just create it, nor can you be the crutch for them if they don’t have that intrinsic motivation. So, you have to make sure people actually are high-energy, and want to do what you want them to do, and what you want to work with them on.

Integrity is what someone does, despite what they say they do

Reading signals is very, very important. Signals are what people do despite what they say. So, it’s important to pay attention to subtle signals. We all know that socially if someone treats a waiter, or waitress in a restaurant really badly, then it’s only a matter of time until they treat you badly.

12. Partner With Rational Optimists

Don’t partner with pessimists

Partner with rational optimists

We’re descended from pessimists

but of course there are obvious exceptions”, BOCTAOE

13. Arm Yourself With Specific Knowledge

! Arm yourself with specific knowledge. It can’t be trained but it can be found by pursuing your genuine curiosity.

If you want to make money you have to get paid at scale. And why you, that’s accountability, at scale, that’s leverage, and just you getting paid as opposed to somebody else getting paid , that’s specific knowledge.

The thing is that we have this idea that everything can be taught, everything can be taught in school. And it’s not true that everything can be taught. In fact, the most interesting things cannot be taught.But everything can be learned. And very often that learning either comes from some innate characteristics in your DNA, or it could be through your childhood where you learn soft skills which are very, very hard to teach later on in life, or it’s something that is brand new so nobody else knows how to do it either, or it’s true on the job training because you’re pattern matching into highly complex environments, basically building judgment in a specific domain.

Specific knowledge can’t be trained

Specific knowledge is found by pursuing your curiosity

So, specific knowledge is found much more by pursuing your innate talents, your genuine curiosity, and your passion. It’s not by going to school for whatever it is the hottest job, it’s not for going into whatever field investors say is the hottest.

Very often specific knowledge is at the edge of knowledge. It’s also stuff that’s just being figured out or is really hard to figure out.

So, if you’re not 100% into it somebody else who is 100% into it will outperform you. And they won’t just outperform you by a little bit, they’ll outperform you by a lot because now we’re operating the domain of ideas, compound interest really applies and leverage really applies.

So, if you’re operating with 1,000 times leverage and somebody is right 80% of the time, and somebody else is right 90% of time, the person who’s right 90% of the time will literally get paid hundreds of times more by the market because of the leverage and because of the compounding factors and being correct. So, you really want to make sure you’re good at it so that genuine curiosity is very important.

Building specific knowledge will feel like play to you

14. Specific Knowledge Is Highly Creative or Technical

Specific knowledge tends to be creative or technical. It’s on the bleeding edge of technology, art and communication.

it’s that it is highly specific to the situation, it’s specific to the individual, it’s specific to the problem, and it can only be built as part of a larger obsession, interest, and time spent in that domain.

It can’t just be read straight out of a single book, nor can it be taught in a single course, nor can it be programmed into a single algorithm.

You can’t be too deliberate about assembling specific knowledge

But I think if you go around trying to build it a little too deliberately, if you become too goal-oriented on the money, then you won’t pick the right thing. You won’t actually pick the thing that you love to do, so you won’t go deep enough into it.

Build specific knowledge where you are a natural

So, whatever you are a natural at, you want to double down on that.

And then there are probably multiple things you’re natural at because personalities and humans are very complex. So, we want to be able to take the things that you are natural at and combine them so that you automatically, just through sheer interest and enjoyment, end up top 25% or top 10% or top 5% at a number of things.

15. Learn to Sell, Learn to Build

Learn to sell. Learn to build. If you can do both, you will be unstoppable.(your specific knowledge)

16. Read What You Love Until You Love to Read

Read the original scientific books in a field

Don’t fear any book

So, you have to make sure that you’re building on a steel frame of understanding because you’re putting together a foundation for skyscraper, and you’re not just memorizing things because you’re just memorizing things you’re lost. So the foundations are ultra important.

And the ultimate, the ultimate is when you walk into a library and you look at it up and down and you don’t fear any book. You know that you can take any book off the shelf, you can read it, you can understand it, you can absorb what is true, you can reject what is false, and you have a basis for even working that out that is logical and scientific and not purely just based on opinions.

The means of learning are abundant, the desire to learn is scarce

17. The Foundations Are Math and Logic

The ultimate foundations are math and logic

It’s better to read a great book really slowly than to fly through a hundred books quickly

What you are really looking for are algorithms. What you are really looking for is understanding. It’s better to go through a book really slowly and struggle and stumble and rewind, than it is to fly through it quickly and say, “Well, now I’ve read 20 books, I’ve read 30 books, I’ve read 50 books in the field.”

It’s like Bruce Lee said, “I don’t fear the man who knows a thousand kicks and a thousand punches, I fear the man who’s practiced one punch ten thousand times or one kick ten thousand times.” It’s that understanding that comes through repetition and through usage and through logic and foundations that really makes you a smart thinker.

Learn persuasion and programming

18. There’s No Actual Skill Called “Business”

There’s no actual skill called business. Avoid business schools and magazines.

Doing is faster than watching

The number of “doing” iterations drives the learning curve

If you’re willing to bleed a little every day, you may win big later

We’re evolved for small victories all the time but that becomes very expensive. That’s where the crowd is. That’s where the herd is. So, if you’re willing to bleed a little bit every day but in exchange you’ll win big later, you will do better.

That is, by the way, entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurs bleed every day.

They’re not making money, they’re losing money, they’re constantly stressed out, all the responsibility is upon them, but when they win they win big. On average they’ll make more.

19. Embrace Accountability to Get Leverage

Embrace accountability. Society will reward you with leverage.

You have to have accountability to get leverage

A well-functioning team has clear accountability for each position

People who can fail in public have a lot of power

21. Take Accountability to Earn Equity

If you have high accountability, you’re less replaceable and you can get a piece of the business.

! Taking accountability is like taking equity in all your work

21. Labor and Capital Are Old Leverage

Wealth requires leverage. Labor and capital are older forms of leverage that everyone is fighting over.

You need specific knowledge and accountability to obtain capital

22. Product and Media are New Leverage

Product leverage is where the new fortunes are made

Combining all three forms of leverage is a magic combination (product, media and code)

Probably the most interesting thing to keep in mind about the new forms of leverage is they are permissionless. They don’t require somebody else’s permission for you to use them or succeed.

23. Product Leverage is Egalitarian

Product leverage is a positive sum game

Creating wealth with product leads to more ethical wealth

You want to use the product that is used by the most people

24. Pick a Business Model With Leverage

Ideally, you should pick a business model with network effects, low marginal costs and scale economies.

Scale economies: the more you produce, the cheaper it gets

Zero marginal cost of reproduction: producing more is free

Network effects: value grows as the square of the customers

Network effect businesses are natural monopolies

In a network effect, each new user adds value to the existing users

Zero marginal cost businesses can pivot into network effect businesses

25. Example: From Laborer to Entrepreneur

The continuum from laborer to real estate tech company goes from low to high specific knowledge, accountability and leverage.

26. Judgment Is the Decisive Skill

Everything we’ve discussed so far has been setting you up to apply judgment.

In an age of infinite leverage, judgment becomes the most important skill

Everything else you do is setting you up to apply judgment

Judgment, especially demonstrated judgment, with high accountability, clear track record, is critical.

Judgment is knowing the long-term consequences of your actions

My definition of wisdom is knowing the long term consequences of your actions, so they’re not all that different. Wisdom is just judgment on a personal domain.

Without experience, judgment is often less than useless

Intellect without any experience is often worse than useless because you get the confidence that the intellect gives you, and you get some of the credibility, but because you had no skin in the game, and you had no real experience, and no real accountability, you’re just throwing darts.

The real world is always far, far more complex than we can intellectualize. Especially all the interesting, fast-moving edge domains and problems, you can’t get there without experience. If you are smart and you iterate fast, it’s not even you put 10,000 hours into something, but you take 10,000 tries at something.

The people with the best judgment are among the least emotional

Judgment is the exercise of wisdom. Wisdom comes from experience; and that experience can be accelerated through short iterations.

The more outraged someone is, the worse their judgment

27. Set an Aspirational Hourly Rate

If outsourcing a task will cost less than your hourly rate, outsource it.

Set and enforce an aspirational hourly rate

No one is going to value you more than you value yourself. You just have to set a very high personal hourly rate and you have to stick to it. Even since I was young, I just decided I was worth a lot more than the market though I was worth, but I started treating myself that way.

You can’t penny pinch your way to wealth

You can penny-pinch your way to a basic sustenance. You can keep your expenses low, maybe retire early and not spend too much. That’s perfectly valid. But we’re here to talk about wealth creation. If you’re going to do that, then that has to be your number one overwhelming priority.

My aspirational rate was $5,000/hr

If you can outsource something for less than your hourly rate, do it

Paul Graham basically said it pretty well for Y Combinator startups, he said, “You should be working on your product and getting product-market fit. And you should be exercising and eating healthy.” That’s about it. That’s all you have time for while you’re on this mission.

28. Work As Hard As You Can

Work as hard as you can. Even though what you work on and who you work with are more important.

Finding Product-Market-Founder Fit to expand on Marc Andreessen’s definition, he came up with Product-Market Fit. I will add Product-Market-Founder Fit, which is how well you are personally suited to that business. The combination of that three, that should be your overwhelming goal.

You can save yourself a lot of time if you pick the right area to work in. Picking the right people to work with is the next most important piece. Third comes how hard you work. They’re like three legs of a stool; if you shortchange on any one of them, the whole stool’s gonna fall down. It’s not like you can pick one over the other that easily.

Nobody really works 80 hours a week

Inspiration is perishable

Impatience with actions, patience with results

29. Be Too Busy to “Do Coffee”

You should be too busy to “do coffee”, while still keeping an uncluttered calendar.

One has to be utterly ruthless about dodging meetings. When you do do meetings, do walking meetings, do standing meetings. Keep them short, keep them actionable, keep them small. Any meeting with eight people sitting around at a conference table, nothing is getting done in that meeting. You are literally just dying one hour at a time.

People will meet with you when you have proof of work

You have to do the work. To use a crypto analogy, you have to have proof of work. If you have proof of work, and you truly have something interesting, then you shouldn’t hesitate to put it together in an email and send it to somebody. Even then, when you’re asking for a meeting, you wanna be super actionable about it.

Networking is overrated even early in your career

30. Keep Redefining What You Do

Keep redefining what you do until you’re the best at what you do

Until you arrive at a comfortable place where like, “Yes this is something I can be amazing at while still being authentic to who I am.” And this is not going to be an overnight discovery. It’s going to be a long journey but at least you know about how to think about it.

Find founder-product-market fit

31. Escape Competition Through Authenticity

Competition can make you play the wrong game. No one can compete with you on being you.

In entrepreneurship, the masses are never right

Combine your vocation and avocation

32. Play Stupid Games, Win Stupid Prizes

Competition will blind you to greater games. You’re one step away from a better market.

33. Eventually You Will Get What You Deserve

Apply specific knowledge with leverage and eventually you will get what you deserve.

Product-market fit is inevitable if you’re doing something you love to do and the market wants it.

34. Reject Most Advice

Most advice is people giving you their winning lottery ticket numbers.

The best founders listen to everyone but make up their own mind

Advice is maxims you can recall later, when you get your own experience

35. A Calm Mind, a Fit Body, a House Full of Love

When you’re finally wealthy, you’ll realize it wasn’t what you were seeking in the first place.

“A calm mind, a fit body and a house full of love. These things can not be bought. They must be earned.”

36. There Are No Get Rich Quick Schemes

Anyone giving advice on how to get rich should have made their money elsewhere

“If you want to be a philosopher king first become a king then become a philosopher. Not first become a philosopher and then become a king.”

37. Productize Yourself

Figure out what you’re uniquely good at and apply as much leverage as possible.

Find hobbies that make you rich, fit and creative

I would change that slightly. I would say one that makes you money, one that makes you fit, and one that makes you smarter.

• startups
• strength training/yoga
• music

Making money should be a function of your identity and what you like to do.

From Admiral Hyman Rickover: The man in charge must concern himself with details. If he does not consider them important, neither will his subordinates. Yet “the devil is in the details.” It is hard and monotonous to pay attention to seemingly minor matters. In my work, I probably spend about ninety-nine percent of my time on what others may call petty details. Most managers would rather focus on lofty policy matters. But when the details are ignored, the project fails. No infusion of policy or lofty ideals can then correct the situation.

Final thoughts

Take away from this. The areas where I can do with the most improvement are taking responsibility actively and paying attention to the details.