The Eventually Equation

Last year, Naval Ravikant had an incredibly popular tweetstorm about getting rich, both literally and metaphorically. From that tweetstorm grew a podcast with Babak Nivi (they co-founded AngelList together) in which they explore each of the tweets in the storm.

Arm yourself with specific knowledge, accountability, and leverage. — Naval (@naval) May 31, 2018

When discussing the tweet above, Nivi lays out a great summary of what it takes to eventually be successful, and, theoretically, a way to calculate the probability of that future success. I don’t know if Naval meant that it was literally worth sketching out but that’s how I took it.

I think looking at the sketched out equation really highlights the importance of learning over a long duration. As with any form of compounding, the longer you can keep playing, the greater the future returns. The variables inside the parentheses matter but are a drop in the bucket compared to life-long pursuit of knowledge and growth.

Alternatively…

The secret to getting rich is hard work, ingenuity, and being born in an era where your peak savings years align with a historic bull market. — Morgan Housel (@morganhousel) December 30, 2019