Naval Ravikant

Naval Ravikant is an Indian-born American entrepreneur and investor, born in New Delhi on November 5, 1974. He came of age in the world of technology startups, venture capital, online platforms, and, later, cryptocurrency. At age 9, he moved to New York City with his mother and his brother, Kamal. He attended Stuyvesant High School, graduating in 1991, and went on to Dartmouth College, where he graduated in 1995 with degrees in computer science and economics.

Before settling into Silicon Valley, Ravikant interned during college at the law firm Davis Polk & Wardwell and, after graduation, briefly worked at Boston Consulting Group. That mix of law, consulting, technology, and economics helps explain the range of subjects he later became associated with: startups, investing, negotiation, markets, philosophy, and wealth. His public voice is practical and compressed, often focused on how people make decisions under uncertainty.

Startups and investing

In 1999, Ravikant co-founded Epinions, a consumer product review site. The company raised $45 million in venture capital from firms including Benchmark Capital and August Capital. In 2003, Epinions merged with the comparison pricing site Dealtime to become Shopping.com, which held an initial public offering in October 2004. In January 2005, Ravikant and three co-founders filed a lawsuit against Benchmark Capital, August Capital, and co-founder Nirav Tolia, alleging they had been misled into approving the merger under the pretense that the company was worth less than the capital raised, making their shares worthless. The lawsuit was settled in December 2005.

Around 2007, Ravikant started The Hit Forge, a $20 million early-stage venture capital fund that invested in startups including Twitter, Uber, and Stack Overflow. That same year, he began co-writing Venture Hacks, a blog offering detailed advice on negotiating term sheets. Venture Hacks grew into AngelList, which Ravikant co-founded in 2010 as a platform for startups to connect with angel investors. He is the co-founder and chairman of AngelList, which also operates Product Hunt. In 2022, AngelList Venture raised funds at a $4 billion valuation.

Public voice

Ravikant has also been active in newer areas of technology and media. In 2014, he co-founded MetaStable Capital, a cryptocurrency hedge fund whose assets were reported in a June 2017 regulatory filing as $69 million, with investors including Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital. In 2017, he launched Spearhead, an investment fund that gives founders capital to invest in technology startups as angel investors. In 2023, he co-founded Airchat, a social media application using voice notes and AI-powered transcription.

Ravikant is known not only for companies and investments, including early-stage investments in Uber, Twitter, Postmates, and Yammer, but also for short, memorable statements about work and life. He hosts the podcast Nav.al, where he discusses philosophy and investing, and he co-hosts a podcast with Brett Hall. With his permission, Eric Jorgenson curated Ravikant’s tweets, essays, and interviews into The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness. His line, “Impatience with actions, patience with results,” fits the pattern of a career spent building, investing, and explaining how long outcomes can follow from clear, repeated choices.