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Naval Ravikant’s advice to startup founders: “You only have to be right once”

In the clip below, Naval reflects on how it took 13 years after starting his first startup before eventually succeeding with AngelList (valued at $4.1B in 2022).

“Entrepreneurial ventures fail all the time. Most of my companies failed. I actually started seven companies, and I’ve launched about 40 or 50 projects over my career. And AngelList is the first one that I would truly say is product, market, entrepreneur fit for me that might succeed down the road.”

He tells the audience:

“It’s a low hit rate over your career, but you only have to be right once… So just keep trying, just keep iterating… a lot of it is market timing and you learn a lot of lessons.”

Similarly, Sam Altman writes in his essay How To Be Successful:

“’I will fail many times, and I will be really right once’ is the entrepreneurs’ way. You have to give yourself a lot of chances to get lucky.”

P.S. We’ve put together a YouTube playlist with every Naval Ravikant insight we’ve ever shared. You can watch it here: "Best startup advice from Naval Ravikant"