Eric-Jorgenson The-Almanack-of-Naval-Ravikant indd

Do I have to start a company to be successful?
The most successful class of people in Silicon Valley on a con-
sistent basis are either the venture capitalists (because they 
are diversified and control what used to be a scarce resource) 
or people who are very good at identifying companies that have 
just hit product/market fit. Those people have the background, 
expertise, and references those companies really want to help 

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82 · T H E A L M A N A C K O F N A V A L R A V I K A N T
them scale. Then, they go into the latest Dropbox or the latest 
Airbnb.
The people who were at Google, then joined Facebook when 
it was one hundred people, and then joined Stripe when it 
was one hundred people?
When Zuckerberg was just starting to scale his company and 
panicked, he was like, “I don’t know how to do this.” And he 
called Jim Breyer [venture capitalist and founder of Accel 
Partners]. And Jim Breyer said, “Well, I have this really great 
head of product at this other company, and you need this 
person.” Those people tend to do the best, risk-adjusted 
over a long period of time, other than the venture investors 
themselves. [30]
Some of the most successful people I’ve seen in Silicon Valley 
had breakouts very early in their careers. They got promoted 
to VP, director, or CEO, or started a company that did well fairly 
early. If you’re not getting promoted through the ranks, it gets 
a lot harder to catch up later in life. It’s good to be in a smaller 
company early because there’s less of an infrastructure to pre-
vent early promotion. [76]
For someone who is early in their career (and maybe even later), 
the single most important thing about a company is the alumni 
network you’re going to build. Think about who you will work 
with and what those people are going on to do. [76]
HOW TO GET LUCKY