Full episode with 20 minutes of new material at the end. With Guillermo Rauch (Vercel), Blake Scholl (Boom Supersonic), and Max Hodak (Science). Nivi: Welcome. You’re listening to Naval Podcast, your authoritative source for new knowledge. We’re trying something new today. More

Groups never admit failure. A group would rather keep living in the mythology of “we were repressed” than ever admit failure. Individuals are the only ones who admit failure. Even individuals don’t like to admit failure, but eventually, they can be forced to. A group will never admit they were wrong. More

This is a preview of our Spearhead podcast, where we discuss startups and angel investing. Hey everybody, it’s Naval and Nivi. We’re going to talk about something very different than what we’ve discussed in the past. Back in the day, we did Venture Hacks, which was all about the game theory of venture capital and helping entrepreneurs raise money. More

What’s a mispriced externality? You mentioned it on a previous episode. An externality is where there’s an additional cost imposed by whatever product is being produced or consumed, that’s not accounted for in the price of the product. This can happen for many reasons. Sometimes you can fix it by putting the cost back into the price. More

Let’s talk about net present value (NPV). Net present value is when you say, “That stream of payments I’m going to get in the future—what’s it worth today?” Here’s a common example: You’re joining a startup and getting stock options, and the founder says, “This company is going to be worth $1 billion, and I’m giving you 0.1% of the company; therefore, you’re getting $1 million worth of stock.” More

Consumer surplus and producer surplus are important concepts. Consumer surplus is the excess value you get from something when you pay less than you were willing to pay. I get a lot of joy out of my morning Starbucks coffee. Obviously I’ve made some money. So if my coffee cost $20, I would pay it. More

Earlier, we talked about compound interest, but we didn’t dig into it much. Relationships offer a good example of compound interest. Once you’ve been in a good relationship with somebody for a while—whether it’s business or romantic—life gets a lot easier because you know that person’s got your back. More