Naval Ravikant facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Naval Ravikant
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Ravikant in 2009
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| Born | November 5, 1974 New Delhi, India
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| Education | Stuyvesant High School |
| Alma mater | Dartmouth College (BS) |
| Occupation | Entrepreneur Investor |
| Years active | 1999–present |
| Employer | Davis Polk Boston Consulting Group |
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Naval Ravikant is a smart entrepreneur and investor from India who now lives in America. He helped start a company called AngelList and used to be its CEO. He also invested early in many famous companies like Uber, FourSquare, and Twitter when they were just starting. He even has his own podcast!
Contents
Early Life and Learning
Naval Ravikant was born in New Delhi, India, in 1974. When he was nine years old, he moved to New York City. He lived there with his mother and his brother, Kamal.
He went to Stuyvesant High School and finished in 1991. Later, in 1995, he graduated from Dartmouth College. There, he studied both Computer Science and Economics. While in college, he also worked for a law firm called Davis Polk & Wardwell.
Naval Ravikant briefly worked at Boston Consulting Group. After that, he moved to Silicon Valley, a famous place for tech companies.
Starting Epinions
In 1999, Ravikant helped create a website called Epinions. This site let people write reviews about different products. They raised $45 million from investors to start the company.
Later, in 2003, Epinions joined with another company called Dealtime. The new company was named Shopping.com. It became a public company in 2004.
Creating AngelList
Around 2007, Ravikant started writing a blog called Venture Hacks. This blog gave helpful tips to people who wanted to start new companies. It explained how to get money from investors.
This blog then grew into AngelList, which Ravikant co-founded in 2010. AngelList is a special platform. It helps new companies find money from "angel investors." These are people who invest their own money in early-stage businesses. AngelList also runs Product Hunt, another platform for new products. In 2022, AngelList was valued at $4 billion. Naval is now the chairman and used to be the CEO of AngelList.
Investing in Crypto
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In 2014, Ravikant helped start MetaStable Capital. This was a special fund that invested in cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrencies are digital money like Bitcoin, Ether, and Monero. By 2017, this fund had $69 million in assets. Many big investment firms put money into it.
Spearhead Investment Fund
In 2017, Naval launched Spearhead. This is an investment fund that helps new founders. It gives them money to invest in other technology companies. The fund raised $100 million for its third round.
The first two groups of founders in Spearhead came from 35 different companies. Together, these companies are worth over $10 billion. Four of them are "unicorns," which means they are valued at over $1 billion. Some of these companies include Neuralink, Opendoor, and Rippling.
Podcasts and Books
Naval has his own short podcast at Nav.al and Spearhead.co. On these podcasts, he talks about ideas, business, and investing. He has also been a guest on many other popular podcasts. These include The Joe Rogan Experience and The Tim Ferriss Show.
A book called The Almanack of Naval Ravikant was created with his permission. It collects his tweets, essays, and interviews about wealth and happiness. You can download this book for free. Tim Ferriss wrote the introduction for it.
Airchat App
In 2023, Ravikant also co-founded Airchat. This is a social media app that uses Generative AI. It works in a way that is similar to Instagram stories.
