Naval Ravikant’s advice to startup founders – why iteration matters?

Naval Ravikant’s advice to startup founders: “You only have to be right once” 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.” One of my favorite quotes on this topic comes from Sam Altman: “’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.”