Naval Ravikant on Elon Musk: “The great entrepreneurs are always willing to start over”

Naval argues that pride is the enemy of learning:

“When I look at my friends and colleagues, the ones who are still stuck in the past and have grown the least are the ones who were the proudest because they feel they already had the answers and don’t want to correct themselves publicly… Pride prevents you from saying, ‘I’m wrong.’”

The problem with pride, Naval explains, is that it prevents you from saying “I’m wrong.”

“When you don’t admit that you were wrong, you get stuck in it and you get trapped in a local maxima, as opposed to going back down and climbing up the mountain again… The great artists always have this ability to start over — whether it’s Paul Simon, Madonna, or U2.”

And Naval argues that the best entrepreneurs are always willing to start over too:

“I’m always struck by the Elon Musk story where he did PayPal… And he said something along the lines of: ‘I made $200 million from the sale of PayPal. I put $100 million into SpaceX, $80 million into Tesla, $20 million into Solar City, and I had to borrow money for rent.’ This guy is a perennial risk taker. He’s always willing to start over. He doesn’t have any pride about being seen as successful or being seen as a failure. He’s willing to put it all on the line to back himself again. But the key thing is he’s always willing to start over… It’s a willingness to look like a fool and a willingness to start over.”

He continues:

“A lot of people just don’t have that. They become successful or rich or famous and that’s it. They’re stuck. They don’t want to go back to zero, but creating anything great requires going from zero to one, and that means you go back to zero. And that’s a really painful and hard thing to do.”

Full video: Chris Williamson “44 Harsh Truths About Human Nature - Naval Ravikant (4K)“ (Mar 2025)