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Naval Ravikant on the “single-most important indicator of an entrepreneur’s success”

February 20, 2025

Naval admits it’s very difficult to predict which startups will work—only 1 out of 10 of his angel investments succeed—but he has noticed a common trait among many of the great companies:

“The founders are in it for the long haul. And the way you see that evidence very early on. They are extremely deliberate about all kinds of small decisions. Stuff you might think that doesn’t matter… And what you realize is is it’s their nature to obsess over these things because they feel like like they’re laying the bricks and the foundation of a skyscraper.”

He contrasts this to entrepreneurs are more careless early on:

“The people who are flippant about things… they’re often signaling to you that they’ll sell the company the first chance they get, or the moment that it looks like they’re gonna run out of cash, they’ll shut down.”

He continues:

“So I think that long-term mentality is probably the single-most important indicator of an entrepreneur’s success. But it’s by no means the only thing. It’s a very competitive environment. Most startups fail. And so you just gotta stick with it.”