Learn to sell, learn to build. If you can do both, you will be unstoppable.

In the discussion of leverage, the compilation pairs creating a product with getting people to adopt it. Ravikant defines building broadly enough to include design, manufacturing and running a service; selling includes communication, recruitment and fundraising. The earlier official transcript of 31 March 2019 has Nivi read this advice back to him, after which Ravikant explains it.

Combining the ability to make something useful with the ability to communicate its value can be especially powerful.

Building is not limited to programming, and selling is not limited to persuading an individual customer to buy. The surrounding passage explicitly gives both words broader meanings.

Work, Wisdom, Education

• read what you love until you love to read.
• Earn with your mind, not your time.
• Let no one be slow to seek wisdom when he is young nor weary in the search thereof when he is grown old. For no age is too early or too late for the health of the soul. Epicurus
• Play long-term games with long-term people. (paraphrase)
• You’re never too old, too wacky, too wild, to pick up a book & read to a child. (misattributed) Dr. Seuss

• nav.al/build-sell

Naval Ravikant, The Almanack of Naval Ravikant (2020), “Find a Position of Leverage”, paragraph beginning “Learn to sell” (online edition). Checked at Quotogeny, https://quotogeny.com/q/learn-to-sell-learn-to-build/ (28 October 2026).

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