Build a Business That Serves Your Life, Not the Other Way Around

Remember the scene in The Social Network when Zuckerberg ousted Eduardo Saverin (Zuck’s close friend and initial financier) in the early days of Facebook?

Classic Silicon Valley “deal with the devil.”

Zuck traded friendship and loyalty for absolute control of Facebook.

It paid off. The world is fundamentally different because of it.

Steve Jobs sacrificed his family, denied paternity of his first daughter, denied stock to (and even pushed out) foundational early collaborators.

Yet he IS a genius, and changed the world in a way no one else could have.

Elon Musk has also paid an immense personal cost to do what he’s done.

It destroyed his marriages, limited time with his children, and prevented any personal peace or stability.

And yet once again, Elon Musk IS a genius - whatever you may think of him - and he too is changing the world in a way no one else can.

Here’s an awesome tweet from Bryan Johnson, the multimillionaire that optimizes everything about his life for the single purpose of longevity, after someone tells him to “live a little.”

He says,

“I am not opposed to pleasure. I am opposed to the counterfeit. I say no to the dying ritual so that I can say yes to the full offering of consciousness: a vibrant physiological state, cognitive clarity, and deep emotional coloring. Vitality is mastery, not abuse dressed up as freedom.

The reward is a clearer lens, the ability to see what is currently invisible. High resolution consciousness allows for depths of thought, creativity, and experiential variance that are far harder to reach when the brain and body are chronically inflamed, degraded, and sedated. I want to expand the boundaries of the human experience.

‘On offer in this new future are things that no human has ever tasted before. I’m not deprived by the lack of participating in the rituals, I’m pointing to a joy that the human mind has not yet imagined.

I don’t intend to live a little. I intend to live more than any human who has yet lived and invite you to join me.”

Read the full tweet here.

What a monologue.

Now let me ask you: what level of impact on the world would you like to have, and at what personal cost?

Anything’s possible… as long as you can sacrifice everything else.

Like Elon, you can crash on couches, take big risks, sweet talk investors to give you money. The playbook is out there.

If you’re a founder, YC even tells you exactly what they’d fund, you just have to build it.

This is what I call rocket-ship successful.

I call them rocket-ships because they need a lot of fuel, burn away everything else, and have the potential to explode and kill everyone inside.

Startups HAVE to be rocket-ships to get an investor interested.

On the other hand, you could be fast-car successful.

While a fast-car doesn’t reach the moon, you can gain some serious speed if you know how to drive.

They’re more common, don’t need jet fuel, and don’t usually kill everyone inside (so you can take your family with you).

Just two years ago, I wanted to build a startup: own my own time, help people, and make tons of money doing it.

I read, built projects, networked my ass off - basically “aspired” the heck out of myself - until I read this quote from Naval:

“One day, I realized with all these people I was jealous of, I couldn’t just choose little aspects of their life. I couldn’t say I want his body, I want her money, I want his personality. You have to be that person. Do you want to actually be that person with all of their reactions, their desires, their family, their happiness level, their outlook on life, their self-image? If you’re not willing to do a wholesale, 24/7, 100 percent swap with who that person is, then there is no point in being jealous.”

What I didn’t realize, was that I actually cared more about my health and my relationships more than ANY amount of money I could get in the world.

I was working to be rocket-ship successful, rather than fast-car successful.

I didn’t realize the difference, until I saw people like Sam Parr, Shaan Puri, Derek Sivers (he might even be a bicycle), Nick Huber, Greg Isenberg, Code Sanchez, Andrew Wilkinson, Paul Jarvis, Rob Walling, Pieter Levels, and so many others do it.

These people look much happier to me than venture-backed startup founders.

Jim Carrey famously once said, “I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it’s not the answer.”

I’ll be completely honest: I love weekends with my girlfriend. I love slow nights. I love cooking. I love time outdoors. And I really hate Claude.

The only thing I have to do is make enough money so I can get more time to do those things.

Fast-car success has the following traits:

• you bootstrap, therefore you own 100% equity
• profit > valuation
• the business serves your life not the other way
• your business has low headcount
• community and partnership-led growth
• async work
• a cap on growth

More important than getting good at the game is picking which game you play.

I wrote a far more detailed article about this here.

The bottom line is, you only get one life and you should be happy and fulfilled.

I will end on an old Kurt Vonnegut passage I was reminded of, where he tells his wife he’s going out to buy an envelope.

“She says, ‘Well, you’re not a poor man. You know, why don’t you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet?’ And so I pretend not to hear her and go out to get an envelope, because I’m going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope. I meet a lot of people and see some great-looking babes. And a fire engine goes by, and I give them the thumbs up and ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And… and I don’t know. The moral of the story is, we’re here on Earth to fart around. And don’t let anybody tell you any different. And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. What the computer people don’t realize, or they don’t care, is we’re dancing animals.”

What a beautiful quote, truly well said.

-Armaan