You will get rich by giving society what it wants but does not yet know how to get. At scale.
-Naval Ravikant
When I first started selling my own branded physical products, I had 20 scooter handlebars manufactured locally, which I sold in person to other riders in my town. Eventually, I started selling some online as well and shipping them interstate and, very occasionally, overseas.
I had created a product that people wanted but couldn’t make themselves. Paying me $150 for a pair of ready-to-ride, tall, and strong scooter bars was easier than learning to weld and manufacturing a pair themselves.
But it wasn’t at scale. I didn’t have thousands of people lining up to buy bars, and even if I did, I wouldn’t have been able to fulfill that demand.
Eventually, I opened a physical store. I stocked all the best brands in the industry and put them in one physical location. You’d have had to drive 30+ minutes in any direction before you got to another shop that offered the same selection of products you could get at my shop. I was offering a lot of people what I thought they wanted.
But the scale was still so limited. And potentially, they could still get this stuff elsewhere.
Eventually, I put a huge focus on designing very specific scooter products packed with features requested from other talented and passionate riders. We didn’t like how other scooter decks were shaped, which made certain tricks and grinds harder. I fixed this and many other scooter-specific problems, then found distributors on various continents around the world to carry our product.
I fixed a problem that thousands of scooter riders all over the world wanted fixed while my offshore factory and global distribution network took care of the logistics. With each production, I fixed more problems and added new products to the range and watched the number grow from thousands to the tens of thousands.
I gave society what it wanted, at scale.
Navalism is best read in the following order:
Seek Wealth, Ignore Status Games, Don't Sell Time, Give At Scale, Long Term Games, Internet Advantage, Compound Interest .. to be continued.