Concept
Permissionless leverage
Permissionless leverage is Naval Ravikant's term for code and media: forms of leverage that multiply the results of your work without anyone having to hire you, lend to you or approve you, because copying them costs almost nothing.
In The Almanack of Naval Ravikant, leverage is what lets one person's judgement produce far more than one person's hours. Naval names three kinds. Labour, other people working for you, is the oldest and requires managing people. Capital, other people's money, requires someone to trust you with it. The newest kind is code and media: software, writing, video, audio. A piece of software or a good explainer can serve thousands of people at almost no extra cost, and nobody has to give you permission to make it. That is why he calls it permissionless and why he sees it as the leverage most open to people starting from nothing. The caution is that permissionless does not mean easy or guaranteed: most content and most apps find no audience, and the leverage multiplies bad judgement as readily as good. It works best on top of specific knowledge, aimed at a real need.
A real-life example
Nihan, a physiotherapist in Mersin, explains the same five back exercises to patients every day. She records short, clear videos of them with her phone and shares them with patients and online. Most get a few views, but two are picked up widely. A year later clinics in other cities send their patients to her videos, and she is paid to make a longer series, while her clinic hours stay the same.
How to use it
- 1Find something you explain or do repeatedly for one person at a time.
- 2Turn it into one piece of code, writing or video that could serve many people.
- 3Publish it, see who uses it, and improve the one that gets traction.