Long-term games with long-term people
Picking work, partners and industries where you keep meeting the same people
Choose an industry, a firm and a set of collaborators you expect to still be dealing with in twenty years, then behave accordingly. Two arguments sit behind it. Returns in money, skill and friendship all compound, and compounding needs an unbroken run. Trust also only pays in a repeated game: people do right by each other when they know there is a next round. The practical test is whether a decision would look bad to the same person five years from now. It rules out industries built on one-off transactions, and it makes walking away from a lucrative but reputation-costing deal the cheap option rather than the noble one.
People on record
Sorted by strength of stance
Does it: documented as part of their own routine. Recommends: explicitly advises other people to do it. Discusses: covered it substantively without clear personal adoption; this can include criticism or disagreement.
- Naval RavikantRecommends
Angel investor · AngelList and the Naval podcast
All the benefits in life come from compound interest, he says, whether what is compounding is money, learning or goodwill. That needs an unbroken run with the same people, which is his argument for picking an industry where everyone is still around for the next game.
Source: nav.al: Play Long-term Games With Long-term People
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