In Robert Kiyosaki's bestseller Rich Dad Poor Dad, there is a famous line: "Let money work for you." It highlights how the fundamental philosophy of money differs completely between the rich and the poor. Many people still say that to build wealth, you must let your money make money.
But Naval Ravikant, often called the sage of Silicon Valley, sees things a bit differently. He calls capital the leverage of Warren Buffett's era, and points out that in modern society, an entirely new form of leverage has emerged.
The Evolution of Leverage
According to Naval, leverage falls into three broad categories.
The first is labor. The oldest form, which simply means having other people work for you. It was powerful in the past, but in modern society it is not particularly effective leverage.
The second is capital. A relatively recent invention, tracing back a few thousand years to the agricultural age. If you hold money as leverage, it is actually quite powerful. Every decision you make gets amplified by money, which is exactly why fund managers and venture capitalists can look so successful.
The third is something entirely new: products with no marginal cost of replication. Books, media, movies, and code. Among these, code is probably the most powerful, permissionless form of leverage that exists. All you need is a single computer.
The Limit of Linear Time
The differences between these forms of leverage become crystal clear when you look at them through the lens of time and human effort.
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| Labor sells your time hour by hour. Leverage breaks that ceiling entirely |
Labor has a linear relationship with time. If it takes one hour to chop down 10 trees, it takes two hours to chop down 20. Output is directly proportional to time invested. To make money through labor, you have to put in the exact equivalent amount of hours.
I work as a network engineer at an ordinary company, clocking in 10 hours a day, 5 days a week. But honestly, more than "making money," this feels like trading my lifespan for cash. Even if I work until the day I retire, I will only ever get paid for the exact hours I put in. That is the hard ceiling of labor.
Capital is somewhat proportional to time, but the money works on its own even when you are not actively doing anything. Kiyosaki's "let money work for you" refers exactly to this. Stocks and real estate fall into this category. It requires time to grow, but it is not your active time being spent. It leverages other people's time and systems.
Code and media, however, have an entirely non-linear relationship with time. You can invest the exact same amount of effort, but one piece of software or one video might be seen by hundreds of thousands of people, while another reaches only a few dozen.
The Zero Marginal Cost Revolution
The reason code, media, and time have a non-linear relationship is exactly what Naval pointed out: the cost of replication is zero.
A restaurant has to invest ten times more time and effort to serve 10 customers than to serve one. But on YouTube or in software, whether 10 people view it or 10,000, it costs almost zero additional time or labor.
When I post an article on this blog, people on the other side of the globe can read it during the hours when I am not writing at all.
Code and media are not even bound by physical space. A restaurant needs customers who can physically show up. Code and media can reach anyone with an internet connection. Because of this massive accessibility, the output is not proportional to time. The upside is theoretically close to infinite. That is why one truly great piece of software, or one brilliantly crafted song, can generate extraordinary amounts of money.
The Age of Vibe Coding
Right now, we are living in an era where utilizing code and media is easier than at any point in history.
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| Your smartphone is already a global broadcasting studio. All you need is something worth saying |
Before the internet, only a tiny minority could access the media known as TV. Today, anyone with a smartphone can film a video, upload it to YouTube or TikTok, and become a one-person broadcaster. That single video can reach hundreds of thousands of people.
Code used to be exclusively for professional programmers. Now, with the rapid advancement of AI, almost anyone can use it.
Of course, if you know absolutely nothing, you will not be building complex expert-level architectures from scratch. But if you have a great idea, vibe coding lets you build the outer shell and test it in the market, a crucial step to avoid the pitfalls I discussed in Why Your Vibe Coding App Has No Users. Once you confirm there is actual demand, you can bring in a programmer or find a partner from there.
The final leverage Naval described is now something absolutely anyone can access.
The Ultimate Metric: Knowing Yourself
That said, easy access does not mean everyone will easily succeed. You have to possess a rare value you can offer to others, and the market has to actually want it.
So even though I have been talking about leverage, I believe the most important thing is knowing yourself.
You need to know what gives you an edge over others. You need to know what you can deeply immerse yourself in. And you need to know whether there is real demand for those things.
The only way to figure all of this out is by continuously making small attempts. Keep making small bets and accumulating real data. At some point, an instinct hits you: "This is it."
In my case, I work at an ordinary company as a network engineer. But as my interest in AI, business, and finance grew, I started writing as a hobby, building software, and publishing my own online book, a process I detailed in How I Sold 1000 Books With Zero Business Experience. I am now earning side income from it.
This may not be the perfect answer for everyone. But because I have real conviction in what I enjoy, what value I can give others, and that the market wants what I am building, I plan to keep walking straight down this path.
The core message of this piece is actually less about leverage itself. Ultimately, the most important thing is finding what you love and what you are good at, testing the market through small attempts, and putting your work out into the world.
You will experience both success and failure along the way. But as you keep stacking up that data, the definitive gut feeling of "this is going to work" will come to you.
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