21Mar06 | Discussing "Permissionless Leverage"

Media & code themselves are inexpensive. Most expensive variable is your time.

Internet makes it possible to validate your ideas in the fraction of time it’d take you if you decided to do it any other traditional way.

The idea of leverage is simple: For any type of work, there’s one or more resources that are being leveraged to achieve results.

Forms of leverage are:

• People: for example you work 40 hours/week and you hired 2 people. Now you have 120.
• Capital: money invested in your idea.
• Code: software subscriptions, codebases of older projects, or any other piece of software you might use whether paid or not.
• Media: blogs, content, video, illustrations, etc.

People & capital are considered permissioned leverage. You have to get the consent of others in order to make use of their time and/or money.

Now code & media are permissionless leverage. Naval cite them as “the leverage behind the newly rich”. You don’t need permission to create, and thus you don’t need permission to validate. The execution process becomes seamless and the friction here is minimal. All you need is to position yourself the right way and craft the right message.

That is why top creators are able to validate their ideas in realtime much faster than anyone else. In a world with much noise, strong personal brands cut through the bullshit. Every business is trying to get a piece of your attention, but you ultimately give it to those who you trust the most. So creators who build trust around their specialized knowledge are the modern-day winners.

Through just media & code, many people were able to bootstrap their success into existence. And it sparks lots of questions because back in the day neither was it that easy nor did we have the tools & resources to make it easy to create, publish, build & ship.

An example of permissionless leverage that I personally like is @nateliason’s article on roamresearch.com. Here’s the thread for context:

An example that creating, iterating & validating in public provides the greatest return-on-investment for your time and opens new paths for opportunity you would’ve never expected.

Another great concept learnt from @jackbutcher on “permissionless leverage”: identify areas of curiosity & competence to help you target relevant audience & build trust when executing on permissionless projects. That’s knowing what you have to offer and whom to offer to. After doing the above you just have to iterate in public.

Thank you for subscribing to the newsletter. If you’ve enjoyed this post, be sure to share it & spread the word.