Why I use code and media as levers
Leverage is a force multiplier
Had it not been for Elon Musk’s coding skills, he would not be one of the richest people. In 1995, he and his brother co-founded Zip2 which provided online city guides. They worked tirelessly, often sleeping in the office and showering at the local YMCA. Due to limited computing resources, Elon developed the application at night and made it available to customers during the day. Zip2 was eventually sold for $300m. Elon’s share of the proceeds paved the way for him to setup SpaceX and Telsa, and later acquire Twitter.
Leverage is a force multiplier
Give me a lever long enough and a place to stand and I will move the earth. - Archimedes
Leverage is important as it amplifies the value of our efforts, enabling exponential growth. There are various forms of leverage, including labour, capital and technology. Companies employee workers, borrow money to invest and use technology to increase profits. The most interesting and important form of leverage relates to products that have low or no marginal cost of replication. This leverage has evolved over the last few hundred years. It started with the printing press, accelerated with broadcast media and is now firmly established with the internet and code. The most recent forms of leverage are permission-less, e.g. coding, writing blogs, Tweeting and sharing YouTube videos. These are great equalisers as no permission is required from anyone to use them.
Coding and media leverage
Learn to build. Learn to sell. If you can do both, you will be unstoppable. - Naval Ravikant
Many foresee a future where robots do everything. That vision may turn out to be accurate, however, much of the robot revolution has already happened. Robots are housed in data centres and accessible via the internet. Robots cheaply undertake web search, transmit videos around the world and answer customer service queries. We can order this army of robots around by issuing commands in computer languages. Hence, coding is a superpower. Robots work while software developers sleep. The bottleneck is finding interesting things for these robots to do.
Coding and media are where many new fortunes are made. Apps like WhatsApp, Instagram and Uber leverage code to provide services to a global audience. Joe Rogan makes $100m annually from his podcast. On a slightly smaller scale, the apps I develop and this blog are my forms of leverage. My first app Conxy was downloaded 4,000 times and last week’s blog post Ten Tips from Futurist Kevin Kelly was read by over 25,000 people on Reddit, LinkedIn and Substack.
Other resources
How to Use Leverage talk by Naval Ravikant
Elon Musk’s 6 Productivity Rules post by Phil Martin
How to Join the New Rich post by Phil Martin
As Peter Drucker said, The best way to predict the future is to create it. And the way to create it is by leveraging what you have.
Have fun.
Phil…
