'Fake News': Naval Ravikant Does Not Want Employees To Work 24/7 At His New Startup

Indian-origin American entrepreneur and angel investor Naval Ravikant on Tuesday dismissed a report that claimed he expects his employees at his new startup to 'always 24/7 be either working or thinking about work'.

Refuting a report shared on the X platform, Ravikant defended his new startup, Impossible Computer Company, and clarified that he does not have such expectations.

He quoted another X user’s summary of his new startup and said, "Fake news as usual. Better summary of what I actually said…" The attached image, shared by an entrepreneur, Alexander Nevedovsky, featured a summary of Raviant’s vision about his startup.

The image featured quotes from Ravikant about how his startup came to be.  

"The way that team mostly got together was through shared mutual respect. My co-founder has incredibly good technical taste. What he'll do is he'll find products or research or insights or papers or code that he really admires and it's usually really weird stuff, not mainstream stuff. He's kind of a collector of edge cases," he said.

The seasoned investor further noted that the company is mostly in-person, based in San Francisco, where Raviaknt prefers to be.

On work-life balance and his expectations, he noted that he follows one key rule: "My rule is: I don't ask other people to do anything that I myself wouldn't do. So I like the office to be in a location where I like to go. I like the offices themselves to be nice, private, high-quality offices."

Further speaking, he criticised the traditional office setups, calling cramped cubicles inhuman. He emphasised that a humane environment boosts creativity. According to him, true passion prevents burnout. 

"If you're not loving what you're doing, if it feels like burnout….you should probably stop working on it. Burnout doesn't go away with a vacation. People who work around the clock and love it don't burn out," he noted.

Replying to the original article, while Ravikant did not specifically address which of his quotes were misrepresented, it was likely his comment on burnout. This comes amid a heightened scrutiny of CEOs and founders for having "unrealistic" work expectations from employees.

Many CEOs have recently emphasised their preference for long working hours, which demands employees to work from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week, or a similar setup. Critics have pointed out that such work environments lead to burnout, stress and poor work-life balance.