Venture Hacks Revisited: Ask Forgiveness, Not Permission
We would rather have someone do something wrong than ask permission to do it.
May 5, 2021 — 5 min read
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Fourteen years ago, AngelList co-founders Naval Ravikant and Babak Nivi launched Venture Hacks—a blog dedicated to startup advice. A lot has changed in the world of startups and venture since their first blog post, but many of the ideas shared on Venture Hacks remain timeless. We’re resharing some of Naval and Babak's more influential posts in hopes that the lessons and insights can inspire a new generation of founders and investors. These blog posts are being republished in their entirety with minimal edits.
This article was published on February 11, 2013.
AngelList’s “corporate policy” is that team members should ask forgiveness, not permission.
We would rather have someone do something wrong than ask permission to do it.
Or better, we would rather have someone do something right and not need permission to do it. This is the most common outcome.
We would rather have people ship to production whenever they want, than go through an internal review process. We can fix it on production. We prefer the customer’s review process. And it isn’t too hard to reveal a new feature to a small portion of our users and iterate on it as we expand it to more users.
Eliminating Permission Increases Speed and Diversity
Eliminating permission increases the speed and diversity of our decision-making.
There are some sensitive parts of our product that are walled off from this “ask forgiveness” policy. There are some things we want reviewed by the people who “know better.” But it’s really rare.
How It Works
This policy only works if you hire insanely smart and capable people and let go of the ones who are not. We also filter for people who are mission-oriented, care about our customer, and want to learn more.
And it doesn’t mean that the founders aren’t standing over your desk telling you, “this isn’t good enough to ship.” That’s why we write down and promote these ideas. Because there is always pressure from someone important to do it another way.
