Leverage Analysis
"Give me a lever long enough, and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world." — Archimedes. Leverage is the concept of decoupling your inputs (time and effort) from your outputs (results and wealth).
The Three Forms of Leverage
To make strategic business decisions, especially as a founder, you must categorize your activities by the type of leverage they employ, as popularized by thinkers like Naval Ravikant.
- Labor: The oldest and worst form. People working for you. It requires immense management and social friction.
- Capital: The 20th-century form. Money working for you. It scales well but requires permission (someone has to give it to you).
- Code and Media: The permissionless leverage. The ultimate modern lever. A piece of software or a YouTube video replicates infinitely at zero marginal cost while you sleep.
A Low-Leverage Decision:
"I will start an agency where I personally consult clients by the hour." (Output is strictly tied to time input).
A High-Leverage Decision:
"I will spend 2 months writing software that automates that specific consulting logic, and sell subscriptions." (Output is decoupled from time input).
How Persona AI Computes Leverage
When using the Leverage & Wealth persona engine in Persona AI, the system evaluates your proposed business ideas entirely through the lens of scalability. It will brutally reject ideas that require non-linear scaling of human labor, and push you toward permissionless, code-driven execution.