Babak Nivi
Role: Entrepreneur, writer Known for: Co-founding AngelList and Venture Hacks with Naval Ravikant
Background
Nivi is Naval Ravikant’s primary long-term collaborator. Together they wrote the Venture Hacks blog (2007), which advised entrepreneurs on term sheets, cap tables, and fundraising mechanics. The blog’s network became the foundation for AngelList (2010).
Key Collaborations with Naval
- Venture Hacks (2007): blog demystifying VC fundraising for founders; widely read in the early startup ecosystem.
- AngelList (2010–present): co-founder; Nivi has been less publicly prominent than Ravikant but is credited as a co-founder across all sources.
- “A Motorcycle for the Mind” (February 2026): essay/podcast episode co-authored with Naval introducing the concept of vibe coding — non-technical users building functional software via natural language AI prompts — and predicting 5–10× productivity boosts for engineers.
Sources
- smillie-2014-avenging-angel — Venture Hacks and AngelList origin story
- stankovic-2021-naval-ravikant-profile — AngelList history
- grokipedia-2026-naval-ravikant — vibe coding (2026)