Be the Navy, Not a Pirate

The pirates won battles; the navy won the world.

Published on a16z.

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Most great organizations begin as pirates — breaking rules, defying empires, and building fortunes from the wreckage. “Move fast and break things” captured that spirit: better to be bold and decisive than slow and perfect. But history shows us that pirates never last long.

For a time, piracy worked — fast, improvisational, wildly profitable. In the late 16th century, the privateer Sir Francis Drake returned to London a hero after plundering the Spanish. But Britain didn’t rule the seas by remaining a nation of pirates. Within a century, Drake’s successors were admirals commanding fleets. Shipyards, logistics, and command structure turned opportunism into empire. The pirates won battles; the navy won the world.

Every organization faces the same reckoning. Pirates run on instinct and luck; navies run on structure and intent. The shift from pirates to navy is what turns flashes of brilliance into lasting power.

Building a Strong Navy

We tend to think that large organizations are slow, bureaucratic, and complacent — but that’s only true of the bad ones. The great ones are extraordinary precisely because they can coordinate talent, resources, and intent at massive scale. A strong navy wins through unity of action and sheer momentum.

A startup that learns this early can scale without losing velocity. The best navies set direction clearly, trust capable officers to act, and adapt quickly when things go wrong. As a founder, your job shifts from doing everything yourself to building an organization that can act intelligently without you. That means:

• Codify doctrine early. Write down how decisions get made, what principles guide them, and what good execution looks like. Clear doctrine lets teams act fast without permission. However, every rule meant to preserve speed eventually slows it; the art is also knowing when to rewrite the book.

• Promote capability, not seniority. Elevate the officers who can think independently and execute under pressure. Reward judgment, not tenure.

• Design feedback loops. Great navies learn continuously. Build systems and culture that seeks to constantly improve. Leaders must also stay close to the details — walk the deck, check the knots, and see reality for yourself.

• Preserve tempo. Bureaucracy creeps in when process replaces intent. Keep the mission explicit. Everyone should know why the work matters.

Done right, structure accelerates rather than restrains. For example, SpaceX isn’t fast because it thrives on chaos; it’s fast because it engineered order into its DNA. Its success is the result of discipline.

At SpaceX, “Build, test, fly” is doctrine: learn from reality, not theory. “The best part is no part” drives ruthless simplicity. “Question every requirement” keeps the company intellectually alive. These principles run through every rocket engine and factory floor. SpaceX’s custom ERP, WarpDrive, even weaves them into the company’s nervous system — every part tracked, every process optimized, every feedback loop tightened.

Critically, building a navy like SpaceX means giving high-agency people freedom within a framework. Set clear goals and boundaries, then let your officers run with them. When they succeed, reward them with greater command; when they fail intelligently, learn from it. The goal is not to eliminate risk but to manage it at scale — to institutionalize boldness. Everyone should feel like part of the crew, trusted to make real decisions and accountable for outcomes. Every process should exist to raise the odds of decisive, creative action, and to keep momentum alive.

Even with a capable crew, a navy needs admirals who can fight. Structure should never dull the leader’s instinct for action. The best commanders don’t retreat from risk as they grow, but instead concentrate on where it really counts. Even the vast British Navy needed Admiral Nelson — one-eyed, one-armed, and mad enough to break formation at Trafalgar to annihilate a fleet twice his size.

Founders usually make those kinds of bets. They have the ownership and urgency to risk everything. But it doesn’t have to end there. Great institutions endure when that instinct outlives the founder — when successors inherit not just the system, but the nerve to use it. Courage is a renewable resource if a culture makes room for it.

The best leaders know when to enter the fabled “founder mode,” channeling the edge that built the company in the first place. Some are literal founders — Steve Jobs betting Apple on the iPhone, Elon Musk staking everything on Falcon 1. Others inherit the helm and reclaim that same nerve: Andy Grove re-founded Intel by abandoning memory chips to bet on microprocessors, and Satya Nadella revived Microsoft by risking its Windows legacy to build the cloud. A navy’s strength lies in coordination and scale, but it still needs commanders willing to gamble the fleet when history demands it — even if it requires a sacrifice.

Why Navies Matter

Navies are what make ambitious, civilizational projects possible. Pirates are fast, but disorganized and limited in reach. A navy builds the infrastructure, supply lines, and trust needed to operate anywhere. That’s what lets a company move from one clever product to a lasting platform — from a single ship to an empire.

Building a navy means designing systems that keep working when the founders sleep. It means turning individual heroics into collective excellence. The founder’s challenge is to evolve; to go from the pirate who captains the ship to the admiral who commands the armada. Even the great pirates of history knew this. The ones who thrived built fleets, ruled cities, and became the very order they once defied.

The instincts that made you decisive early on still matter, but they must be embedded in the culture so others may move with the same conviction. The pirate spirit is not contempt for order but a hunger for the horizon — the need to press beyond the edge of the map. A strong navy gives this fire a purpose. The greatest fleets were forged not by taming the reckless, but by giving them command and a cause worth their daring.

Sir Francis Drake died at sea, still chasing gold. The navy he inspired went on to rule the oceans for centuries. His raids made headlines; the navy made history. Companies are the same. The pirate phase is how the impossible begins. But the institutions that endure — the ones that shape industries and nations — are the navies that follow.

To build something that lasts, you need more than courage. You need command, coordination, and clarity. Build the navy.