Specific Knowledge: What Society Can't Train You
The Problem With Traditional Education
Society is obsessed with teaching what's easy to teach.
Math. History. Languages. Things that fit in a curriculum, that can be tested, that can be standardized.
But what actually makes you valuable in the market is the opposite: what *can't* be taught in a classroom.
Naval Ravikant has a brilliant concept about this. He calls it "Specific Knowledge"—the set of skills and understanding that:
- Are hard to teach formally
- Are typically learned through genuine curiosity
- Are highly demanded in the market
- Are difficult to replicate or copy
It's not a degree. It's not a certificate. It's *who you are*.
How You Found Your Specific Knowledge As a Child
Think about yourself at age eight.
What did you do in your free time? What obsessed you? What question couldn't you stop asking?
I spent hours taking things apart to see how they worked. My father would give me old gadgets and I'd open them with a screwdriver, trying to understand the logic behind each component. Not because someone asked me to. Because I *needed* to know.
That impulse was your compass. It was your specific knowledge finding you.
But then school arrived. Social pressure came. The question: "What are you going to study?"
And many of us abandoned what obsessed us to chase what society said was "safe" or "profitable."
Why Most People Fail at This
There's a reason most entrepreneurs fail when they try to pivot into a "profitable" niche they don't care about.
It's not that the niche isn't profitable. It's that they don't have the specific knowledge to compete.
I know people who got into AI because "it's trending." People who learned Next.js because "there's demand." People who launched a SaaS in a sector they didn't understand because "they heard it was a good market."
Some got lucky. Most disappeared.
On the other hand, I've seen people who simply shared publicly what they already knew. Their curiosity. Their obsession. And suddenly, it became a business.
The difference is specific knowledge.
How to Identify Your Specific Knowledge (If You Forgot)
Many people have spent so much time doing what they "should" do that they lost connection with what actually matters to them.
Here are some signals that something is your specific knowledge:
1. You do it without being asked
In my early years as a developer, I spent nights reading about software architecture, not because it was assigned, but because I was fascinated by how to build systems that scale. That was specific. That was mine.
2. You teach it without expecting reward
If you find someone on Twitter/X and suddenly spend 30 minutes explaining a concept without them asking, that's a signal. Your specific knowledge wants to come out.
3. Others ask you for help in it—not because you're the best, but because you're accessible
You don't need to be the best at something to have specific knowledge. You need to be *genuinely* good and willing to share it.
4. You did it before it was "cool"
If you were experimenting with AI in 2021 when most people didn't know what it was, that's specific knowledge. Not because you're smarter. Because you were curious when others weren't.
The Asymmetry That Makes You Unstoppable
Here's what's beautiful: specific knowledge creates an asymmetry.
When I built Conversor IAE CNAE, I wasn't competing against better developers. I was competing against ignorance. Against the lack of specific knowledge about a very particular niche: Spanish entrepreneurs who needed to convert business categories.
It wasn't a "sexy" market. It wasn't a "big" market. But it was a market where *I* had specific knowledge and others didn't.
That's what Naval wants you to understand: you don't need to compete in the global market. You need to find the place where your specific knowledge is so valuable that others can't replicate it quickly.
In Europe, we typically see entrepreneurs making the mistake of trying to copy Silicon Valley models without adapting them to local markets. The result is they compete on someone else's terrain. But if you use your specific knowledge about the Spanish market, local regulations, how Spanish customers think... suddenly you have an advantage that's not replicable.
How to Monetize Your Specific Knowledge
Once you identify what's yours, monetization becomes almost obvious.
Option 1: Create Content
Share publicly what you know. Blogs, videos, tweets. People with the problem you solve will find you.
Option 2: Build Products
A SaaS, a tool, a directory. Something that automates what you do manually.
Option 3: Consulting Services
If the specific knowledge is deep enough, sometimes it's more profitable to sell it directly as consulting.
Option 4: Teaching
Courses, masterminds, communities. Others want what you have.
You don't need to choose one. I've done all four simultaneously. But they all start from the same place: your specific knowledge.
The Real Cost of Ignoring This
If you ignore your specific knowledge and chase what you "should" do, you pay a price.
It's not just that you make less money (though typically you do). It's that you spend your life competing on terrain where others have the advantage. Where you'll never be the best. Where you'll always be one step behind.
But if you identify and develop your specific knowledge, something changes. Suddenly, you're not competing. You're creating.
And people pay much more for creation than competition.
Final Reflection
Naval says something that stuck with me: "Your passion already found you as a child. You just forgot."
It's true. And the beautiful part is it's never too late to remember.
Your specific knowledge is there. Maybe you abandoned it years ago. Maybe you buried it under years of "shoulds." But it's still there.
The question isn't: "How do I find my passion?"
The question is: "What am I doing that isn't that?"
And once you answer that question, everything changes.
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What's your specific knowledge? The one you actually have, not the one you think you should have. Write it in the comments. I bet you already knew it.
