Загрузка видео...

Не удалось загрузить видео

На главную

Peter Thiel explains his principle of only working on problems that wouldn’t get solved without you Thiel shares that he’s “a little bit skeptical” of social entrepreneurship: “Social entrepreneurship is always ambiguous because it’s unclear what the word ‘social’ means. Social can mean that it’s ‘good for society’ or...

StartupArchive_'s profile picture

Startup Archive

157,538 subscribers

39,553 просмотров • 9 месяцев назад •via X (Twitter)

LIVE

Anya Rossi• Live Now

Private livecam show

Комментарии: 12

Фото профиля Startup Archive
Startup Archive9 месяцев назад

Watch the full @Wharton interview with Peter Thiel here:

Фото профиля Brendan M
Brendan M9 месяцев назад

Spot on: True missions create counterfactual futures—without you, the problem lingers unsolved. In a world of crowded "social good," irreplaceable impact is the only defensible moat. Timeless filter for building what lasts. 🚀

Фото профиля OpenSetu
OpenSetu9 месяцев назад

Unfortunately, That kind of stuff does not get funded outside of Silicon Valley, and not everyone can be there.

Фото профиля Randhir Kumar
Randhir Kumar9 месяцев назад

Being useful is not the same as being necessary. Mission lives in necessity.

Фото профиля Mad Scientist
Mad Scientist9 месяцев назад

Being a #MiniMe version of Thiel or Musk is for Chumps!

Фото профиля Mingzhi
Mingzhi9 месяцев назад

@grok 以下帖子的主要观点是什么？Peter Thiel谁？

Фото профиля Tang Chien-Hsuan
Tang Chien-Hsuan9 месяцев назад

This reframes everything. Instead of asking 'what problem should I solve?' ask 'what problem needs ME specifically to solve it?' Your unique skills and perspective are the competitive advantage.

Фото профиля Nurnabi 🦄
Nurnabi 🦄9 месяцев назад

Thiel's right! Are startups solving real problems? We help startups design solutions that stand out. What do you think?

Фото профиля Adam Knees
Adam Knees9 месяцев назад

Mission driven companies tend to exist precisely because nobody else is willing to take on the risk, cost, or time required

Фото профиля Hina Khan
Hina Khan9 месяцев назад

I completely agree with his take on social entrepreneurship but his Zero to One thinking only works in Silicon Valley & developed markets, where capital, talent, tech & risk tolerance help new ideas take off. For the rest, its 1 to N

Фото профиля Elan Anandhan
Elan Anandhan9 месяцев назад

at a micro level, doing things our way (our unique point of view, beliefs, experience, and skills) naturally brings novelty to everything we do. we will likely end up solving a problem nobody else is tackling, or solving an existing problem in a way nobody else would. mission-driven startups are not for all first-time founders. for most first-time founders, the primary objective is to build a profitable business and make money. if they win, then maybe in their 2nd or 3rd startup they might choose to pursue a mission-driven idea. but only a few people have the appetite or opportunity to build a second billion-dollar company. you also cannot compare first-time founders with Elon and SpaceX. nobody would have funded Elon if spacex had been his first startup. it was his prior success and pedigree that allowed him to attract funding and support for such a grand, long-term mission. finally, he is an outlier. the appetite he has for building businesses is rare. by his own words, he is not doing this for money. so for first-time founders, building a profitable business in their own way itself is a great differentiator.

Фото профиля Mingzhi
Mingzhi9 месяцев назад

@grok Peter Thiel是谁，他做了什么？

Похожие видео

Elon Musk on building a company: “There are periods where it’s just awful” “A lot of times people think creating a company is going to be fun. I would say it’s really not that fun. There are periods of fun, and there are periods where it’s just awful. Particularly if you’re the CEO of the company. You actually have a distillation of all the worst problems in the company. There’s no point in spending your time on things that are going right. So you only spend your time on things that are going wrong that other people can’t take care of… the most pernicious and painful problems.” Elon believes founders need to have a “fairly high pain threshold” and explains that starting a company is like “staring into the abyss and eating glass.” “The staring into the abyss part is that you’re going to be constantly facing the extermination of the company because most startups fail… You’re constantly saying, okay, if I don’t get this right, the company will die. It’s going to be quite stressful. And then the eating glass part is you’ve got to work on the problems that the company needs you to work on, not the problems you want to work on. And so you end up working on problems that you’d really wish you weren’t working on… And that goes on for a long time.” Source: Khan Academy (Apr 2013)
1:52

Elon Musk on building a company: “There are periods where it’s just awful” “A lot of times people think creating a company is going to be fun. I would say it’s really not that fun. There are periods of fun, and there are periods where it’s just awful. Particularly if you’re the CEO of the company. You actually have a distillation of all the worst problems in the company. There’s no point in spending your time on things that are going right. So you only spend your time on things that are going wrong that other people can’t take care of… the most pernicious and painful problems.” Elon believes founders need to have a “fairly high pain threshold” and explains that starting a company is like “staring into the abyss and eating glass.” “The staring into the abyss part is that you’re going to be constantly facing the extermination of the company because most startups fail… You’re constantly saying, okay, if I don’t get this right, the company will die. It’s going to be quite stressful. And then the eating glass part is you’ve got to work on the problems that the company needs you to work on, not the problems you want to work on. And so you end up working on problems that you’d really wish you weren’t working on… And that goes on for a long time.” Source: Khan Academy (Apr 2013)

Startup Archive

74,972 просмотров • 2 месяцев назад

Peter Thiel on the most important lesson he learned building PayPal The early employees of PayPal went on to build incredible companies like Tesla, SpaceX, LinkedIn, YouTube, Palantir, Yelp, Yammer, and more. When asked about the factors that explain these outlier successes, Thiel suggests that it was probably a combination of several different things: an entrepreneurial culture, lots of strong personalities, and the early 2000s was a great time to start a company. But Thiel also says that the overarching lesson you learned working at PayPal—which had a lot of challenges but ended up succeeding—was: “You can build a great company, but it’s hard.” He contrasts this to the lessons you learn at most startups: “If you’re at a startup that fails, you will learn the lesson that it’s impossible to build a great company and that you should try something less ambitious the next time around. If you’re at a startup where things work too easily [such as Microsoft or Google], you learn the lesson that it’s actually easy to build a great company.” He continues: “Hard is somehow better than easy or impossible. If it’s easy, you don’t need to work hard. If it’s impossible, there’s no point in working hard. So easy and impossible converge to not working hard. Hard tells you you have to work hard.” Video source: This Week in Startups @jason (2015)
1:50

Peter Thiel on the most important lesson he learned building PayPal The early employees of PayPal went on to build incredible companies like Tesla, SpaceX, LinkedIn, YouTube, Palantir, Yelp, Yammer, and more. When asked about the factors that explain these outlier successes, Thiel suggests that it was probably a combination of several different things: an entrepreneurial culture, lots of strong personalities, and the early 2000s was a great time to start a company. But Thiel also says that the overarching lesson you learned working at PayPal—which had a lot of challenges but ended up succeeding—was: “You can build a great company, but it’s hard.” He contrasts this to the lessons you learn at most startups: “If you’re at a startup that fails, you will learn the lesson that it’s impossible to build a great company and that you should try something less ambitious the next time around. If you’re at a startup where things work too easily [such as Microsoft or Google], you learn the lesson that it’s actually easy to build a great company.” He continues: “Hard is somehow better than easy or impossible. If it’s easy, you don’t need to work hard. If it’s impossible, there’s no point in working hard. So easy and impossible converge to not working hard. Hard tells you you have to work hard.” Video source: This Week in Startups @jason (2015)

Startup Archive

105,347 просмотров • 11 месяцев назад

Peter Thiel on the question he asks every startup founder he invests in “Why will the 20th talented person join your company when they can get paid way more at Google, they will have to work way less hard at Google, and it will look better on their resume to go to Google?” The 20th employee won’t get the equity or prestige that someone on the founding team will get, so there needs to be another incentive if you’re going to build a truly great company and attract the best people in the world. Thiel believes the best answer is something along the lines of: “This is the only place in the world where you can work on this incredibly important problem.” He continues: “It has to—on some dimension—be a really important problem that at least some people think is the most important problem in the world. Those are the kind of businesses that are unique, and when they work, they end up being leaders in their respective markets.” If it’s a problem that a bunch of other team are working on, it will be hard to attract a truly world-class employee #20.
1:21

Peter Thiel on the question he asks every startup founder he invests in “Why will the 20th talented person join your company when they can get paid way more at Google, they will have to work way less hard at Google, and it will look better on their resume to go to Google?” The 20th employee won’t get the equity or prestige that someone on the founding team will get, so there needs to be another incentive if you’re going to build a truly great company and attract the best people in the world. Thiel believes the best answer is something along the lines of: “This is the only place in the world where you can work on this incredibly important problem.” He continues: “It has to—on some dimension—be a really important problem that at least some people think is the most important problem in the world. Those are the kind of businesses that are unique, and when they work, they end up being leaders in their respective markets.” If it’s a problem that a bunch of other team are working on, it will be hard to attract a truly world-class employee #20.

Startup Archive

316,188 просмотров • 1 год назад

Elon Musk explains why the CEO must work on the “most pernicious and painful problems” “A lot of times people think creating a company is going to be fun. I would say it’s really not that fun. There are periods of fun, and there are periods where it’s just awful. Particularly if you’re the CEO of the company. You actually have a distillation of all the worst problems in the company. There’s no point in spending your time on things that are going right. So you only spend your time on things that are going wrong that other people can’t take care of… the most pernicious and painful problems.” Elon believes founders need to have a “fairly high pain threshold” and explains that starting a company is like “staring into the abyss and eating glass.” “The staring into the abyss part is that you’re going to be constantly facing the extermination of the company because most startups fail… You’re constantly saying, okay, if I don’t get this right, the company will die. It’s going to be quite stressful. And then the eating glass part is you’ve got to work on the problems that the company needs you to work on, not the problems you want to work on. And so you end up working on problems that you’d really wish you weren’t working on… And that goes on for a long time.” Video source: Khan Academy
0:59

Elon Musk explains why the CEO must work on the “most pernicious and painful problems” “A lot of times people think creating a company is going to be fun. I would say it’s really not that fun. There are periods of fun, and there are periods where it’s just awful. Particularly if you’re the CEO of the company. You actually have a distillation of all the worst problems in the company. There’s no point in spending your time on things that are going right. So you only spend your time on things that are going wrong that other people can’t take care of… the most pernicious and painful problems.” Elon believes founders need to have a “fairly high pain threshold” and explains that starting a company is like “staring into the abyss and eating glass.” “The staring into the abyss part is that you’re going to be constantly facing the extermination of the company because most startups fail… You’re constantly saying, okay, if I don’t get this right, the company will die. It’s going to be quite stressful. And then the eating glass part is you’ve got to work on the problems that the company needs you to work on, not the problems you want to work on. And so you end up working on problems that you’d really wish you weren’t working on… And that goes on for a long time.” Video source: Khan Academy

Startup Archive

41,111 просмотров • 2 лет назад

Peter Thiel: Why will the 20th employee join your company? When deciding whether or not to invest in a founder, Thiel asks: “Why will the 20th talented person join your company when they can get paid way more at Google, they will have to work way less hard at Google, and it will look better on their resume to go to Google?” The 20th employee won’t get the equity or prestige that someone on the founding team will get, so there needs to be another incentive if you’re going to build a truly great company and attract the best people in the world. Thiel believes the best answer is something along the lines of: “This is the only place in the world where you can work on this incredibly important problem.” He continues: “It has to—on some dimension—be a really important problem that at least some people think is the most important problem in the world. Those are the kind of businesses that are unique, and when they work, they end up being leaders in their respective markets.” If it’s a problem that a bunch of other teams are working on, it will be hard to attract a truly world-class employee #20. Source: Pando
0:59

Peter Thiel: Why will the 20th employee join your company? When deciding whether or not to invest in a founder, Thiel asks: “Why will the 20th talented person join your company when they can get paid way more at Google, they will have to work way less hard at Google, and it will look better on their resume to go to Google?” The 20th employee won’t get the equity or prestige that someone on the founding team will get, so there needs to be another incentive if you’re going to build a truly great company and attract the best people in the world. Thiel believes the best answer is something along the lines of: “This is the only place in the world where you can work on this incredibly important problem.” He continues: “It has to—on some dimension—be a really important problem that at least some people think is the most important problem in the world. Those are the kind of businesses that are unique, and when they work, they end up being leaders in their respective markets.” If it’s a problem that a bunch of other teams are working on, it will be hard to attract a truly world-class employee #20. Source: Pando

Startup Archive

40,425 просмотров • 2 лет назад

Peter Thiel on why all trends are overrated and one-of-a-kind companies are underrated Peter Thiel is asked what students should study in college. He thinks this is similar to the question “what are future trends in technology?” “What I will say about trends in technology and areas of study is that they’re probably all overrated,” Thiel explains. “When you have something that can be reduced to a buzzword, it means that a lot of people are doing it and they’re somehow inadequately differentiated in that field.” On the other hand, Thiel believes that one-of-a-kind companies that don’t easily fit into an existing narrative or trend are underrated. He gives Airbnb as an example—any existing category would miss the uniqueness of the business. “Great companies always have this one-of-a-kind attribute,” Thiel observes. And he suspects that areas of study are similar: “If you’re in a big area of study, where everyone’s studying the same thing, you’re not adequately differentiating yourself from other people… I think people are spending too much time studying the things everybody else is studying, and they’re spending too little time studying more particular things that they’re really passionate about.” Video source: Northwestern Engineering (2014)
1:50

Peter Thiel on why all trends are overrated and one-of-a-kind companies are underrated Peter Thiel is asked what students should study in college. He thinks this is similar to the question “what are future trends in technology?” “What I will say about trends in technology and areas of study is that they’re probably all overrated,” Thiel explains. “When you have something that can be reduced to a buzzword, it means that a lot of people are doing it and they’re somehow inadequately differentiated in that field.” On the other hand, Thiel believes that one-of-a-kind companies that don’t easily fit into an existing narrative or trend are underrated. He gives Airbnb as an example—any existing category would miss the uniqueness of the business. “Great companies always have this one-of-a-kind attribute,” Thiel observes. And he suspects that areas of study are similar: “If you’re in a big area of study, where everyone’s studying the same thing, you’re not adequately differentiating yourself from other people… I think people are spending too much time studying the things everybody else is studying, and they’re spending too little time studying more particular things that they’re really passionate about.” Video source: Northwestern Engineering (2014)

Startup Archive

139,384 просмотров • 1 год назад

Peter Thiel: There is no wisdom of crowds Thiel suggests that the antithesis of his book Zero To One is Malcolm Gladwell’s The Wisdom of Crowds. “If you have to give credit to Malcolm Gladwell, the way the argument actually works in the wisdom of crowds is if you have a crowd of people and they independently make a judgement, you can average it out and you’ll get to a pretty good idea.” The classic example is asking a group of people to independently guess how many marbles are in a bag—the average answer will be pretty good. “But the problem is that in most cases, the decisions don’t end up getting made individually.” Thiel explains. “People are influenced by one another. And when you have a crowd dynamic in which people are drawing conclusions because they’re looking toward one another, that is where the crowd is untruth.” Thiel believes imitation is a deep part of human nature: “Kids learn language by copying their parents. It’s how culture is transmitted in our society. But it’s also how very many things go wrong.” Thiel believes you need to go against the crowd if you want to accomplish something truly great. He points out that many of the most successful entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley seem to be suffering from a mild form of Aspergers. Video source: Saïd Business School (2015)
2:55

Peter Thiel: There is no wisdom of crowds Thiel suggests that the antithesis of his book Zero To One is Malcolm Gladwell’s The Wisdom of Crowds. “If you have to give credit to Malcolm Gladwell, the way the argument actually works in the wisdom of crowds is if you have a crowd of people and they independently make a judgement, you can average it out and you’ll get to a pretty good idea.” The classic example is asking a group of people to independently guess how many marbles are in a bag—the average answer will be pretty good. “But the problem is that in most cases, the decisions don’t end up getting made individually.” Thiel explains. “People are influenced by one another. And when you have a crowd dynamic in which people are drawing conclusions because they’re looking toward one another, that is where the crowd is untruth.” Thiel believes imitation is a deep part of human nature: “Kids learn language by copying their parents. It’s how culture is transmitted in our society. But it’s also how very many things go wrong.” Thiel believes you need to go against the crowd if you want to accomplish something truly great. He points out that many of the most successful entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley seem to be suffering from a mild form of Aspergers. Video source: Saïd Business School (2015)

Startup Archive

458,052 просмотров • 1 год назад

Peter Thiel on why entrepreneurship is not a good direct goal “I don’t think there’s anything about entrepreneurship per se that is good.” He recounts talking to a friend who said he wanted to be an entrepreneur in 5-10 years. “That’s like saying I want to be rich or I want to be famous… It’s not good as a direct goal. If you have that as your sole goal, you’re unlikely to really succeed.” In Thiel’s view, the right reason to become an entrepreneur is to work on an important problem nobody else is working on. Source: Forbes (Oct 2014)
0:56

Peter Thiel on why entrepreneurship is not a good direct goal “I don’t think there’s anything about entrepreneurship per se that is good.” He recounts talking to a friend who said he wanted to be an entrepreneur in 5-10 years. “That’s like saying I want to be rich or I want to be famous… It’s not good as a direct goal. If you have that as your sole goal, you’re unlikely to really succeed.” In Thiel’s view, the right reason to become an entrepreneur is to work on an important problem nobody else is working on. Source: Forbes (Oct 2014)

Startup Archive

45,352 просмотров • 4 месяцев назад

Peter Thiel on how to build the next billion-dollar startup: "Every moment in the history of business happens only once. The next Mark Zuckerberg won't be starting a social networking site. The next Bill Gates won't start an operating system. The next Elon Musk won't start a Tesla electric car company." Peter's entire thesis rejects the idea of formulas in business. As he puts it: "Science starts with things that are experimentally repeatable, but great businesses are zero to one; they're always one-of-a-kind. There is always this anti-formulaic quality." So what's the one theme he keeps coming back to? "This need for differentiation. What are you doing that nobody else is doing? What ideas do you have that nobody else has? What great business are you working on that no one else is working on?" He continues: "If you're a founder or an entrepreneur, you should always aim to build a monopoly where you're the only person in the world doing what you're doing. There really are only two kinds of businesses in this world: businesses that are in crazy competition and one-of-a-kind businesses that are monopolies." On why you shouldn't just iterate your way to success: "The core thing is to have a great product, and then you can always improve and iterate on that. If you're just trying to optimize and you don't have a great product, that rarely works." His advice? Think 5 to 10 years ahead: "Why will this be a really valuable business in 5 to 10 years? How's the competitive landscape going to develop? These are hard questions to answer, but the great entrepreneurs I know always have some perspective on it. When I was playing chess, one of the early lessons I learned was, a bad plan is still always better than no plan at all." On what makes work meaningful: "It's great to be working on problems where if you weren't working on them, nobody else would do them. If we weren't doing this, this problem would absolutely not be tackled. That's what's meaningful. Whereas when you're competing, you're already, by definition, number two at least in a category." Build something only you can build.
16:33

Peter Thiel on how to build the next billion-dollar startup: "Every moment in the history of business happens only once. The next Mark Zuckerberg won't be starting a social networking site. The next Bill Gates won't start an operating system. The next Elon Musk won't start a Tesla electric car company." Peter's entire thesis rejects the idea of formulas in business. As he puts it: "Science starts with things that are experimentally repeatable, but great businesses are zero to one; they're always one-of-a-kind. There is always this anti-formulaic quality." So what's the one theme he keeps coming back to? "This need for differentiation. What are you doing that nobody else is doing? What ideas do you have that nobody else has? What great business are you working on that no one else is working on?" He continues: "If you're a founder or an entrepreneur, you should always aim to build a monopoly where you're the only person in the world doing what you're doing. There really are only two kinds of businesses in this world: businesses that are in crazy competition and one-of-a-kind businesses that are monopolies." On why you shouldn't just iterate your way to success: "The core thing is to have a great product, and then you can always improve and iterate on that. If you're just trying to optimize and you don't have a great product, that rarely works." His advice? Think 5 to 10 years ahead: "Why will this be a really valuable business in 5 to 10 years? How's the competitive landscape going to develop? These are hard questions to answer, but the great entrepreneurs I know always have some perspective on it. When I was playing chess, one of the early lessons I learned was, a bad plan is still always better than no plan at all." On what makes work meaningful: "It's great to be working on problems where if you weren't working on them, nobody else would do them. If we weren't doing this, this problem would absolutely not be tackled. That's what's meaningful. Whereas when you're competing, you're already, by definition, number two at least in a category." Build something only you can build.

Jaynit

77,758 просмотров • 9 месяцев назад

Peter Thiel on what most founders don’t understand about differentiation “I think you want to have very big differences inside the team, and then from the outside, you want to be seen as very different from the rest of the world.” For example, SpacEx’s mission is to go to Mars: “Everybody at the company thinks: we’re the only place in the world where people are going to go to Mars. And that one idea separates it very sharply from the rest of the world.” And then within a company, you want the roles to be as differentiated as possible. One of the challenges in an early stage startup is that the roles tend to fluctuate a lot. Thiel believes this is one of the ways in which conflicts tend to arise. “If you were a sociopathic boss who just wanted to create conflicts amongst your employees for no reason at all, the formula for creating conflicts is to tell two people to do the exact same thing.” To summarize his point, Thiel concludes: “You want to have roles differentiated sharply differentiated within companies. And you want to have the mission of the company differentiated sharply from the rest of the world.” Video source: Saïd Business School (2015)
2:03

Peter Thiel on what most founders don’t understand about differentiation “I think you want to have very big differences inside the team, and then from the outside, you want to be seen as very different from the rest of the world.” For example, SpacEx’s mission is to go to Mars: “Everybody at the company thinks: we’re the only place in the world where people are going to go to Mars. And that one idea separates it very sharply from the rest of the world.” And then within a company, you want the roles to be as differentiated as possible. One of the challenges in an early stage startup is that the roles tend to fluctuate a lot. Thiel believes this is one of the ways in which conflicts tend to arise. “If you were a sociopathic boss who just wanted to create conflicts amongst your employees for no reason at all, the formula for creating conflicts is to tell two people to do the exact same thing.” To summarize his point, Thiel concludes: “You want to have roles differentiated sharply differentiated within companies. And you want to have the mission of the company differentiated sharply from the rest of the world.” Video source: Saïd Business School (2015)

Startup Archive

43,752 просмотров • 9 месяцев назад

Peter Thiel on what most founders don’t understand about differentiation “I think you want to have very big differences inside the team, and then from the outside, you want to be seen as very different from the rest of the world.” For example, SpacEx’s mission is to go to Mars: “Everybody at the company thinks: we’re the only place in the world where people are going to go to Mars. And that one idea separates it very sharply from the rest of the world.” And then within a company, you want the roles to be as differentiated as possible. One of the challenges in an early stage startup is that the roles tend to fluctuate a lot. Thiel believes this is one of the ways in which conflicts tend to arise. “If you were a sociopathic boss who just wanted to create conflicts amongst your employees for no reason at all, the formula for creating conflicts is to tell two people to do the exact same thing.” To summarize his point, Thiel concludes: “You want to have roles differentiated sharply differentiated within companies. And you want to have the mission of the company differentiated sharply from the rest of the world.” Source: Saïd Business School (May 2015)
2:03

Peter Thiel on what most founders don’t understand about differentiation “I think you want to have very big differences inside the team, and then from the outside, you want to be seen as very different from the rest of the world.” For example, SpacEx’s mission is to go to Mars: “Everybody at the company thinks: we’re the only place in the world where people are going to go to Mars. And that one idea separates it very sharply from the rest of the world.” And then within a company, you want the roles to be as differentiated as possible. One of the challenges in an early stage startup is that the roles tend to fluctuate a lot. Thiel believes this is one of the ways in which conflicts tend to arise. “If you were a sociopathic boss who just wanted to create conflicts amongst your employees for no reason at all, the formula for creating conflicts is to tell two people to do the exact same thing.” To summarize his point, Thiel concludes: “You want to have roles differentiated sharply differentiated within companies. And you want to have the mission of the company differentiated sharply from the rest of the world.” Source: Saïd Business School (May 2015)

Startup Archive

25,702 просмотров • 2 месяцев назад

Peter Thiel on what he would look for if he was joining a startup Wharton professor Adam Grant asks Peter Thiel what he would look for if he was joining an early-stage startup. Thiel gives a simple response: “Do you like the people? Do you think you could become good friends with these people? That’s such a critical part for getting these things to work.” He recalls interviewing with a law firm in New York early in his career and one partner telling him: “It’s a place where everybody hates everybody else, but we all make lots of money.” The partner viewed it as an illustration of how incredibly “professional” the firm was. But Thiel argues that we need more than just “professional” at work. Thiel elaborates more on this idea in his book Zero to One: “Why work with a group of people who don’t even like each other? Many seem to think it’s a sacrifice necessary for making money. But taking a merely professional view of the workplace, in which free agents check in and out on a transactional basis, is worse than cold: it’s not even rational. Since time is your most valuable asset, it’s odd to spend it working with people who don’t envision any long-term future together. If you can’t count durable relationships among the fruits of your time at work, you haven’t invested your time well—even in purely financial terms.” Video source: The Wharton School (2014)
1:01

Peter Thiel on what he would look for if he was joining a startup Wharton professor Adam Grant asks Peter Thiel what he would look for if he was joining an early-stage startup. Thiel gives a simple response: “Do you like the people? Do you think you could become good friends with these people? That’s such a critical part for getting these things to work.” He recalls interviewing with a law firm in New York early in his career and one partner telling him: “It’s a place where everybody hates everybody else, but we all make lots of money.” The partner viewed it as an illustration of how incredibly “professional” the firm was. But Thiel argues that we need more than just “professional” at work. Thiel elaborates more on this idea in his book Zero to One: “Why work with a group of people who don’t even like each other? Many seem to think it’s a sacrifice necessary for making money. But taking a merely professional view of the workplace, in which free agents check in and out on a transactional basis, is worse than cold: it’s not even rational. Since time is your most valuable asset, it’s odd to spend it working with people who don’t envision any long-term future together. If you can’t count durable relationships among the fruits of your time at work, you haven’t invested your time well—even in purely financial terms.” Video source: The Wharton School (2014)

Startup Archive

60,844 просмотров • 8 месяцев назад

Q: Why is it easier to start a hard company than an easy company? In the clip below, Sam Altman tells the class at Stanford: “It’s easier to start a hard company than an easy company. Most people—especially young people—want to pick something that doesn’t sound too ambitious. They say to themselves: ‘starting a company sounds really hard. I better pick the easiest possible company.’” But as Sam explains: “Starting a company is always hard and it’s about equally hard no matter what you do. If you start a hard company though and you inspire passionate people—for example, if you are working on general AI or supersonic airplanes or nuclear power—you’ll find a lot more people who are excited about that than another derivative idea.” He elaborates on this idea even further in a blog post from four years ago: “The most precious commodity in the startup ecosystem right now is talented people, and for the most part talented people want to work on something they find meaningful… An easy startup is a headwind; a hard startup is a tailwind. If people care about your success because you seem committed to doing something significant, it’s a background force helping you with hiring, advice, partnerships, fundraising, etc.” He continues: “Let yourself become more ambitious—figure out the most interesting version of where what you’re working on could go. Then talk about that big vision and work relentlessly towards it, but always have a reasonable next step. You don’t want step one to be incorporating the company and step two to be going to Mars. Be willing to make a very long-term commitment to what you’re doing. Most people aren’t, which is part of the reason they pick ‘easy’ startups. In a world of compounding advantages where most people are operating on a 3 year timeframe and you’re operating on a 10 year timeframe, you’ll have a very large edge.”
0:40

Q: Why is it easier to start a hard company than an easy company? In the clip below, Sam Altman tells the class at Stanford: “It’s easier to start a hard company than an easy company. Most people—especially young people—want to pick something that doesn’t sound too ambitious. They say to themselves: ‘starting a company sounds really hard. I better pick the easiest possible company.’” But as Sam explains: “Starting a company is always hard and it’s about equally hard no matter what you do. If you start a hard company though and you inspire passionate people—for example, if you are working on general AI or supersonic airplanes or nuclear power—you’ll find a lot more people who are excited about that than another derivative idea.” He elaborates on this idea even further in a blog post from four years ago: “The most precious commodity in the startup ecosystem right now is talented people, and for the most part talented people want to work on something they find meaningful… An easy startup is a headwind; a hard startup is a tailwind. If people care about your success because you seem committed to doing something significant, it’s a background force helping you with hiring, advice, partnerships, fundraising, etc.” He continues: “Let yourself become more ambitious—figure out the most interesting version of where what you’re working on could go. Then talk about that big vision and work relentlessly towards it, but always have a reasonable next step. You don’t want step one to be incorporating the company and step two to be going to Mars. Be willing to make a very long-term commitment to what you’re doing. Most people aren’t, which is part of the reason they pick ‘easy’ startups. In a world of compounding advantages where most people are operating on a 3 year timeframe and you’re operating on a 10 year timeframe, you’ll have a very large edge.”

Michael McGuiness

504,007 просмотров • 3 лет назад

"Courage is far shorter in supply than genius." - Peter Thiel "One of the challenges in writing a book about entrepreneurship or teaching a class on this is that there is sort of no formula. And I think science always starts with a number two. It starts with experiments you can repeat, things you can do over and over again. But there's sort of a sense in which every moment in the history of business, every moment in the history of technology happens only once. The next Mark Zuckerberg will not be starting a social networking company. The next Larry Page will not start a search engine. The next Bill Gates will not be starting an operating system. And so if you are trying to copy these people, you're in some sense not learning from them. And so I think one of the really big challenges in teaching or writing about entrepreneurship is what can you say about being an entrepreneur at all when the key thing is always to do something new, different, that's not precisely been done before. And so the point of departure I start with in Zero to One is a somewhat indirect approach by asking a series of contrarian questions. The business question is, what great company is nobody starting? The more intellectual version of this question is, tell me something true that very few people agree with you on. And this is a fantastic interview question. It turns out to be quite a hard question, even when people can read on the internet that you ask of everybody who comes in the door, it still is a hard question. It's one of those unusual questions where if you know it's on the test, it's still hard. And it's hard not just because we sort of think that new things require brilliance or something like that, but because it's socially difficult. If I ask you that question, if you tell me something like the education system is screwed up or our political system doesn't work very well, those are true answers, but they're not actually good answers because all of us already know them to be true. The good answers are ones that are somehow uncomfortable that the person interviewing you does not actually want to hear. And I think we live in this world where courage is in far shorter supply than genius. And so it is sort of this, it is in a sense this problem of political correctness properly understood, is this very deep, very, very broad sort of a problem."
2:28

"Courage is far shorter in supply than genius." - Peter Thiel "One of the challenges in writing a book about entrepreneurship or teaching a class on this is that there is sort of no formula. And I think science always starts with a number two. It starts with experiments you can repeat, things you can do over and over again. But there's sort of a sense in which every moment in the history of business, every moment in the history of technology happens only once. The next Mark Zuckerberg will not be starting a social networking company. The next Larry Page will not start a search engine. The next Bill Gates will not be starting an operating system. And so if you are trying to copy these people, you're in some sense not learning from them. And so I think one of the really big challenges in teaching or writing about entrepreneurship is what can you say about being an entrepreneur at all when the key thing is always to do something new, different, that's not precisely been done before. And so the point of departure I start with in Zero to One is a somewhat indirect approach by asking a series of contrarian questions. The business question is, what great company is nobody starting? The more intellectual version of this question is, tell me something true that very few people agree with you on. And this is a fantastic interview question. It turns out to be quite a hard question, even when people can read on the internet that you ask of everybody who comes in the door, it still is a hard question. It's one of those unusual questions where if you know it's on the test, it's still hard. And it's hard not just because we sort of think that new things require brilliance or something like that, but because it's socially difficult. If I ask you that question, if you tell me something like the education system is screwed up or our political system doesn't work very well, those are true answers, but they're not actually good answers because all of us already know them to be true. The good answers are ones that are somehow uncomfortable that the person interviewing you does not actually want to hear. And I think we live in this world where courage is in far shorter supply than genius. And so it is sort of this, it is in a sense this problem of political correctness properly understood, is this very deep, very, very broad sort of a problem."

Founder Mode

12,339 просмотров • 8 месяцев назад

$ABCL CEO Carl Hansen explains the net negative overall value creation in biotech and how AbCellera plans to beat it: “I really think it can be beat because there’s a lot of mistakes that get made in where you allocate capital.” “If you’re a biotech and you start a company on a drug, and you go public and have a drug, and now the data is looking not that great, you just keep running that drug. … Because if you quit that drug, the company is done.” “So, because you’re so concentrated on one thing, you end up having blinders. It’s like a cult of a molecule. And even a real, practical, capital access problem that makes you continue to move things forward” ______________________________________ “Another problem is that many of the drugs that get started, get started by people who don’t understand the competitive or commercial landscape and have no intent of ever actually manufacturing it. … Because they know someone else is going to buy it. So then their framework is not ‘Am I making a drug that’s going to make a difference for people?’ The framework is ‘Can I make something that I think someone will take off my hands?’ And that happens a lot.” “There are many acquisitions where a big pharma company spends $10B, $20B, and it’s a complete bust. So really no value is generated for patients but someone was able to get a good exit on that because they anticipated what someone would want. And a lot of decision making gets done like that”. _______________________________________ “I’m not saying that we have this all solved. But what we’re trying to do is create a framework where we are able to take many bets so that we don’t fall in love with anything, or we don’t have to fall in love with anything. … And then always hold up very explicitly what we know and what we don’t know along the dimensions that matter. The dimensions that matter are - Will it work? That’s a science. - When it gets where will people care? - Is it differentiated? - Does it solve a big problem? In order to get it there, is there a path with our resources and expertise that would allow us to see it through?” “When you start to hold things up like that, you start to see where the mistakes are, where the uncertainties are, and you can be more rational in deciding ‘We’re going to run it to here because we get to flip the card and if the card goes the wrong way we’re going to kill it because we’ve got something else behind it.’” “I do think that if done right, and if you can pick the right opportunities, the success rate can be well higher than an order of magnitude better. … And there are examples of this… companies I’ve mentioned, you know, Regeneron, their success rate is at least 10x the industry in bringing programs forward and getting them approved. … So it’s… you can do it better that way”
3:50

$ABCL CEO Carl Hansen explains the net negative overall value creation in biotech and how AbCellera plans to beat it: “I really think it can be beat because there’s a lot of mistakes that get made in where you allocate capital.” “If you’re a biotech and you start a company on a drug, and you go public and have a drug, and now the data is looking not that great, you just keep running that drug. … Because if you quit that drug, the company is done.” “So, because you’re so concentrated on one thing, you end up having blinders. It’s like a cult of a molecule. And even a real, practical, capital access problem that makes you continue to move things forward” ______________________________________ “Another problem is that many of the drugs that get started, get started by people who don’t understand the competitive or commercial landscape and have no intent of ever actually manufacturing it. … Because they know someone else is going to buy it. So then their framework is not ‘Am I making a drug that’s going to make a difference for people?’ The framework is ‘Can I make something that I think someone will take off my hands?’ And that happens a lot.” “There are many acquisitions where a big pharma company spends $10B, $20B, and it’s a complete bust. So really no value is generated for patients but someone was able to get a good exit on that because they anticipated what someone would want. And a lot of decision making gets done like that”. _______________________________________ “I’m not saying that we have this all solved. But what we’re trying to do is create a framework where we are able to take many bets so that we don’t fall in love with anything, or we don’t have to fall in love with anything. … And then always hold up very explicitly what we know and what we don’t know along the dimensions that matter. The dimensions that matter are - Will it work? That’s a science. - When it gets where will people care? - Is it differentiated? - Does it solve a big problem? In order to get it there, is there a path with our resources and expertise that would allow us to see it through?” “When you start to hold things up like that, you start to see where the mistakes are, where the uncertainties are, and you can be more rational in deciding ‘We’re going to run it to here because we get to flip the card and if the card goes the wrong way we’re going to kill it because we’ve got something else behind it.’” “I do think that if done right, and if you can pick the right opportunities, the success rate can be well higher than an order of magnitude better. … And there are examples of this… companies I’ve mentioned, you know, Regeneron, their success rate is at least 10x the industry in bringing programs forward and getting them approved. … So it’s… you can do it better that way”

Jack Prescott

31,665 просмотров • 2 месяцев назад

Telegram founder Pavel Durov on what separates A Players from B Players “I can recall a few instances in my career where firing an engineer actually resulted in an increase in productivity,” Telegram founder Pavel Durov begins. He gives an example of two Android engineers building an app that are having a hard time hitting deadlines: “You think, ‘I probably have to hire a third engineer.’ But then you notice that one of [the engineers] is really weird — falling behind schedule, complaining, not assuming responsibility — and you ask, ‘What if I just fired this person?’ Then you fire this person, and in a few weeks you realize you never needed a third engineer. The problem was this guy who created more issues and problems than he solved. It’s so counterintuitive because in developing tech projects, you tend to think that you just throw more people into something and things get solved miraculously.” Pavel continues: “The other thing that people don’t realize is how demotivating working with a B Player is. Everyone can tell if the other engineer they’re working with is really competent. If the person is asking the wrong questions and they keep lagging behind, at a certain point if you’re an A Player, you get get this dissatisfaction and feeling that you are not able to realize your full potential and accomplish what you’re really meant to accomplish because of this person working next to you (or pretending to work next to you).” Pavel reflects on what it is exactly that separates these B Players from A Players: “In some cases it’s not because the person is lazy . . . It’s not about experience. More often it’s about natural ability and persistence. In 90% of cases, it’s just the inability to focus on one task for an extended period of time. Not everybody has this ability. So for people who do have this ability, it’s an insult to work alongside someone who is distracted and cannot go deep in the projects that they’re responsible for.” Video source: Lex Fridman (2025)
3:10

Telegram founder Pavel Durov on what separates A Players from B Players “I can recall a few instances in my career where firing an engineer actually resulted in an increase in productivity,” Telegram founder Pavel Durov begins. He gives an example of two Android engineers building an app that are having a hard time hitting deadlines: “You think, ‘I probably have to hire a third engineer.’ But then you notice that one of [the engineers] is really weird — falling behind schedule, complaining, not assuming responsibility — and you ask, ‘What if I just fired this person?’ Then you fire this person, and in a few weeks you realize you never needed a third engineer. The problem was this guy who created more issues and problems than he solved. It’s so counterintuitive because in developing tech projects, you tend to think that you just throw more people into something and things get solved miraculously.” Pavel continues: “The other thing that people don’t realize is how demotivating working with a B Player is. Everyone can tell if the other engineer they’re working with is really competent. If the person is asking the wrong questions and they keep lagging behind, at a certain point if you’re an A Player, you get get this dissatisfaction and feeling that you are not able to realize your full potential and accomplish what you’re really meant to accomplish because of this person working next to you (or pretending to work next to you).” Pavel reflects on what it is exactly that separates these B Players from A Players: “In some cases it’s not because the person is lazy . . . It’s not about experience. More often it’s about natural ability and persistence. In 90% of cases, it’s just the inability to focus on one task for an extended period of time. Not everybody has this ability. So for people who do have this ability, it’s an insult to work alongside someone who is distracted and cannot go deep in the projects that they’re responsible for.” Video source: Lex Fridman (2025)

Startup Archive

709,472 просмотров • 11 месяцев назад