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Peter Thiel on the difference between the best founders and “professional CEOs” In his book Zero To One, which is approaching its 10-year anniversary, Thiel wrote: “We need founders. If anything, we should be more tolerant of founders who seem strange or extreme. We need unusual individuals to lead... companies beyond mere incrementalism.” And while he doesn’t believe there’s a simple magic formula for what a founder looks like, Thiel observes: “A lot of the great companies that have been built over the last two decades were founded by people where it was somehow deeply connected to their identity - their life’s project.” He contrasts this to Silicon Valley in the 1990s when lots of founders were replaced with professional CEOs. Thiel believes it made a big difference when it became more common for founders run the companies. He gives the example of a 22 year old Mark Zuckerberg turning down a billion dollar acquisition from Yahoo: “If you had a professional CEO, it would have just been: ‘I can’t believe they’re offering us a billion dollars. I’m going to try not to be too eager. We better take the money and run.’” Video Source: The Aspen Instituteshow more

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90,939 views • 2 years ago •via X (Twitter)

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9 Comments

Startup Archive2 years ago

Watch the full @AspenInstitute interview with Peter Thiel here:

Startup Archive2 years ago

Want even more startup insights from the world's best founders? Join the 8,000+ founders who read our free newsletter here:

Adam Gregory Goern2 years ago

Remember when Scully as professional CEO ran Apple into the ground? Then Jobs returned as Saviour Founder.

Felix Chin MD2 years ago

same principles apply to researchers (vs professional researchers), except magnified 1000x given research’s intended role of exploring unknown search space (researchers by extension should be a little idiosyncratic)

UX & Graphic Design Agency in Munich2 years ago

Translation: embrace your inner mad scientist. 🚀 #StayWeird

OIIA2 years ago

Interesting, there's a chance for me yet then?

James Marsh2 years ago

Peter is fooling himself.

Spektre | DeFi2 years ago

👋

K Raju2 years ago

💪

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Peter Thiel on the difference between the best founders and “professional CEOs” In his book Zero To One, Thiel wrote: “We need founders. If anything, we should be more tolerant of founders who seem strange or extreme. We need unusual individuals to lead companies beyond mere incrementalism.” And while he doesn’t believe there’s a simple magic formula for what a founder looks like, Thiel observes: “A lot of the great companies that have been built over the last two decades were founded by people where it was somehow deeply connected to their identity - their life’s project.” He contrasts this to Silicon Valley in the 1990s when lots of founders were replaced with professional CEOs. Thiel believes it made a big difference when it became more common for founders run the companies. He gives the example of a 22 year old Mark Zuckerberg turning down a billion dollar acquisition from Yahoo: “If you had a professional CEO, it would have just been: ‘I can’t believe they’re offering us a billion dollars. I’m going to try not to be too eager. We better take the money and run.’” Source: The Aspen Institute (Jun 2024)

Peter Thiel on the difference between the best founders and “professional CEOs” In his book Zero To One, Thiel wrote: “We need founders. If anything, we should be more tolerant of founders who seem strange or extreme. We need unusual individuals to lead companies beyond mere incrementalism.” And while he doesn’t believe there’s a simple magic formula for what a founder looks like, Thiel observes: “A lot of the great companies that have been built over the last two decades were founded by people where it was somehow deeply connected to their identity - their life’s project.” He contrasts this to Silicon Valley in the 1990s when lots of founders were replaced with professional CEOs. Thiel believes it made a big difference when it became more common for founders run the companies. He gives the example of a 22 year old Mark Zuckerberg turning down a billion dollar acquisition from Yahoo: “If you had a professional CEO, it would have just been: ‘I can’t believe they’re offering us a billion dollars. I’m going to try not to be too eager. We better take the money and run.’” Source: The Aspen Institute (Jun 2024)

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Marc Andreessen’s 2 reasons for why founder-run companies are harder to disrupt “If you just look historically at many of the important technology companies of the last 50-100 years, many of them are run by their founders for decades… And a lot of it has to do with disruption.” Marc continues: “There’s this cliché of founders that a lot of people believe which is that founders are too stubborn and founders get too locked into their original idea and they can’t adapt as times change. We’ve actually found the opposite to be true. We’ve found that when a company is going to get disrupted, the person in many cases with the best odds of countering the disruption is the founder, and I think there’s a couple of different reasons for that.” The two reasons Marc shares are: 1. The founder remembers when the business was nothing, and are constantly haunted by the fact that the business could be a zero again: “The founder remembers what it was like when there was nobody else in the office with you and when you carried out your own trash can. The founder remembers this thing used to be zero.” 2. The founder carries enormous moral weight inside the company and can more easily make drastic changes: “When Steve Jobs goes into Apple and says times are changing we need to do X - and X is heresy… A Steve jobs - a founder - is going to be able to convince the company that they have to do that. Whereas if a professional CEO shows up and says that, everybody’s going to be like, ‘Ooh, I don’t know.’” Source: Startup Grind (Feb 2016)

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Brian Chesky: "People are born good founders. It's innate. You don't have to learn how to be good founder. No one is born a good CEO. The problem is we founders were never really prepared to be great CEOs. We were taught to learn by doing and that's great for a founder. It is not good as a CEO. I was naturally good founder, I think I was a very good early stage CEO. The moment I had to have an executive team, I really struggled to make the shift from a founder to CEO. In the 2010s, I do not think I was a great CEO. We paid the price for my learning curve. And then the pandemic happened. We had a near death experience and I said screw all the rumination it's do or die. And I learned how to do the job."

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Peter Thiel: Europe will never have massive tech companies because they fear success. "In Silicon Valley, there's this pornography of failure. You talk about all your failures, and this somehow means you're going to succeed." "In the social democratic European societies, it's acceptable to be moderately successful, it's not acceptable to be wildly successful. If you have a successful company that's starting to grow, it will get short-circuited, and you'll sell the company. You'll never get to an enormous company if you sell it along the way." "The single most important decision in the history of Facebook— summer of 2006. It was two years into the company. We got an acquisition offer for $1B from Yahoo to buy the company. There were three of us on the board— Mark Zuckerberg, myself, and another VC. We had a meeting to decide if we should take the $1B." "The two of us thought it was a lot of money, we should maybe take it. Mark started the board meeting— 'this is a pro forma thing, we're just going to talk about this for 10 minutes. Obviously we're not taking it.'" "Any super big tech company is one where you've been offered multiple times for people to buy it, and you've chosen never to sell it. You're not that afraid of success." "In Europe, the answer is to check out sooner rather than later and go back to the decade-long vacation that people are on in Europe."

Peter Thiel: Europe will never have massive tech companies because they fear success. "In Silicon Valley, there's this pornography of failure. You talk about all your failures, and this somehow means you're going to succeed." "In the social democratic European societies, it's acceptable to be moderately successful, it's not acceptable to be wildly successful. If you have a successful company that's starting to grow, it will get short-circuited, and you'll sell the company. You'll never get to an enormous company if you sell it along the way." "The single most important decision in the history of Facebook— summer of 2006. It was two years into the company. We got an acquisition offer for $1B from Yahoo to buy the company. There were three of us on the board— Mark Zuckerberg, myself, and another VC. We had a meeting to decide if we should take the $1B." "The two of us thought it was a lot of money, we should maybe take it. Mark started the board meeting— 'this is a pro forma thing, we're just going to talk about this for 10 minutes. Obviously we're not taking it.'" "Any super big tech company is one where you've been offered multiple times for people to buy it, and you've chosen never to sell it. You're not that afraid of success." "In Europe, the answer is to check out sooner rather than later and go back to the decade-long vacation that people are on in Europe."

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Startup Archive

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Jaynit

55,406 views • 5 months ago

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)

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 views • 8 months ago

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)

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

25,680 views • 1 month ago

Legendary Sequoia Capital partner, Doug Leone, shares an unexpected take on what makes a great entrepreneur: "If you're desperate it's a great asset. If you have too many choices in life it clouds your thinking. When you only have one way to go and that's forward, it's very easy. You just go. Failure truly is not an option." That kind of focus often comes from founders who haven't followed conventional paths, people who have done "quirky things" and taken risks. Doug also reveals a "little secret" for spotting these founders: "We look for people that solve a problem that they have. They don't know it, we don't know it, but they're the proxy for the next 20 million users." He points to three examples: — The Zappos founders couldn't find a pair of shoes — Jan of WhatsApp needed private, low-cost messaging — The Yahoo founders couldn't find anything on the internet "If we see that, that's a little tell for us that we may be on to something because we may find our first beta site, the founder, for the next generation." The best founders are fueled by desperation, building what they wish existed — and that's exactly what keeps them going when everyone else quits.

Legendary Sequoia Capital partner, Doug Leone, shares an unexpected take on what makes a great entrepreneur: "If you're desperate it's a great asset. If you have too many choices in life it clouds your thinking. When you only have one way to go and that's forward, it's very easy. You just go. Failure truly is not an option." That kind of focus often comes from founders who haven't followed conventional paths, people who have done "quirky things" and taken risks. Doug also reveals a "little secret" for spotting these founders: "We look for people that solve a problem that they have. They don't know it, we don't know it, but they're the proxy for the next 20 million users." He points to three examples: — The Zappos founders couldn't find a pair of shoes — Jan of WhatsApp needed private, low-cost messaging — The Yahoo founders couldn't find anything on the internet "If we see that, that's a little tell for us that we may be on to something because we may find our first beta site, the founder, for the next generation." The best founders are fueled by desperation, building what they wish existed — and that's exactly what keeps them going when everyone else quits.

Big Brain Business

67,133 views • 7 months ago

Paypal co-founder Peter Thiel offers a contrarian view on mastery: the best founders aren't specialists, they're polymaths who understand how everything connects. After 14 years on the Facebook board, Thiel has watched Mark Zuckerberg up close. And he's noticed something that cuts against conventional wisdom about what it takes to build something great. "I think that one kind of perspective for a lot of the world-class entrepreneurs is they're not specialists. They're something close to polymaths." Thiel uses Zuckerberg as his prime example: "If you have a conversation with Mark Zuckerberg, he'd be able to speak with a surprising amount of understanding about a lot of things. He could talk about the details of the Facebook product, the psychology of social media, the way the culture is shifting, the management of the company, and how this fits into the bigger history of technology." This stands in stark contrast to how academia frames expertise: "Whereas the sort of academic view is often that you're like a narrow expert on one thing and that's what you do and what it is about. It's much more this polymath-like intellect who understands all these different things." Peter Thiel reflects on what this has looked like at the board level: "The kinds of board conversations we've had over the last 13, 14 years, it's just been this crazy range." The takeaway: world-class founders don't just go deep in one area. They think across product, psychology, culture, management, and technology history, and they see how it all connects.

Paypal co-founder Peter Thiel offers a contrarian view on mastery: the best founders aren't specialists, they're polymaths who understand how everything connects. After 14 years on the Facebook board, Thiel has watched Mark Zuckerberg up close. And he's noticed something that cuts against conventional wisdom about what it takes to build something great. "I think that one kind of perspective for a lot of the world-class entrepreneurs is they're not specialists. They're something close to polymaths." Thiel uses Zuckerberg as his prime example: "If you have a conversation with Mark Zuckerberg, he'd be able to speak with a surprising amount of understanding about a lot of things. He could talk about the details of the Facebook product, the psychology of social media, the way the culture is shifting, the management of the company, and how this fits into the bigger history of technology." This stands in stark contrast to how academia frames expertise: "Whereas the sort of academic view is often that you're like a narrow expert on one thing and that's what you do and what it is about. It's much more this polymath-like intellect who understands all these different things." Peter Thiel reflects on what this has looked like at the board level: "The kinds of board conversations we've had over the last 13, 14 years, it's just been this crazy range." The takeaway: world-class founders don't just go deep in one area. They think across product, psychology, culture, management, and technology history, and they see how it all connects.

Big Brain Business

69,444 views • 4 months ago

Eric Schmidt: The great founders are frugal When Eric joined Google as CEO in 2001—two years after securing a $25 million Series A—he shared an office with four engineers. He even had to lend one of the founders his car when theirs broke down. In the clip below he explains why this mentality is important: “I can always tell when we’re dealing with a proper founder by how they are spending their money… Whenever I go to startups that have beautiful offices and really nice chairs, I cringe.” He continues: “The great founders are frugal. They understand that the money needs to be used precisely for certain areas. Many of the most successful founders begin with no salary at all… If you’re not prepared to live that, you don’t really understand what being a founder is like.” Source: Startup Grind

Eric Schmidt: The great founders are frugal When Eric joined Google as CEO in 2001—two years after securing a $25 million Series A—he shared an office with four engineers. He even had to lend one of the founders his car when theirs broke down. In the clip below he explains why this mentality is important: “I can always tell when we’re dealing with a proper founder by how they are spending their money… Whenever I go to startups that have beautiful offices and really nice chairs, I cringe.” He continues: “The great founders are frugal. They understand that the money needs to be used precisely for certain areas. Many of the most successful founders begin with no salary at all… If you’re not prepared to live that, you don’t really understand what being a founder is like.” Source: Startup Grind

Startup Archive

68,501 views • 2 years ago