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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)show more

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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 Institute

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 Institute

Startup Archive

90,949 views • 2 years ago

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)

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)

Startup Archive

19,509 views • 1 month ago

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)

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 views • 1 year ago

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)

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 views • 8 months ago

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt: “The great founders are frugal” When Eric joined Google as CEO in 2001 — two years after the company had raised 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. He believes this frugality is common attribute of the best founders: “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.” Eric 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.” Video source: Startup Grind (2016)

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt: “The great founders are frugal” When Eric joined Google as CEO in 2001 — two years after the company had raised 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. He believes this frugality is common attribute of the best founders: “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.” Eric 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.” Video source: Startup Grind (2016)

Startup Archive

46,541 views • 7 months ago

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt: “The great founders are frugal” When Eric joined Google as CEO in 2001 — two years after the company had raised 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. He believes this frugality is common attribute of the best founders: “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.” Eric 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.” Video source: Startup Grind (2016)

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt: “The great founders are frugal” When Eric joined Google as CEO in 2001 — two years after the company had raised 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. He believes this frugality is common attribute of the best founders: “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.” Eric 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.” Video source: Startup Grind (2016)

Startup Archive

62,897 views • 1 year ago

William got margin called and pledged over $1B of his own stock to fund Column. He explains why extreme personal risk is what makes great founders, and why we see less of it today: "I think that the good founders bet on themselves and take an extreme amount of risk to do that. The extreme amount of risk part is something that we no longer have. But when there's literally only one door in front of you. You don't have a choice, and that fear and innate desire creates another part of you. It creates creativity, it creates inspiration. It's extremely valuable part of the founder journey. And in many ways, Silicon Valley we've actually removed that. I don't know why we don't talk about it more. If you go back to pre 2008, you're on the edge of the knife. We don't create environments where a founder has to bet themselves. I think starting companies are just too f**king safe. It's caused a lot of companies to be super safe companies like, we're gonna pivot to AI...that's not bold, that's not ambitious. It's because we are attracting founders that actually want to be employees. They don't think if I don't pull this off, I'm going to become bankrupt. My life is over and I think that's pretty healthy. That's when you bring out the rawness of humanity and I don't see that very much anymore. The weird thing is an early stage employee takes way more risk than an early stage founder. And I don't think we should actually de-risk the early stage employee. I just think we need to increase the risk for founders. I think we need to make failure much more expensive."

William got margin called and pledged over $1B of his own stock to fund Column. He explains why extreme personal risk is what makes great founders, and why we see less of it today: "I think that the good founders bet on themselves and take an extreme amount of risk to do that. The extreme amount of risk part is something that we no longer have. But when there's literally only one door in front of you. You don't have a choice, and that fear and innate desire creates another part of you. It creates creativity, it creates inspiration. It's extremely valuable part of the founder journey. And in many ways, Silicon Valley we've actually removed that. I don't know why we don't talk about it more. If you go back to pre 2008, you're on the edge of the knife. We don't create environments where a founder has to bet themselves. I think starting companies are just too f**king safe. It's caused a lot of companies to be super safe companies like, we're gonna pivot to AI...that's not bold, that's not ambitious. It's because we are attracting founders that actually want to be employees. They don't think if I don't pull this off, I'm going to become bankrupt. My life is over and I think that's pretty healthy. That's when you bring out the rawness of humanity and I don't see that very much anymore. The weird thing is an early stage employee takes way more risk than an early stage founder. And I don't think we should actually de-risk the early stage employee. I just think we need to increase the risk for founders. I think we need to make failure much more expensive."

Patrick OShaughnessy

86,597 views • 6 months ago

Peter Thiel on why the best businesses never compete: "Most people believe that capitalism and competition are synonyms. I believe capitalism and competition are antonyms." His point is simple: "A capitalist is someone who's in the business of accumulating capital. A world of perfect competition is a world where all the profits are competed away." Peter explains that the most important distinction in business is one nobody talks about enough. "There are two kinds of companies in this world. There are companies that are competitive and there are companies that have monopolies." His go-to example of a bad business? Restaurants. "Opening a restaurant is super competitive and nobody ever makes any money doing it." His example of a great business: Google. "Google has had no competition in search since 2002 when it definitively distanced itself from Microsoft and Yahoo, and it's been making enormous profits for the dozen years or so ever since." So what should founders actually aim for? "If you're a one-of-a-kind company, a happy company that's doing something different, you are a monopoly. It is the goal of every founder, every entrepreneur—it should be their goal to try to build a monopoly business." True market power means never having to compete in the first place.

Peter Thiel on why the best businesses never compete: "Most people believe that capitalism and competition are synonyms. I believe capitalism and competition are antonyms." His point is simple: "A capitalist is someone who's in the business of accumulating capital. A world of perfect competition is a world where all the profits are competed away." Peter explains that the most important distinction in business is one nobody talks about enough. "There are two kinds of companies in this world. There are companies that are competitive and there are companies that have monopolies." His go-to example of a bad business? Restaurants. "Opening a restaurant is super competitive and nobody ever makes any money doing it." His example of a great business: Google. "Google has had no competition in search since 2002 when it definitively distanced itself from Microsoft and Yahoo, and it's been making enormous profits for the dozen years or so ever since." So what should founders actually aim for? "If you're a one-of-a-kind company, a happy company that's doing something different, you are a monopoly. It is the goal of every founder, every entrepreneur—it should be their goal to try to build a monopoly business." True market power means never having to compete in the first place.

Big Brain Business

73,938 views • 8 months ago

"I would not recommend playing against Peter Thiel at chess. You gotta pick games that you can win." Cognition CEO Scott Wu says he did challenge Founders Fund to a poker match to determine their seed round terms, a difference worth ~1% of the company, but Peter shut it down: " Peter was like, 'I don't really think that's the right way to do this.'" "We worked it out anyway and we came to a deal and it was all good, and then we've been working together ever since."

"I would not recommend playing against Peter Thiel at chess. You gotta pick games that you can win." Cognition CEO Scott Wu says he did challenge Founders Fund to a poker match to determine their seed round terms, a difference worth ~1% of the company, but Peter shut it down: " Peter was like, 'I don't really think that's the right way to do this.'" "We worked it out anyway and we came to a deal and it was all good, and then we've been working together ever since."

sourcery

174,244 views • 1 month ago

We are thrilled to announce the launch of avra — a 7-week program designed specifically for post-Series A CEOs looking to scale their companies effectively. As most startup founders are first-time CEOs, the journey can be daunting, and resources are scarce. That’s why we created avra : to bridge that gap and provide structured, actionable insights from those who’ve been there. Each week, you’ll dive deep into essential topics like hiring and managing leaders, how to accelerate shipping velocity, and refine strategic planning. Every session is taught by experienced CEOs and operators from the world’s best companies. Since launching last year, we’ve run three cohorts, with 37 CEOs participating in the program. Don’t just take our word for it—hear from the avra founders directly!

We are thrilled to announce the launch of avra — a 7-week program designed specifically for post-Series A CEOs looking to scale their companies effectively. As most startup founders are first-time CEOs, the journey can be daunting, and resources are scarce. That’s why we created avra : to bridge that gap and provide structured, actionable insights from those who’ve been there. Each week, you’ll dive deep into essential topics like hiring and managing leaders, how to accelerate shipping velocity, and refine strategic planning. Every session is taught by experienced CEOs and operators from the world’s best companies. Since launching last year, we’ve run three cohorts, with 37 CEOs participating in the program. Don’t just take our word for it—hear from the avra founders directly!

Anu Hariharan

329,927 views • 2 years ago

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."

Jawwwn

1,680,847 views • 7 months ago

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."

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."

Patrick OShaughnessy

152,266 views • 4 months 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 • 8 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 • 5 months ago

Peter Thiel: "Competition is for losers" "Competition is for losers, which got people's attention, because we normally believe the opposite. We believe that the losers are the people who don't compete intensely enough. You're a loser if you're not competitive. But what if you're a loser because you're too obsessed with competing? If you're too focused on competing, maybe you're losing sight of what's really important." Thiel explains the distinction most people miss: "The most important distinction in business that people don't talk about enough is that there are two kinds of companies in this world. There are companies that are competitive, and there are companies that have monopolies. If you're a one-of-a-kind company, a happy company that's doing something different, you are a monopoly. It is the goal of every founder, every entrepreneur, it should be their goal to try to build a monopoly business." He frames this as an unconventional truth: "Most people believe that capitalism and competition are synonyms. I believe capitalism and competition are antonyms. A capitalist is someone who's in the business of accumulating capital. A world of perfect competition is a world where all the profits are competed away."

Peter Thiel: "Competition is for losers" "Competition is for losers, which got people's attention, because we normally believe the opposite. We believe that the losers are the people who don't compete intensely enough. You're a loser if you're not competitive. But what if you're a loser because you're too obsessed with competing? If you're too focused on competing, maybe you're losing sight of what's really important." Thiel explains the distinction most people miss: "The most important distinction in business that people don't talk about enough is that there are two kinds of companies in this world. There are companies that are competitive, and there are companies that have monopolies. If you're a one-of-a-kind company, a happy company that's doing something different, you are a monopoly. It is the goal of every founder, every entrepreneur, it should be their goal to try to build a monopoly business." He frames this as an unconventional truth: "Most people believe that capitalism and competition are synonyms. I believe capitalism and competition are antonyms. A capitalist is someone who's in the business of accumulating capital. A world of perfect competition is a world where all the profits are competed away."

Jaynit

55,406 views • 5 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

Mark Zuckerberg reveals why Elon Musk was right to fire 80% of Twitter's employees: "Elon led a push early on to make Twitter a lot leaner. You can agree or disagree with exactly all the tactics, but a lot of the specific principles that he pushed on around basically trying to make the organization more technical, around decreasing the distance between engineers of the company and him, fewer layers of management, I think those were generally good changes" "I also think that it was probably good for the industry that he made those changes because my sense is that there were a lot of other people who thought those were good changes but who may have been a little shy about doing them" "Just in my conversations with other founders and how people have reacted to the things that we've done, what I've heard from a lot of folks is when someone like you, when I wrote the letter outlining the organizational changes I wanted to make back in March and when people see what Elon is doing, that gives people the ability to think through how to shape their organizations in a way that can be good for the industry and make all these companies more productive over time" "That was one where I think he was quite ahead of a bunch of the other companies on. Certainly his actions led me and I think a lot of other folks in the industry to think about, hey, are we kind of doing this as much as we should? Could we make our companies better by pushing on some of these same principles?"

Mark Zuckerberg reveals why Elon Musk was right to fire 80% of Twitter's employees: "Elon led a push early on to make Twitter a lot leaner. You can agree or disagree with exactly all the tactics, but a lot of the specific principles that he pushed on around basically trying to make the organization more technical, around decreasing the distance between engineers of the company and him, fewer layers of management, I think those were generally good changes" "I also think that it was probably good for the industry that he made those changes because my sense is that there were a lot of other people who thought those were good changes but who may have been a little shy about doing them" "Just in my conversations with other founders and how people have reacted to the things that we've done, what I've heard from a lot of folks is when someone like you, when I wrote the letter outlining the organizational changes I wanted to make back in March and when people see what Elon is doing, that gives people the ability to think through how to shape their organizations in a way that can be good for the industry and make all these companies more productive over time" "That was one where I think he was quite ahead of a bunch of the other companies on. Certainly his actions led me and I think a lot of other folks in the industry to think about, hey, are we kind of doing this as much as we should? Could we make our companies better by pushing on some of these same principles?"

Jaynit

864,924 views • 2 months ago