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Peter Thiel: world-class entrepreneurs are typically polymaths “I think that one kind of perspective for a lot of the world-class entrepreneurs is that they’re not specialists. They’re something closer to polymaths.” Thiel continues: “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 can speak about the details of the Facebook product. He can talk about the way people think about social media — the psychology and the way the culture is shifting. Management of the company, he has ideas on that. He has ideas on how [Facebook] fits into the bigger history of technology.” Thiel then contrasts this to a more typical academic view: “The academic view is that you’re sort of a narrow expert on one thing and that’s what you do. But it’s much more this polymath-like intellect that understands all these different things.” Video source: Dave Rubin Dave RubinShow (2018)show more

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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)

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139,271 Aufrufe • vor 9 Monaten

Peter Thiel on why the name of your startup is predictive of success or failure “This is a slight aesthetic thing that I believe in very strongly: the names of companies are often very predictive of future failure or success.” PayPal and Napster are the first example Thiel gives: “PayPal was a very friendly name — it was the friend that helps you pay. Napster was a bad name — you nap some music, you nap a kid. That sounds like a bad thing to be doing, and it’s no wonder the government then comes in and shuts the company down within a few years.” “You want to be very careful of how you name companies,” Thiel warns founders. In the context of the sharing economy, he likes Airbnb more than Uber: “Airbnb sounds very innocent like this virtual bread and breakfast — this very light, non-threatening sort of company. Uber sounds like a bad name from Germany sometime in the 1930s. What are you exactly above? Maybe the law? This is probably something that, again from a regulatory perspective, I think Airbnb is a vastly better name than Uber.” And on the social networking side, Thiel likes Facebook more than MySpace: “You can say that all these social networks involve both reading and writing… Over time, reading dominates writing. Facebook was about learning about people around you — about their real identities at Harvard. MySpace started among wannabe actors in Los Angeles, and it was about them coming up with fictional narratives around themselves and a lot of other people in LA who are generally like that. And because reading dominates writing, Facebook would ultimately dominate MySpace. There’s a certain version where the whole arc of the company and the whole product arc was implicit in the names.” Video source: Mercatus Center (2015)

Peter Thiel on why the name of your startup is predictive of success or failure “This is a slight aesthetic thing that I believe in very strongly: the names of companies are often very predictive of future failure or success.” PayPal and Napster are the first example Thiel gives: “PayPal was a very friendly name — it was the friend that helps you pay. Napster was a bad name — you nap some music, you nap a kid. That sounds like a bad thing to be doing, and it’s no wonder the government then comes in and shuts the company down within a few years.” “You want to be very careful of how you name companies,” Thiel warns founders. In the context of the sharing economy, he likes Airbnb more than Uber: “Airbnb sounds very innocent like this virtual bread and breakfast — this very light, non-threatening sort of company. Uber sounds like a bad name from Germany sometime in the 1930s. What are you exactly above? Maybe the law? This is probably something that, again from a regulatory perspective, I think Airbnb is a vastly better name than Uber.” And on the social networking side, Thiel likes Facebook more than MySpace: “You can say that all these social networks involve both reading and writing… Over time, reading dominates writing. Facebook was about learning about people around you — about their real identities at Harvard. MySpace started among wannabe actors in Los Angeles, and it was about them coming up with fictional narratives around themselves and a lot of other people in LA who are generally like that. And because reading dominates writing, Facebook would ultimately dominate MySpace. There’s a certain version where the whole arc of the company and the whole product arc was implicit in the names.” Video source: Mercatus Center (2015)

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257,941 Aufrufe • vor 8 Monaten

Mark Zuckerberg on Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter Elon Musk famously reduced head count by 80% after acquiring Twitter. It was controversial at the time, but Mark is asked what he thinks Elon did well during it. Mark responds: “You can agree or disagree with the exact tactics and how he did that. Every leader has their own style… But a lot of the specific principles that he pushed on: making the organization more technical, decreasing distance between engineers at the company and him, fewer layers of management. I think that those were generally good changes.” Mark also believes this was good for the technology industry as a whole: “My sense is that there were a lot of other people who thought that 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 we’ve done… When people see what Elon is doing, I think 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.” He continues: “So I think that was one thing where he was quite ahead of a bunch of the other companies on… And from the outside, it’s very hard to know. Did he cut too much? Did he not cut enough? I don’t think it’s my place to opine on that… But certainly his actions led me and, I think, a lot of other folks in the industry to think about, ‘Hey, are we doing this as much as we should? Could we make our companies better by pushing on some of these same principles?’” Video source: Lex Fridman (2023)

Mark Zuckerberg on Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter Elon Musk famously reduced head count by 80% after acquiring Twitter. It was controversial at the time, but Mark is asked what he thinks Elon did well during it. Mark responds: “You can agree or disagree with the exact tactics and how he did that. Every leader has their own style… But a lot of the specific principles that he pushed on: making the organization more technical, decreasing distance between engineers at the company and him, fewer layers of management. I think that those were generally good changes.” Mark also believes this was good for the technology industry as a whole: “My sense is that there were a lot of other people who thought that 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 we’ve done… When people see what Elon is doing, I think 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.” He continues: “So I think that was one thing where he was quite ahead of a bunch of the other companies on… And from the outside, it’s very hard to know. Did he cut too much? Did he not cut enough? I don’t think it’s my place to opine on that… But certainly his actions led me and, I think, a lot of other folks in the industry to think about, ‘Hey, are we doing this as much as we should? Could we make our companies better by pushing on some of these same principles?’” Video source: Lex Fridman (2023)

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522,371 Aufrufe • vor 4 Monaten

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 it can mean that it’s ‘good as seen by society’. In the second meaning, you often end up with something that many people are doing.” He gives education startups as an example of a social startup - it’s seen as objectively good and lots of people are working on it. Thiel contrasts this to a mission-oriented company: “A mission-oriented company is one where if you didn’t work on this problem, nobody would.” He gives the example of Elon Musk starting SpaceX with the mission of going to Mars and making humans interplanetary. If Elon wasn’t working on it, this problem might not get solved. Thiel believes this is an important principle in general: “We always want to do things where… if you weren’t working on it, it wouldn’t get solved. Always go for that sort of counterfactual meaning. You don’t want to ever be in a place where you’re just one of a hundred cogs in the machine… You want to be in a place where you’re doing something that can’t be easily replicated or replaced - either on an individual level or the level of a company.” Video source: The Wharton School (2014)

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 it can mean that it’s ‘good as seen by society’. In the second meaning, you often end up with something that many people are doing.” He gives education startups as an example of a social startup - it’s seen as objectively good and lots of people are working on it. Thiel contrasts this to a mission-oriented company: “A mission-oriented company is one where if you didn’t work on this problem, nobody would.” He gives the example of Elon Musk starting SpaceX with the mission of going to Mars and making humans interplanetary. If Elon wasn’t working on it, this problem might not get solved. Thiel believes this is an important principle in general: “We always want to do things where… if you weren’t working on it, it wouldn’t get solved. Always go for that sort of counterfactual meaning. You don’t want to ever be in a place where you’re just one of a hundred cogs in the machine… You want to be in a place where you’re doing something that can’t be easily replicated or replaced - either on an individual level or the level of a company.” Video source: The Wharton School (2014)

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39,468 Aufrufe • vor 6 Monaten

21 year old Mark Zuckerberg explains why he isn’t worried about competition from Google When asked if he was worried about Google eventually competing against Facebook in a 2005 guest lecture at Harvard, a 21 year old Mark Zuckerberg gave the following reply: “I think that one of the cool things about this time in technology is that individuals are leveraged and able to do way more than they had really ever been able to do before… Instead of worrying about who’s the big player and what Google is going to do next? You can just get a lot of stuff done.” He points out that Facebook was able to scale to 300,000 users and 400 million page views per day with just 50 people and servers that cost only $100 per month. Meanwhile Google was doing 250 million page views a day with hundreds of thousands of machines and 5,000 employees. Mark argues: “The most important thing is to have smart people. As technology becomes more generic and less expensive, the leverage point becomes the people.” Mark believed that if he could recruit more intelligent people, Google’s resource advantage wouldn’t matter. He also believed Facebook’s small size was an advantage: “When you’re a small company, then you can be really nimble and get a lot of stuff done, and there’s relatively little bureaucracy. So if you have smart people who can take advantage of that to build cool things, then that’s a [big advantage].” Video source: CS50 (2005)

21 year old Mark Zuckerberg explains why he isn’t worried about competition from Google When asked if he was worried about Google eventually competing against Facebook in a 2005 guest lecture at Harvard, a 21 year old Mark Zuckerberg gave the following reply: “I think that one of the cool things about this time in technology is that individuals are leveraged and able to do way more than they had really ever been able to do before… Instead of worrying about who’s the big player and what Google is going to do next? You can just get a lot of stuff done.” He points out that Facebook was able to scale to 300,000 users and 400 million page views per day with just 50 people and servers that cost only $100 per month. Meanwhile Google was doing 250 million page views a day with hundreds of thousands of machines and 5,000 employees. Mark argues: “The most important thing is to have smart people. As technology becomes more generic and less expensive, the leverage point becomes the people.” Mark believed that if he could recruit more intelligent people, Google’s resource advantage wouldn’t matter. He also believed Facebook’s small size was an advantage: “When you’re a small company, then you can be really nimble and get a lot of stuff done, and there’s relatively little bureaucracy. So if you have smart people who can take advantage of that to build cool things, then that’s a [big advantage].” Video source: CS50 (2005)

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64,379 Aufrufe • vor 10 Monaten

🇺🇸 SEC. KENNEDY: I WAS WRONG ABOUT TRUMP, HE’S DEEP AND THOUGHTFUL "A lot of things have surprised me about the President because I bought into the idea that he was a one-dimensional character, that he was kind of a bombastic narcissist, and all that. And part of it is hearing it all the time on TV. But also, the way that he conducts himself sometimes validates those. If you have that narrative, you can find things, what he does, and validate that narrative. But what I've been surprised in getting to know him is what a kind of deep, multidimensional, and thoughtful character he is.” Source: Secretary Kennedy Tucker Carlson Network

🇺🇸 SEC. KENNEDY: I WAS WRONG ABOUT TRUMP, HE’S DEEP AND THOUGHTFUL "A lot of things have surprised me about the President because I bought into the idea that he was a one-dimensional character, that he was kind of a bombastic narcissist, and all that. And part of it is hearing it all the time on TV. But also, the way that he conducts himself sometimes validates those. If you have that narrative, you can find things, what he does, and validate that narrative. But what I've been surprised in getting to know him is what a kind of deep, multidimensional, and thoughtful character he is.” Source: Secretary Kennedy Tucker Carlson Network

Mario Nawfal

48,833 Aufrufe • vor 1 Jahr

Naval Ravikant on the “single-most important indicator of an entrepreneur’s success” Naval admits it’s very difficult to predict which startups will work—only 1 out of 10 of his angel investments succeed—but he has noticed a common trait among many of the great companies: “The founders are in it for the long haul. And the way you see that evidence very early on. They are extremely deliberate about all kinds of small decisions. Stuff you might think that doesn’t matter… And what you realize is is it’s their nature to obsess over these things because they feel like like they’re laying the bricks and the foundation of a skyscraper.” He contrasts this to entrepreneurs are more careless early on: “The people who are flippant about things… they’re often signaling to you that they’ll sell the company the first chance they get, or the moment that it looks like they’re gonna run out of cash, they’ll shut down.” He continues: “So I think that long-term mentality is probably the single-most important indicator of an entrepreneur’s success. But it’s by no means the only thing. It’s a very competitive environment. Most startups fail. And so you just gotta stick with it.” Video source: Startup Grind (2013)

Naval Ravikant on the “single-most important indicator of an entrepreneur’s success” Naval admits it’s very difficult to predict which startups will work—only 1 out of 10 of his angel investments succeed—but he has noticed a common trait among many of the great companies: “The founders are in it for the long haul. And the way you see that evidence very early on. They are extremely deliberate about all kinds of small decisions. Stuff you might think that doesn’t matter… And what you realize is is it’s their nature to obsess over these things because they feel like like they’re laying the bricks and the foundation of a skyscraper.” He contrasts this to entrepreneurs are more careless early on: “The people who are flippant about things… they’re often signaling to you that they’ll sell the company the first chance they get, or the moment that it looks like they’re gonna run out of cash, they’ll shut down.” He continues: “So I think that long-term mentality is probably the single-most important indicator of an entrepreneur’s success. But it’s by no means the only thing. It’s a very competitive environment. Most startups fail. And so you just gotta stick with it.” Video source: Startup Grind (2013)

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95,915 Aufrufe • vor 1 Jahr

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. Source: University of Oxford (May 2015)

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. Source: University of Oxford (May 2015)

Startup Archive

46,637 Aufrufe • vor 1 Monat

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)

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)

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457,223 Aufrufe • vor 9 Monaten

Elon Musk explains how to get startup ideas When asked how he comes up with startup ideas, Elon responds: “I tend to think of things from a sort of physics standpoint… what’s the best way to accomplish something? And then pursue that. That’s also a good way to determine if something’s far from its optimum.” He gives rockets as an example: “You could reason by analogy and say the rocket is going to cost a certain amount because that’s what prior rockets have cost. Or you can say, well, what is a rocket made of? What are the material constituents? What do they weigh? What’s the cost per unit mass? And that sets the limit asymptotically for what a rocket can be. So if you can figure out some creative way to rearrange those elements into a rocket shape, then you can achieve a much better outcome.” He also thinks combining ideas from different industries is really helpful for innovation: “What have people discovered in one industry and can that be applied to other industries? That’s I think also a great source of ideas. But usually you just struggle on a solution and try a bunch of things. Most of them don’t work and occasionally one does.” Source: VANITY FAIR (Oct 2014)

Elon Musk explains how to get startup ideas When asked how he comes up with startup ideas, Elon responds: “I tend to think of things from a sort of physics standpoint… what’s the best way to accomplish something? And then pursue that. That’s also a good way to determine if something’s far from its optimum.” He gives rockets as an example: “You could reason by analogy and say the rocket is going to cost a certain amount because that’s what prior rockets have cost. Or you can say, well, what is a rocket made of? What are the material constituents? What do they weigh? What’s the cost per unit mass? And that sets the limit asymptotically for what a rocket can be. So if you can figure out some creative way to rearrange those elements into a rocket shape, then you can achieve a much better outcome.” He also thinks combining ideas from different industries is really helpful for innovation: “What have people discovered in one industry and can that be applied to other industries? That’s I think also a great source of ideas. But usually you just struggle on a solution and try a bunch of things. Most of them don’t work and occasionally one does.” Source: VANITY FAIR (Oct 2014)

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33,984 Aufrufe • vor 20 Tagen

lando on max’s mind games and saying he would’ve won the title easily in the mclaren: “he’s very welcome to say whatever he wants to be honest. he kind of earned the right, he's won four world championships. i have a lot of respect and i think that gives anyone a lot of credit in general. he's achieved an incredible amount, more than anyone generally dreams of achieving. max generally has a good clue about a lot of things but there's also a lot of things he doesn't have much of a clue about. but it's also red bull's way of going about things, it's his kind of aggressive nature and just talking nonsense a lot of the time. so it depends if you want to listen to it and talk about it, like you love to, or you do what we do as a team, which is just kind of keep our heads down and keep focused. maybe he would have done, but he hasn't so far, and he keeps trying” 👏👏

lando on max’s mind games and saying he would’ve won the title easily in the mclaren: “he’s very welcome to say whatever he wants to be honest. he kind of earned the right, he's won four world championships. i have a lot of respect and i think that gives anyone a lot of credit in general. he's achieved an incredible amount, more than anyone generally dreams of achieving. max generally has a good clue about a lot of things but there's also a lot of things he doesn't have much of a clue about. but it's also red bull's way of going about things, it's his kind of aggressive nature and just talking nonsense a lot of the time. so it depends if you want to listen to it and talk about it, like you love to, or you do what we do as a team, which is just kind of keep our heads down and keep focused. maybe he would have done, but he hasn't so far, and he keeps trying” 👏👏

ray

928,344 Aufrufe • vor 7 Monaten

Marc Andreessen on the 3 things he looks for when investing in a startup The first thing Marc Andreesen looks for is a big market: “Is there a big existing market that you think you can go after and displace incumbents? Or do you believe there will be a new market that will be big?” The second thing he looks for is a 10x better product: “Is there a fundamental technology or economic change that justifies a new company? And the way I always think about that is: Is there a 10x change happening in the technology landscape? Is something 10x faster, 10x cheaper, or 10x better? If it’s not 10x, we as both VCs and entrepreneurs have to ask ourselves if it’s really worth doing because it’s really hard to start new companies . . . Existing companies are usually pretty good at what they do. So for a new company to exist, it has to bring a product to market that’s so much better than what exists that it punches through the status quo.” The third is the team: “Is the team outstanding? . . . You want to have a founding team of complementary skillsets. You want to have at least one super strong technologist — quite possibly more than one. Some of the best startups are actually more than one founding technologist. And then it often helps to have someone who is a marketing or salesperson who has a really good understanding of business.” Marc believes that you need all three of these, but if you’re going to compromise on one of those as an investor, it should be the product: “A great market is a lot easier to make up for with iterative product execution. The problem with a poor or small market is that even if you do a good job on the product, there just aren’t that many customers so it’s hard to ever get big and people get demoralized . . . And then we evaluate the team of a startup by its ability to get into a big market with a good product.”

Marc Andreessen on the 3 things he looks for when investing in a startup The first thing Marc Andreesen looks for is a big market: “Is there a big existing market that you think you can go after and displace incumbents? Or do you believe there will be a new market that will be big?” The second thing he looks for is a 10x better product: “Is there a fundamental technology or economic change that justifies a new company? And the way I always think about that is: Is there a 10x change happening in the technology landscape? Is something 10x faster, 10x cheaper, or 10x better? If it’s not 10x, we as both VCs and entrepreneurs have to ask ourselves if it’s really worth doing because it’s really hard to start new companies . . . Existing companies are usually pretty good at what they do. So for a new company to exist, it has to bring a product to market that’s so much better than what exists that it punches through the status quo.” The third is the team: “Is the team outstanding? . . . You want to have a founding team of complementary skillsets. You want to have at least one super strong technologist — quite possibly more than one. Some of the best startups are actually more than one founding technologist. And then it often helps to have someone who is a marketing or salesperson who has a really good understanding of business.” Marc believes that you need all three of these, but if you’re going to compromise on one of those as an investor, it should be the product: “A great market is a lot easier to make up for with iterative product execution. The problem with a poor or small market is that even if you do a good job on the product, there just aren’t that many customers so it’s hard to ever get big and people get demoralized . . . And then we evaluate the team of a startup by its ability to get into a big market with a good product.”

Startup Archive

17,333 Aufrufe • vor 5 Monaten

.Keith Rabois on the most important lesson he learned from Peter Thiel: You can’t hire anybody over 30. “Peter might not say it exactly the same way today, but basically, what he was trying to say is this: by the time you’re 30, everyone on the planet knows how to assess you pretty accurately. There are enough data points on your resume—back then, it was your resume, and today, it’s your LinkedIn profile—so that everybody can come to a consensus view about your abilities. But if you come to a consensus view about everybody’s abilities, guess what? Google is going to spend a lot of money on that person. Or OpenAI is going to spend a lot of money on that person. Or Meta is going to spend a lot of money on that person. And, when you’re a startup, you can’t outspend large companies that are very profitable or have infinite money like OpenAI. You need to be much more disciplined, much more frugal, and you may not even want to hire these people. The people who are motivated by that much compensation may not even be the right builders. I took that advice with me literally from November 2000, and I’ve been trying to apply it for 24 years now.”

Arjun Khemani

3,781,771 Aufrufe • vor 1 Jahr

Larry Page’s response to Steve Jobs’s critique that Google lacks focus When asked about Steve Jobs’s critique that Google is doing too many things and lacks focus, Page jokes: “I mean he was right. He did fine as well.” But Page does admit Google’s lack of focus is something he worried about. He explains that he chose this path for Google because he wanted to build a company for engineers and entrepreneurs. “You’re looking at the business benefit you might get [from trying all of these different ideas]. But I also think in terms of motivating ourselves, potential employees, and entrepreneurs. We want to be doing things that are exciting and that are really going to make a difference.” One of the things that inspired Page to create the Alphabet org structure was the observation that companies—in general—have bad reputations. “Most people don’t wake up and say ‘Oh, I wish I could go work for a company.’ They do it because they have to… I think that’s something we should work to change.” This was his goal for Google. “I think we need to be more ambitious. We’ve got to do things that matter more to people. We’ve got to do fewer things that are zero-sum games, and more things that really cause a lot of benefit.” Video source: FORTUNE (2015)

Larry Page’s response to Steve Jobs’s critique that Google lacks focus When asked about Steve Jobs’s critique that Google is doing too many things and lacks focus, Page jokes: “I mean he was right. He did fine as well.” But Page does admit Google’s lack of focus is something he worried about. He explains that he chose this path for Google because he wanted to build a company for engineers and entrepreneurs. “You’re looking at the business benefit you might get [from trying all of these different ideas]. But I also think in terms of motivating ourselves, potential employees, and entrepreneurs. We want to be doing things that are exciting and that are really going to make a difference.” One of the things that inspired Page to create the Alphabet org structure was the observation that companies—in general—have bad reputations. “Most people don’t wake up and say ‘Oh, I wish I could go work for a company.’ They do it because they have to… I think that’s something we should work to change.” This was his goal for Google. “I think we need to be more ambitious. We’ve got to do things that matter more to people. We’ve got to do fewer things that are zero-sum games, and more things that really cause a lot of benefit.” Video source: FORTUNE (2015)

Startup Archive

49,233 Aufrufe • vor 3 Monaten

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.

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 Aufrufe • vor 10 Monaten

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)

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 Aufrufe • vor 9 Monaten

Google founder Larry Page explains how he decides what to work on When asked about his philosophy and only working on “10x ideas”, Page invokes the idea of additionality from economics: “It means doing something that wouldn’t happen unless you’re actually doing it. I think the more you can do things like that, the bigger impact you can have. And that’s about doing things people might not think are possible.” Page believes technology is a huge enabler of this impact: “I’ve been amazed… The more you learn about technology, the more you learn what’s possible…. And so for me, I just tried to focus on: What is the future really going to be and how do we create it?” Page’s path to additionality is following your curiosity, working on things nobody else is working on, and being willing to take risks that others aren’t. Video source: TED Talks (2014)

Google founder Larry Page explains how he decides what to work on When asked about his philosophy and only working on “10x ideas”, Page invokes the idea of additionality from economics: “It means doing something that wouldn’t happen unless you’re actually doing it. I think the more you can do things like that, the bigger impact you can have. And that’s about doing things people might not think are possible.” Page believes technology is a huge enabler of this impact: “I’ve been amazed… The more you learn about technology, the more you learn what’s possible…. And so for me, I just tried to focus on: What is the future really going to be and how do we create it?” Page’s path to additionality is following your curiosity, working on things nobody else is working on, and being willing to take risks that others aren’t. Video source: TED Talks (2014)

Startup Archive

109,802 Aufrufe • vor 7 Monaten

Asmongold says he could never represent or lead a campaign or any kind of movement because of the way he looks 👀😭 “I can work from the shadows. I can never represent any sort of a movement because of the way that I look. I think people see the way that somebody like me looks, and then they are immediately like, ‘You know what? I'm on the other side. Whatever. I'm a warlock.’ Isn't that bad? Is there any other creator whose appearance is negatively discussed more on social media than me? Think about that. Is there a single person?”

Asmongold says he could never represent or lead a campaign or any kind of movement because of the way he looks 👀😭 “I can work from the shadows. I can never represent any sort of a movement because of the way that I look. I think people see the way that somebody like me looks, and then they are immediately like, ‘You know what? I'm on the other side. Whatever. I'm a warlock.’ Isn't that bad? Is there any other creator whose appearance is negatively discussed more on social media than me? Think about that. Is there a single person?”

Prism

78,213 Aufrufe • vor 16 Tagen

WILD TAKE: Bill Maher on the Supreme Court Striking Down Parts of the Voting Rights Act: “We’ve heard a lot of talk about a civil war. This is like a step toward that. I saw the map. The picture of the map of what it’s going to look like. There’s going to be no black congress people from the South.” “You think you can cut off the part of the country that has the most African Americans in it, and that map is completely red… and you think people are just going to take that lying down.” Bret Stephens: “What I think you’re actually going to have is you’re going to have black representation, but a lot more of it is going to be Republican.”

WILD TAKE: Bill Maher on the Supreme Court Striking Down Parts of the Voting Rights Act: “We’ve heard a lot of talk about a civil war. This is like a step toward that. I saw the map. The picture of the map of what it’s going to look like. There’s going to be no black congress people from the South.” “You think you can cut off the part of the country that has the most African Americans in it, and that map is completely red… and you think people are just going to take that lying down.” Bret Stephens: “What I think you’re actually going to have is you’re going to have black representation, but a lot more of it is going to be Republican.”

RedWave Press

864,120 Aufrufe • vor 2 Monaten