Peter Thiel: Of the six co-founders of PayPal, four were bombing as schoolchildren.
“Your brain is software. Program it. your body is a shell. Change it. Death is a disease. Heal yourself. The extinction is approaching. Fight him. ”
Today is Peter Thiel's birthday, Don PayPal Mafia . He turned 49 years old.
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His achivki:
Journalist: - Wikipedia says that you are a member of the management committee of the Bilderberg club. Is this true, and if so, what are you doing there? Organize secret world domination?
Peter Thiel: - This is true, although everything is not so secret or secret that I could not tell you. The bottom line is that there is a good dialogue between the various political, financial, media and business leaders of America and Western Europe. There is no conspiracy. And this is a problem of our society. No secret plan. Our leaders do not have a secret plan how to solve all our problems. Perhaps secret plans are bad, but much more outrageous, in my opinion, the lack of a plan in principle.
Under the cut - a few quotes on the key activities of Till. Let's try to track the thoughts of the great IT strategist.
“The first team I created in Silicon Valley was nicknamed“ PayPal Mafia ”because of the fact that many of my former colleagues subsequently helped each other by launching successful technology firms and investing in them. In 2002, we sold eBay to PayPal for $ 1.5 billion. Since then, Elon Musk managed to found SpaceX and become a co-founder of Tesla Motors, Reed Hoffman co-founded LinkedIn, Steve Chen, Chad Hurley and Jod Karim jointly founded YouTube, Jeremy Stoppelman and Russell Simmons launched Yelp, David Sachs co-founded Yammer, and I co-founded Palantir. Today, the seven companies mentioned are estimated at about $ 1 billion each. The small joys that PayPal office offered to employees have never attracted much attention from the press, but our team still works perfectly well, both together and separately. Our corporate culture has been strong enough to take root far beyond the PayPal office. We did not collect our mafia by arranging a resume or recruiting the most talented employees. ”
“Time is your most valuable resource, and it’s foolish to spend it on working with people who don’t see any long-term shared future for themselves. If the result of the time spent at work did not become stable friendly relations with colleagues, it means that you have illiterately invested your time - even from a purely financial point of view.
From the very beginning, I wanted to ensure that relations between employees at PayPal were not formal, so that we would become a closely knit team. I believed that companionship not only brings us satisfaction and will contribute to effective work, but will also help to build more successful careers outside of PayPal. Therefore, we tried to hire people who will work together with sincere pleasure. Of course, we expected that they would be talented, but what was more important was that they genuinely strive to work with us. This is how the PayPal mafia was formed. ”
“Space is a vast space that provides endless possibilities for escape from the world of politics.”
“Every business event happens only once. New Bill Gates will not create an operating system. New Larry Page and Sergey Brin do not come up with a search engine. And the new Mark Zuckerberg will not build a social network. If you copy these guys, it means that you have not learned anything from them. ”
“People tend to concentrate too much on horizontal development, whereas the step from 0 to 1 is really important. All the great companies (Facebook, Palantir, SpaceX) were able to make it, the rest are not.”
“It is impossible to build a successful company if everyone a priori believes that it will be successful. The key question is formulated as follows: do you know something about the world, which is unconditional truth, but what do everyone else disagree with? ”
“Palantir, our second most profitable investment after Facebook, in turn, allowed us to earn more than other companies in total (net of Facebook, of course). This bias in profitable profits is quite natural: the same picture is observed in our other funds. The main secret of venture capital is that, if successful, the most successful of the fund's investments brings him no less, and often more, income than all other investments combined. From this follow two very strange rules for venture capitalists. Rule number one: you should only invest in companies that have enough potential to repay you the amount comparable to the capital of your fund. This rule is scary for many, as it excludes the vast majority of potential candidates for investment, including quite successful companies, which, however, can only rely on a more modest profit. From here follows rule number two: since the first rule puts you in a rather rigid framework, no other rules should be observed. ”
“With perfect competition, no one earns money: all profits go to continue rivalry.”
“What makes a company capable of attracting cash flows not only today, but many years later?” Each monopoly is unique, but, as a rule, it possesses a set of characteristics from the following list: its own technology, network effect, scale effect, brand. "
“Capitalism is built on capital accumulation, but perfect competition deprives capitalists of all profits, thus giving entrepreneurs a simple and clear lesson: if you want to create and save incomes, do not build a business based on the production of goods that are no different from those of competitors.”
“Creative monopoly is new products and services that are beneficial for everyone, without exception, and do not dry out the flow of profits for their creator. Competition is the absence of profit, the absence of any noticeable differences between market participants and the constant struggle for survival. ”
“Maybe the leading universities of the world are engaged only in the fact that they simply select talented people who would succeed anyway? Or do they still give them a useful education? Unfortunately, this question has never been studied thoroughly enough, so there are a lot of oddities in higher education. ”
“University lecturers prefer to downplay the degree of fierce competition among students, but managers are another matter. They do not get tired to remind everyone that business is war. MBA students do not part with the works of Clausewitz and Sun Tzu. Militant metaphors pervade the everyday language of business: we use "bounty hunters" to "strengthen" and "strengthen" the staff of sales professionals who will help the company "conquer" the market, "protected from the actions of competitors", and eventually "achieve victory ". In fact, the war is not like the business itself, but competition. Her need is dubious, the courage of the participants in the battles is not obvious, and the influence is undoubtedly crushing. ”
“I consider higher education a bubble, and a classical bubble. <...> The value of higher education today is over-estimated incredibly. If you try to objectively calculate its value, it will become clear: people overpay for it. At the same time, everyone is very sincere in him. <...> I do not want to give advice. But I would say that for people who have already graduated from school and are now going to university or are just going to do it, it would be extremely useful to think about what exactly is the teleology of education - what is its purpose and where does it lead ”.
“Everyone in the world needs money - to pay wages, to trade, to live. Paper money is an ancient technology that today is not very suitable for this purpose. Paper money may run out. They can be lost. They can be stolen. In the 21st century, people need something more convenient and safer. Something that you can always use if the Internet is nearby. <...> In the future, PayPal will give people around the world direct control over their currency. And then corrupt governments can never deprive them of their personal fortune. ”
“I no longer believe that democracy and freedom are compatible. <...> But if you think that the world is limited by politics, then it’s easy to fall into despair. But I do not despair. I do not think that all the keys to our future are in the hands of politicians. The main task for the libertarians of our time is to find ways to escape from politics in all its forms - to escape from both totalitarianism and fundamentalism, and from the power of a thoughtless people and the so-called social democracy. ”
“At the beginning of the century, companies like Facebook created a space where people can form new communities that are not bound by the historical boundaries of nations and states. The Internet gives hope that over time, a new reality will change the existing social and political order. But the Internet is limited in means - this is the virtual world and it offers only illusory salvation. Which of these two forces will ultimately prevail is the main issue that will not be resolved for a very long time. ”
“ Space is an endless space that provides endless opportunities for escape from the world of politics. But there is one problem: since the 1960s, space technologies have evolved extremely slowly, so the universe remains an inaccessible place for us. We must redouble our efforts to commercialize space, but we must remain realistic. The libertarian future described in Robert Heinlein’s science fiction books will not come before the second half of the 21st century. ”
“These technologies certainly carry some threats. However, if you completely abandon them, everything will only get worse. If they are not developed by good people, evil people will take care of it. In my opinion, this is the perfect recipe for disaster. The only chance to do something similar is to create a giant totalitarian state on the territory of the entire planet that will control all technological development. But it seems to me that it was precisely such a world that Bill Joy was afraid of. ”
“I do not think that death and life are inseparably linked in some eastern mystical sense. Every myth on this planet tells us that the goal of life is death. I do not think this is true. I think that the meaning of life is life. ”
“Striving to minimize risk is often the wrong way. To become great, you need to think about great plans. Always plan for the future. ”
“Modern science fiction is a symbol of the crisis of our ideas. Now she talks about technologies that either do not work at all or are used with malicious intent. The summary of the fiction of the 1970s was as follows: "Me and my robot friend are walking on the surface of the moon." But today everything looks something like this: "The galaxy is under the authority of the confederation of fundamental Islamists, and some people are destroying entire planets for fun."
Til recommends reading:
Publishing support is Edison , a company that develops corporate portals and video-transfer applications .
PS And Peter Thiel in his youth played weak chess.
Today is Peter Thiel's birthday, Don PayPal Mafia . He turned 49 years old.
')
His achivki:
- Founded PayPal in 1998 with Max Levchin
- Facebook's first external investor ($ 500 thousand)
- In 2003 he founded the company Palantir
- Managing Partner at Founders Fund
- Co-founder and chairman of the investment committee Mithril Capital Management (fund for investment at a later stage)
- Since 2010, 30 students have been given $ 100,000 each so that they quit university and went about their project (in 2014, invested in Ethereum)
- In 2015 he became a partner of the startup incubator Y Combinator.
Journalist: - Wikipedia says that you are a member of the management committee of the Bilderberg club. Is this true, and if so, what are you doing there? Organize secret world domination?
Peter Thiel: - This is true, although everything is not so secret or secret that I could not tell you. The bottom line is that there is a good dialogue between the various political, financial, media and business leaders of America and Western Europe. There is no conspiracy. And this is a problem of our society. No secret plan. Our leaders do not have a secret plan how to solve all our problems. Perhaps secret plans are bad, but much more outrageous, in my opinion, the lack of a plan in principle.
Under the cut - a few quotes on the key activities of Till. Let's try to track the thoughts of the great IT strategist.
Mafia
“The first team I created in Silicon Valley was nicknamed“ PayPal Mafia ”because of the fact that many of my former colleagues subsequently helped each other by launching successful technology firms and investing in them. In 2002, we sold eBay to PayPal for $ 1.5 billion. Since then, Elon Musk managed to found SpaceX and become a co-founder of Tesla Motors, Reed Hoffman co-founded LinkedIn, Steve Chen, Chad Hurley and Jod Karim jointly founded YouTube, Jeremy Stoppelman and Russell Simmons launched Yelp, David Sachs co-founded Yammer, and I co-founded Palantir. Today, the seven companies mentioned are estimated at about $ 1 billion each. The small joys that PayPal office offered to employees have never attracted much attention from the press, but our team still works perfectly well, both together and separately. Our corporate culture has been strong enough to take root far beyond the PayPal office. We did not collect our mafia by arranging a resume or recruiting the most talented employees. ”
“Time is your most valuable resource, and it’s foolish to spend it on working with people who don’t see any long-term shared future for themselves. If the result of the time spent at work did not become stable friendly relations with colleagues, it means that you have illiterately invested your time - even from a purely financial point of view.
From the very beginning, I wanted to ensure that relations between employees at PayPal were not formal, so that we would become a closely knit team. I believed that companionship not only brings us satisfaction and will contribute to effective work, but will also help to build more successful careers outside of PayPal. Therefore, we tried to hire people who will work together with sincere pleasure. Of course, we expected that they would be talented, but what was more important was that they genuinely strive to work with us. This is how the PayPal mafia was formed. ”
“Space is a vast space that provides endless possibilities for escape from the world of politics.”
Startups
“Every business event happens only once. New Bill Gates will not create an operating system. New Larry Page and Sergey Brin do not come up with a search engine. And the new Mark Zuckerberg will not build a social network. If you copy these guys, it means that you have not learned anything from them. ”
“People tend to concentrate too much on horizontal development, whereas the step from 0 to 1 is really important. All the great companies (Facebook, Palantir, SpaceX) were able to make it, the rest are not.”
“It is impossible to build a successful company if everyone a priori believes that it will be successful. The key question is formulated as follows: do you know something about the world, which is unconditional truth, but what do everyone else disagree with? ”
“Palantir, our second most profitable investment after Facebook, in turn, allowed us to earn more than other companies in total (net of Facebook, of course). This bias in profitable profits is quite natural: the same picture is observed in our other funds. The main secret of venture capital is that, if successful, the most successful of the fund's investments brings him no less, and often more, income than all other investments combined. From this follow two very strange rules for venture capitalists. Rule number one: you should only invest in companies that have enough potential to repay you the amount comparable to the capital of your fund. This rule is scary for many, as it excludes the vast majority of potential candidates for investment, including quite successful companies, which, however, can only rely on a more modest profit. From here follows rule number two: since the first rule puts you in a rather rigid framework, no other rules should be observed. ”
Monopoly
“With perfect competition, no one earns money: all profits go to continue rivalry.”
“What makes a company capable of attracting cash flows not only today, but many years later?” Each monopoly is unique, but, as a rule, it possesses a set of characteristics from the following list: its own technology, network effect, scale effect, brand. "
“Capitalism is built on capital accumulation, but perfect competition deprives capitalists of all profits, thus giving entrepreneurs a simple and clear lesson: if you want to create and save incomes, do not build a business based on the production of goods that are no different from those of competitors.”
“Creative monopoly is new products and services that are beneficial for everyone, without exception, and do not dry out the flow of profits for their creator. Competition is the absence of profit, the absence of any noticeable differences between market participants and the constant struggle for survival. ”
Education
“Maybe the leading universities of the world are engaged only in the fact that they simply select talented people who would succeed anyway? Or do they still give them a useful education? Unfortunately, this question has never been studied thoroughly enough, so there are a lot of oddities in higher education. ”
“University lecturers prefer to downplay the degree of fierce competition among students, but managers are another matter. They do not get tired to remind everyone that business is war. MBA students do not part with the works of Clausewitz and Sun Tzu. Militant metaphors pervade the everyday language of business: we use "bounty hunters" to "strengthen" and "strengthen" the staff of sales professionals who will help the company "conquer" the market, "protected from the actions of competitors", and eventually "achieve victory ". In fact, the war is not like the business itself, but competition. Her need is dubious, the courage of the participants in the battles is not obvious, and the influence is undoubtedly crushing. ”
“I consider higher education a bubble, and a classical bubble. <...> The value of higher education today is over-estimated incredibly. If you try to objectively calculate its value, it will become clear: people overpay for it. At the same time, everyone is very sincere in him. <...> I do not want to give advice. But I would say that for people who have already graduated from school and are now going to university or are just going to do it, it would be extremely useful to think about what exactly is the teleology of education - what is its purpose and where does it lead ”.
Politics
“Everyone in the world needs money - to pay wages, to trade, to live. Paper money is an ancient technology that today is not very suitable for this purpose. Paper money may run out. They can be lost. They can be stolen. In the 21st century, people need something more convenient and safer. Something that you can always use if the Internet is nearby. <...> In the future, PayPal will give people around the world direct control over their currency. And then corrupt governments can never deprive them of their personal fortune. ”
“I no longer believe that democracy and freedom are compatible. <...> But if you think that the world is limited by politics, then it’s easy to fall into despair. But I do not despair. I do not think that all the keys to our future are in the hands of politicians. The main task for the libertarians of our time is to find ways to escape from politics in all its forms - to escape from both totalitarianism and fundamentalism, and from the power of a thoughtless people and the so-called social democracy. ”
“At the beginning of the century, companies like Facebook created a space where people can form new communities that are not bound by the historical boundaries of nations and states. The Internet gives hope that over time, a new reality will change the existing social and political order. But the Internet is limited in means - this is the virtual world and it offers only illusory salvation. Which of these two forces will ultimately prevail is the main issue that will not be resolved for a very long time. ”
“ Space is an endless space that provides endless opportunities for escape from the world of politics. But there is one problem: since the 1960s, space technologies have evolved extremely slowly, so the universe remains an inaccessible place for us. We must redouble our efforts to commercialize space, but we must remain realistic. The libertarian future described in Robert Heinlein’s science fiction books will not come before the second half of the 21st century. ”
“These technologies certainly carry some threats. However, if you completely abandon them, everything will only get worse. If they are not developed by good people, evil people will take care of it. In my opinion, this is the perfect recipe for disaster. The only chance to do something similar is to create a giant totalitarian state on the territory of the entire planet that will control all technological development. But it seems to me that it was precisely such a world that Bill Joy was afraid of. ”
“I do not think that death and life are inseparably linked in some eastern mystical sense. Every myth on this planet tells us that the goal of life is death. I do not think this is true. I think that the meaning of life is life. ”
“Striving to minimize risk is often the wrong way. To become great, you need to think about great plans. Always plan for the future. ”
Books
“Modern science fiction is a symbol of the crisis of our ideas. Now she talks about technologies that either do not work at all or are used with malicious intent. The summary of the fiction of the 1970s was as follows: "Me and my robot friend are walking on the surface of the moon." But today everything looks something like this: "The galaxy is under the authority of the confederation of fundamental Islamists, and some people are destroying entire planets for fun."
Til recommends reading:
- “Black Swan”, Nassim Taleb.
- New Atlantis, Francis Bacon.
- “The Right Thing”, Tom Wolfe.
- The Diamond Age, Neil Stephenson.
- "Sovereign Personality," James Davidson.
Interesting articles
- Course lectures "Startup". Peter Thiel. Stanford 2012. Activity 1
- How is Peter Thiel going to live to 120 years
- Palantir, PayPal Mafia, special services, world government
- Peter Thiel on why higher education is overvalued
- Peter Thiel: How to build a monopoly?
- How Peter Thiel distinguishes insanely cool startups from insane
- “No need to be true to yourself”: Peter Thiel's speech to the graduates of 2016
Publishing support is Edison , a company that develops corporate portals and video-transfer applications .
PS And Peter Thiel in his youth played weak chess.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/311916/
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