#278 Peter Thiel

What I learned from rereading Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel. ---- Get access to the World’s Most Valuable Notebook for Founders by investing in a subscription to Founders Notes ---- [4:01] Jobs's return to Apple 12 years later shows how the most important task in business-the creation of new valuecannot be reduced to a formula and applied by professionals. [5:00] A really important sentence to understand one of the main points in Peter’s book: Apple's value crucially depended on the singular vision of a particular person. [5:00] A unique founder can make authoritative decisions, inspire strong personal loyalty, and plan ahead for decades. [6:00] Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue and Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future (Founders #31) [7:00] Properly understood, any new and better way of doing things is technology. [8:00] By creating new technologies we rewrite the plan of the world. [9:00] The paradox of teaching entrepreneurship is that such a formula necessarily cannot exist; because every innovation is new and unique, no authority can prescribe in concrete terms how to be innovative. The single most powerful pattern I have noticed is that successful people find value in unexpected places, and they do this by thinking about business from first principles instead of formulas. [10:00] The minute that you understand that you can poke life and actually something will pop out the other side, that you can change it, you can mold it. That's maybe the most important thing. It's to shake off this erroneous notion that life is there and you're just gonna live in it, versus embrace it, change it, improve it, make your mark upon it. —Steve Jobs [11:00] Brilliant thinking is rare, but courage is in even shorter supply than genius. [13:00] A startup is the largest group of people you can convince of a plan to build a different future. A new company's most important strength