Stephanie Le

Peter Thiel | How to Start a Startup: Competition is for Losers | SVIC Interview

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Silicon Valley Investors Club (SVIC) is a global community of STEM professionals interested in making smarter investment and career decisions.

Peter Thiel is an entrepreneur and investor. He cofounded PayPal, led it as CEO, and took it public; he made the first outside investment in Facebook, where he serves as a director; and he cofounded Palantir Technologies, where he serves as chairman. He has recently released a pre-recorded video that focuses on what makes a business valuable and how to successfully expand your startup.

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In This Talk, You’ll Learn About:

  • What specifically makes a business valuable to a customer
  • How advertising is used online and globally to capture audiences
  • The story of Paypal and how it expanded to become the brand it is today
  • The marginal costs of software
  • Technological progress and innovation over the years

Related Interviews: Interview with Annie Duke, Thinking in Bets

Episode Notes:

  • 00:03 Introduction and welcome of Peter Thiel.
  • 00:56 Capturing/creating value – what makes a business valuable.
  • 03:43 Pros and cons to the world of perfect competition.
  • 5:00 Two kinds of businesses in this world - perfectly competitive, and monopolies.
  • 06:45 Lies people tell about their businesses and how they work.
  • 7:55 Examples of how the lies work in practice.
  • 9:30 Is the intersection valuable - is it real, does it make sense?
  • 10:19 The Search market - the opposite lie.
  • 11:04 The advertising market - Online advertising, US advertising, and global advertising.
  • 11:30 Technology market - competition between cars, phones, social network.
  • 12:38 The evidence of the narrow markets in the tech industry.
  • 13:27 How to build a monopoly. Right size – start small and monopolize.
  • 15:02 Starting small and expanding - the PayPal story.
  • 18:44 Characteristics of monopoly businesses – proprietary technology, network effects. economies of scale branding.
  • 19:58 Characteristic of a monopoly technology company – PayPal and Amazon. comparison.
  • 21:36 Economies of scale - high fixed costs, low marginal costs, and branding.
  • 25:20 Time dimension to the characteristics.
  • 27:12 Value of the future - the last mover advantage.
  • 27:54 History of innovation - two slightly directions with this monopoly versus competition idea.
  • 28:27 Technological innovation – technological progress over the years.
  • 29:08 Valuable innovations – lack of reward for inventors.
  • 32:00 Vertically integrated complex monopolies.
  • 34:21 Software and economies of scale, low marginal costs.
  • 37:02 Psychology and competition – competition is for loser’s idea.
  • 38:1 Mimetic preferences - human nature and problematic behavior.
  • 38:36 Competitions as validation – does the intensity of competition make sense.
  • 42:23 Question and Answer session.

Related Interviews: Interview with Sebastian Junger, author of “Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging”

Recommended Book

Zero to One by Peter Thiel

Check out the Silicon Valley Investors Club (SVIC) Library for more great reads.

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