Peter Thiel

pero él empezó deliberadamente con los libros.

If you treat the future as something definite, it makes sense to understand it in advance and to work to shape it. But if you expect an indefinite future ruled by randomness, you’ll give up on trying to master it.

A board of three is ideal. Your board should never exceed five people, unless your company is publicly held. (Government regulations effectively mandate that public companies have larger boards — the average is nine members.) By far the worst you can do is to make your board extra large. When unsavvy observers see a nonprofit organization with dozens of people on its board, they think: “Look how many great people are committed to this organization! It must be extremely well run.” Actually, a huge board will exercise no effective oversight at all; it merely provides cover for whatever microdictator actually runs the organization. If you want that kind of free rein from your board, blow it up to giant size. If you want an effective board, keep it small.

If you’ve invented something new but you haven’t invented an effective way to sell it, you have a bad business — no matter how good the product.

The road doesn’t have to be infinite after all. Take the hidden paths.

In the real world outside economic theory, every business is successful exactly to the extent that it does something others cannot. Monopoly is therefore not a pathology or an exception. Monopoly is the condition of every successful business. Tolstoy opens Anna Karenina by observing: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Business is the opposite. All happy companies are different: each one earns a monopoly by solving a unique problem. All failed companies are the same: they failed to escape competition.

We are more fascinated today by statistical predictions of what the country will be thinking in a few weeks’ time than by visionary predictions of what the country will look like in 10 or 20 years from now.

As computers become more and more powerful, they won’t be substitutes for humans: they’ll be complements.

U biznisu, novac je važan ili je najvažniji. Monopolisti si mogu dopustiti da razmišljaju i o drugim stvarima; ne-monopolisti to ne mogu.

We teach every young person the same subjects in mostly the same ways, irrespective of individual talents and preferences.

If anything, we should be more tolerant of founders who seem strange or extreme;

También puedes mejorar diez veces tu producto a través de un diseño integrado superior.

The Engineering Question Can you create breakthrough technology instead of incremental improvements? 2. The Timing Question Is now the right time to start your particular business? 3. The Monopoly Question Are you starting with a big share of a small market? 4. The People Question Do you have the right team? 5. The Distribution Question Do you have a way to not just create but deliver your product? 6. The Durability Question Will your market position be defensible 10 and 20 years into the future? 7. The Secret Question Have you identified a unique opportunity that others don’t see?

Network effects can be powerful, but you’ll never reap them unless your product is valuable to its very first users when the network is necessarily small.

but how to establish a process by which a sales team of modest size can move the product to a wide audience.