YouSaid · the spoken record

Peter Thiel

lines on the record
72
first
2018-08-02
most recent
2018-08-02
sittings or episodes
1
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podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

  1. “Apple's value crucially depended on the singular vision of a particular person. This hints at the strange way in which the companies that create new technology often resemble feudal monarchies rather than organizations that are supposedly more modern. A unique founder can make authoritative decisions, inspire strong personal loyalty, and plan ahead for decades. Paradoxically, impersonal bureaucracy staff by trained professionals can last longer than any lifetime, but they usually act with short time horizons. Lesson for business is that we need founders. If anything, we should be more tolerant of founders who seem strange or extreme. We need unusual individuals to lead companies beyond mere incrementalism.”

    2018-08-02 · Founders · #31 Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue and Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “The stark differences between man and machine mean that gains from working with computers are much higher than gains from trade with other people. We don't trade with computers any more than we trade with livestock or lamps, and that's the point. Computers are tools, not rivals. When we design new computer technology to help solve problems, we get all the efficiency gains of a hyper-specialized trading partner without having to compete with it for resources. Properly understood, technology is the one way for us to escape competition in a globalizing world. As computers become more and more powerful, they won't be substitutes for humans, they'll be complements. And I'm skipping over a bunch of chapters like I normally do, but I want to read, this is the longest part I want to read. And then I guess we can close with this.”

    2018-08-02 · Founders · #31 Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue and Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “This is something I actually agree with him on. He has an entire chapter called Man and Machine. Something I've become recently even more skeptical about is this common utterance that, oh, we're going to be careful. Like, we're going to automate away all of the jobs and humans are going to have nothing to do. And at first, I might have been receptive to it because I'm interested in technology and maybe I can't see clearly because of that bias. But then you start looking back in history and you're like, wait a minute, humans have been saying this over and over again constantly. And so Peter's chapter is saying the most valuable companies are not the ones that eliminate man with a machine. The most valuable ones are the combination of both. You take the strong attributes of a person and add the strong elements or attributes of a machine.”

    2018-08-02 · Founders · #31 Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue and Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “It's better to think of distribution as something essential to the design of your product. If you have 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 Superior sales and distribution by itself can create a monopoly, even with no product differentiation. The converse is not true. No matter how strong your product, even if it easily fits into already established habits, and anybody who tries it likes it immediately, you must still support it with a strong distribution plan.”

    2018-08-02 · Founders · #31 Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue and Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “That are important to our discussion today, that is. This is counterintuitive. Sales as a secret. The most fundamental reason that even business people underestimate the importance of sales in the systemic effort is the systemic effort to hide it at every level of every field and a world secretly driven by it. It's kind of like what Ryan Holliday was saying, how we're just naive to certain things, even though that's how the world works. The engineer's grail is a product great enough that it sells itself. But anyone who would actually say this about a real product must be lying, either he's delusional, meaning lying to himself, or he's selling something and thereby contradicting himself.”

    2018-08-02 · Founders · #31 Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue and Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “And now, this is what to do with secrets. If you find a secret, you face a choice. Do you tell anyone or do you keep it to yourself? It depends on the secret. Some are more dangerous than others. Unless you have perfectly conventional beliefs, it's rarely a good idea to tell everybody everything you know So, who do you tell whoever you need to and no more? In practice there's always a golden mean between telling nobody and telling everybody, and that's a company. The best entrepreneurs know this. Every great business is built around a secret that's hidden from the outside. A great company is a conspiracy to change the world. When you share your secret, the recipient becomes a fellow conspirator. See the ech I guess hear the echo to our wheel right away to say it. So just a few more notes.”

    2018-08-02 · Founders · #31 Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue and Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “The next page, the note I left myself is great companies can be built on unsuspected secrets. If you think something hard is impossible, you'll never even start trying to achieve it. Belief in secrets is therefore an effective truth. The actual truth is that there are many more secrets left to find, but they will yield only to relentless searchers. The same is true for business. Great companies can be built on open but unsuspected secrets about how the world works. Consider the Silicon Valley startups that have harnessed the spare capacity that is all around us but often ignored. Before Aaron B, travelers had little choice but to pay high prices for a hotel room, and property owners couldn't easily and reliably rent out their unoccupied space. Saw untapped supply and unaddressed demand where others saw nothing at all”

    2018-08-02 · Founders · #31 Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue and Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “So throughout the conspiracy book, we're constantly reminded of the importance of secrets. And zero to one, there's an entire chapter on secrets, chapter eight. So I just want to pull a couple things from there. I don't think we have to go too deep into it. Every one of today's most famous and familiar ideas was once unknown and unsuspected. The mathematical relationship between a triangle size, for example, was secret for millennia. Pythagoras had to think hard to discover it. If you wanted in on Pythagoras' new discovery, joining his strange vegetarian cult was the best way to learn about it. Today his geometry has become a convention, a simple truth we teach to grade schoolers. Conventional truth can be important. It's essential to learn elementary mathematics, for example, but it won't Give you an edge. It's not a secret.”

    2018-08-02 · Founders · #31 Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue and Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “And I think that was the point I was making a little earlier that some people are going to want to build businesses where the people that were reading books on that are huge and maybe lasted for a long time, even though all of them are temporary in the long term. Others, maybe you want a one-person business, whatever it is, the important part is you have agency, not just over your own life, but over a small and important part of the world. And my personal belief is if more people had agency and control over their that as opposed to just going to work for somebody else, they'd probably be a lot more satisfied.”

    2018-08-02 · Founders · #31 Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue and Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “A startup is the largest endeavor over which this is actually really important, a startup is the largest endeavor over which you can have definitive mastery. And here's this word again. You can have agency, not just over your own life, but over a small and important part of the world. It begins by rejecting the unjust tyranny of chance. You are not a lottery ticket.”

    2018-08-02 · Founders · #31 Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue and Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “Founders only sell when they have no more concrete visions for the company, in which case the acquirer probably overpaid. Definitive founders with robust plans don't sell, which means the offer wasn't high enough. When Yahoo offered to buy Facebook for one billion dollars in july two thousand six, I thought we should at least consider it. But Mark Zuckerberg walked into the board meeting and announced Oka guys, this is just a formality. It shouldn't take more than ten minutes. We're obviously not going to sell here. Mark saw where he could take the company and Yahoo didn't. A business with a good, definitive plan will always be underrated in a world where people see the future as random.”

    2018-08-02 · Founders · #31 Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue and Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Okay, so this is interesting too. Or at least I found it interesting. The most important lesson you can learn from Steve Jobs. But the most important lesson to learn from Jobs has nothing to do with aesthetics. The greatest thing Jobs designed was his business. Apple imagined and executed definitive multi year plans to create new products and distribute them effectively. Forget minimum viable products. Ever since he started Apple in nineteen seventy six, Job saw that you can change the world through careful planning, not by listening to focus groups feedback or copying other success. And this next part is when to sell your company.”

    2018-08-02 · Founders · #31 Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue and Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “So in this post, you have Keith. I think it's Raboy, maybe is how you pronounce his name. He's answering a question what strong beliefs on culture did Peter, Max, and David have at PayPal? And I just want to read this one paragraph. And he said, extreme focus driven by Peter. Peter required that everyone be tasked with exactly one priority. He would refuse to discuss virtually anything else with you except what was currently assigned as your number one initiative. Even our annual review forms in two thousand one required each employee to identify the single most valuable contribution to the company. Although I resisted some of this approach during the PayPal years, I am now a proponent of it and even have devised a theory of why it is crucial. All right, so let's go back to the book.”

    2018-08-02 · Founders · #31 Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue and Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “And this is the benefits of starting small. It was much easier to reach a few thousand people who really needed our product than try to compete for the attention of millions of scattered individuals. Oh, so I love this. And right after I read this, I'm going to read another thing from Cora. A definitive view favors firm. So let me read my note first. It says Peter's philosophy of extreme manager focus. Quote, one thing A definitive view, by contrast, favors firm convictions. Instead of pursuing many sided mediocrity and calling it well roundedness, a definitive person determines the one best thing to do and then does it. Instead of working tirelessly to make herself indistinguishable, she strives to be great at something substantive, to be a monopoly of one.”

    2018-08-02 · Founders · #31 Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue and Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “More sane than most. And I love this idea about durability. It echoes Jeff Bezos' quote that you should invest when you're setting up your business. You should invest in things that don't change. And this is Peter talking about durability. For a company to be valuable, it must grow and endure. But many entrepreneurs focus only on short-term growth. They have an excuse. Growth is easy to measure, but durability isn't. Those who succumb to measurement mania obsess about weakly active user statistics, monthly revenue targets, and quarterly earning reports. However, you can hit those numbers and still overlook deeper, harder to measure problems that threaten the durability of your business. If you focus on near-term growth above all else, you miss the most important question you should be asking. Will this business still be around a decade from now?”

    2018-08-02 · Founders · #31 Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue and Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “Tuition that continues to outpace inflation. Why are we doing this to ourselves? And a few pages later, we're introduced to a lesson from Hamlet. For Hamlet, greatness means willingness to, so there's a paragraph before that he quotes Hamlet. I guess I'll read that. This is directly from Hamlet, exposing what is mortal and unsure to all that fortune, death, and danger dare, even for an eggshell, rightly to be great is not to stir without great argument, but greatly defying quarrel in a straw when honors at the stake, and this is his description of that. For Hamlet, greatness means willingness to fight for reasons as thin as an eggshell. Anyone would fight for things that matter. True heroes take their personal honor so seriously that they will fight for things that don't matter. This twisted logic is part of human nature. But it's disastrous in business. If you can recognize competition as a destructive force instead of a sign of value, you're already”

    2018-08-02 · Founders · #31 Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue and Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “We teach every young person the same subjects in mostly the same ways, irrespective of individual talents and preferences. Students who don't learn best by sitting still at a desk are made to feel somehow inferior, while children who excel on conventional measures like tests and assignments end up defining their identities in terms of this weirdly contrived academic parallel reality, and it gets worse as students ascend to higher levels of the tournament. Elite students climb confidently until they reach a level of competition sufficiently intense to beat their dreams out of them. Higher education is the place where people who had big plans in high school get stuck in fierce rivalries with equally smart peers over conventional careers like management consultant consulting our investment banking. For the privilege of being turned into conformists, students or their families pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in skyrocketing.”

    2018-08-02 · Founders · #31 Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue and Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “So I just love that. And I think it might be a quick way to understand, to frame your thinking when you're thinking about building a business outside of an industry that's not already in competitive equilibrium and that one that if it disappears, there's no undifferentiated competitor that just pops back up in its space and it just keeps on moving. Let's see here.”

    2018-08-02 · Founders · #31 Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue and Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “Work as hard as you can, even though who you work with and what you work on is more important than how hard you work. So you should still work as hard as you can. Become the best in the world at what you do. Keep redefining what you do until this is true. That's almost similar to Peter Thiel saying is the quickest way to monopoly is a very small but valuable niche. And he uses the example of PayPal starting out with just 20,000 power sellers on eBay. There are no get rich quick schemes. That is just someone else getting rich off of you. Apply specific knowledge with leverage and eventually you will get what you deserve. When you're finally wealthy, you'll realize that it wasn't what you were seeking in the first place, but that's for another day”

    2018-08-02 · Founders · #31 Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue and Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “Play iterated games all the returns in life, whether in wealth, relationships or knowledge, come from compound interest. Well, there you go. Pick business partners with high intelligence, energy, and above all integrity. Don't partner with cynics and pessimists. Their beliefs are self-fulfilling. That I would describe with most of the people as far as I can tell. At least the ones I've been exposed to that used to work at Gawker, all of them seem to be cynical and pessimistic. I cannot stand these people in real life. I don't have anybody that I keep around me in my social circle that is cynical or pessimistic. It's useless. Learn to sell, learn to build. If you can do both, you will be unstoppable. Arm yourself with specific knowledge, accountability.”

    2018-08-02 · Founders · #31 Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue and Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “So, this next part I highlight, it says in business, equilibrium means stasis, and stasis means death. If your industry is in a competitive equilibrium, the death of your business won't matter to the world. Some other undifferentiated competitor will always be ready to take your place. So the note I left myself is what is the counter to this? So whenever I hear something like that, like, what is an undifferentiated competitor? So a good way to think about that, what he said, if your business dies, then it doesn't matter. Somebody else is just going to come right along and do exactly what you were doing. So therefore, you might be wasting your time. And so the example I always use is like a pizza place. Every city, everywhere has a pizza place, multiple pizza places. If one of them goes out of business, it's not really the end of the world because their product isn't really differentiated. And so when I'm asking myself, when I'm actually trying to learn, okay, I understand that concept, but how do we counter that? And so I actually...”

    2018-08-02 · Founders · #31 Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue and Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “Possible to invent new and better things. Creative monopolists give customers more choices by adding entirely new categories of abundance to the world. Creative monopolies are not just good for the rest of society, their powerful engines for making it better. And this is his example. Apple's monopoly profits from designing, producing, and marketing the iPhone were the reward for creating greater abundance, not artificial scarcity. Customers were happy to finally have the choice of paying high prices to get a smartphone that actually works.”

    2018-08-02 · Founders · #31 Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue and Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “If anybody misunderstands and his opinion on creating a monopoly, they're thinking of monopolies of old in a static world. If you were Cornelius Vanderbilt and you have a monopoly on, let's say, shipping traffic, well, there's nothing you could do. But that's completely different than a dynamic monopoly such as the one Google currently enjoys and Facebook. Okay. In a static world, monopolist is just a rent collector. If you corner the market for something, you can jack up the price. Others will have no choice but to buy from you. Think of like Comcast or if you're in an area where you're limited, there's no choice between cable or internet providers. Think of the famous board game. Deeds are shuffled around from a player to player, but the board never changes the monopoly that is. There's no way to win by inventing a better kind of real estate development. The relative values of the properties are fixed up for all time. So all you can do is try to buy them up. But the world we live in is dynamic.”

    2018-08-02 · Founders · #31 Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue and Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “And so his answer to that is create some kind of unique dynamic monopoly where you're creating value for other people, but you're capturing that value. In the book, he compares the difference between the airlines who create a lot of value but capture none of it and Google, who creates a lot of value and captures almost all of it. And so this is him talking about the difference between dynamic and static. And it's a very good.”

    2018-08-02 · Founders · #31 Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue and Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “And this is the business version of the contrarian question slash an answer for entrepreneurs. The business version of our contrarian question is what valuable company is nobody building? This question is harder than it looks because your company could create a lot of value without becoming very valuable itself. Creating value is not enough. You also need to capture some of the value you create. Americans mythologize competition and credit with saving us from socialist breadlines. Actually, capitalism and competition are opposites. Capitalism is premised on the accumulation of capital, but under perfect competition, all profits get competed away.”

    2018-08-02 · Founders · #31 Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue and Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “So skipping ahead, I found this very interesting. He's more of a contrarian here. So he talks about what people, specifically in Silicon Valley, learned from the dot-com crash. And let's call these the four principles for entrepreneurs. These are the four that people learned, and I'm going to share the four opposite principles he learned for entrepreneurs. One, make incremental advances. Two, stay lean and flexible. Three, improve on the competition. Four, focus on product, not sales. And now here's Peter's counter to that. Number one, it's better to risk boldness than trivial. I can't say that word. Number two, a bad plan is better than no plan. Number three, competitive markets destroy profits. Four. Matters just as much as product.”

    2018-08-02 · Founders · #31 Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue and Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “And now this is Peter's own answer to the contrarian question as of the time he published a book. My own answer to the contrarian question is that most people think that the future of the world will be defined by globalization. But the truth is that technology matters more. Without technological change, if China doubles its energy production over the next two decades, it will also double its air pollution. If every one of India's hundreds of millions of households were to live the way Americans already do, using only today's tools, the result would be environmentally catastrophic. Spreading old ways”

    2018-08-02 · Founders · #31 Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue and Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  28. “And a few pages later, I was struck by the difference in approach between Peter and Nick. And I wrote the question, how does this apply to your business? Peter is spending tens of thousands of dollars on a battery of market research as the trial approaches. Telephone surveys, in-person surveys, dossiers of social media comments about the trial. Analysis for media reporting, jury consultants, bankruptcy attorneys to prepare for the chance that Gawker might try to escape a catastrophic verdict. All this money, all these avenues spent and pursued in order to leave nothing to chance and to find every edge, every opportunity to land the decisive blow. For nearly a year he had called Mr A almost weekly to press one key issue. Are you sure if Gawker won't be able to squirrel out of the supersedus bond if they lose? His team had been pouring over.”

    2018-08-02 · Founders · #31 Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue and Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  29. “But he really wasn't going to. Not only were they trying to make me quit, this is a direct quote from Hogan, talk me into quitting before trial, they were trying to reward me for quitting. That's a really interesting perspective there. Gawker's heavy persuasion from beginning to end had the opposite effect. It only increased Hogan's anger and hardened his resolve. He had always been aggressive. Now this trait has fused with the intense hate that had developed over the last four years.”

    2018-08-02 · Founders · #31 Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue and Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  30. “And just another paragraph that I'm putting in, it's normal to second guess. There was a real second guessing, Peter explains. Are we totally wrong about everything here? And were our timelines wrong? Maybe none of our cases are going to work. Maybe this whole plan doesn't make sense. So I put that in there because somebody listening to this is surely second guessing an idea or something they're doing in life. I do all the time and I just think it's useful to know that others do and it's perfectly normal.”

    2018-08-02 · Founders · #31 Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue and Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  31. “So, what I took away from that and why I said how you do one thing is how you do all things they're making these kind of unforced errors and depositions. So I think you could rightfully conclude that they've probably made a bunch of errors in running their business over the last 10 years, which winds up being true because they find not only Hogan's case, but many other cases that could be used to weaken Gawker. I just came across, so what I like about Ryan Holliday's writing is how he sprinkles in history. And I like, he talks about these maxims from this British historian Liddell Hart. And it's comparing strategy to a tree. Here's some maxims that he has. Keep your object always in mind while adapting your plant's circumstances. Take a line of operation which offers alternative objectives. Ensure that both plans and the dispositions are fully.”

    2018-08-02 · Founders · #31 Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue and Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  32. “So, skipping ahead, I just mentioned some of the stuff that Nick and AJ say on the depositions, and I wrote Reckless slash how you do one thing is how you do all things, a quote I always like to remind myself of, and I try to bring up on the podcast as much as possible. What Teal learned watching those depositions of Denton and Durillio was that these men were worse than whatever uncharitable assumptions he had previously held about them. Who says those things in a legal proceeding? Who jokes about publishing child porn while under oath? Who describes an illicitly recorded sex tape and the article that brought it to millions of people as sweet? Do these people not understand how they come off? And this is a really smart.”

    2018-08-02 · Founders · #31 Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue and Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  33. “That's not right. That's not what we should be doing. That's just not. It's crazy to me. So let's go into what's going on and the dangers of screens and what's going on in Hogan's life. Wow, I'm getting way too emotional. I'm sorry, guys. I got to calm down. Okay. That's the problem when you have a child, you immediately think of like, and I have a little sister too. Oh, okay. There were signs, though, if anyone...”

    2018-08-02 · Founders · #31 Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue and Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  34. “And so I don't think everybody has to agree. Some people could think what happened to Gawker is justified. Some people can't. But if you know that information, I want to know how you're going to defend the behavior of Gawker. What would you do? And maybe I'm oversensitive to this, having a daughter. But if that ever happened to my daughter, I wouldn't stop at an email. Like these people don't, they didn't know what they were doing. Either they were arrogant or ignorant or a combination of both or just, I don't know the kind of person that could listen to a father begging, please take this tape of my 21-year-old daughter being raped on the bar, on the bathroom floor and a bar off the internet. And you tell them, oh, don't worry, it's no big deal. They send them to pass. And again, what is the motivation that Gawker has here? I'm getting a little too excited, so I'm going to calm down. Their motivation is page views so they can sell advertising.”

    2018-08-02 · Founders · #31 Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue and Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  35. “So I just went off on a tangent there, but it's interesting because the very next page, the note, I left myself is the danger of screens and the perseverance of Hulk Hogan. And maybe this was in the forefront of my mind when I just said what I said is let me just tell you why. When Gawker's writers looked at Terry Bullella as they looked at so many of the people they wrote about, they saw not a person, but a character in the game of their digital day-to-day existence. They saw the comical, cartoonish professional wrestler, the stupid celebrity who, like all celebrities, must enjoy all kinds of publicity good or bad, chosen or otherwise. They did not see a man who had lost nearly everything and had been pushed to his breaking point, so now we're going to detail the current position Hokkoganism in his life. And so in addition to publishing a stolen sex tape for Hulk Hogan, to making a joke about sex tapes of people over the age of four, there's also something.”

    2018-08-02 · Founders · #31 Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue and Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  36. “Meaning that what they were hearing was so disgusting. They had to restrain themselves from moving or from yelling out or from acting. So I'm not saying that everything that Peter is doing is defensible, but he's definitely more aware of human nature than I think the people in the bubble of Gawker are. And just, again, what kind of person do you want to be?”

    2018-08-02 · Founders · #31 Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue and Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  37. “And I just, I think I might have maybe even done something similar when I was younger. Maybe that's the issue here. That takes time and to be less selfish as you age. And certainly now having a relationship and a daughter, you're going to change. And maybe some of this is immaturity, but it's just not humane. And some of the stuff, I don't even know if I'll cover it all, but there's just one case in the deposition where, you know, there's the AJ Durolio, the other guy that got sued with Nick Denn, jokes about, he's like, no, I publish a sex tape of a celebrity because it's newsworthy. And they're like, well, is there an age limit? And he's like, yeah, four years old. And so they're like, so anybody over four, you'd publish a sex tape? And he's like, Yeah. And he says it's a joke. That's not That's not.”

    2018-08-02 · Founders · #31 Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue and Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  38. “You know, because I'm old enough where, like, the first time I got online, I think it was like 12 years old on an IBM PC using AOL, right? So part of my life, the internet didn't exist for all intents and purposes. And even back then, it was dial up and you couldn't use a phone. Like you couldn't get online if somebody was using the phone in your house. But what's happening now is that we're all online. There's a screen in between us. And there's something about even like whether it's a screen or think about when you're driving in a car, like somebody cuts you off, like you might yell or get mad just because you're siloed from that temporary siloed from that person. Like, this is another person. And instead of sympathizing with the fact that, you know, he's got kids and a family and it's embarrassing that sex tape was recorded without his permission and then stolen. They're making fun of him.”

    2018-08-02 · Founders · #31 Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue and Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  39. “And so the next part, something that is personally important to me, that the understanding that we live, a world far too complex for our understanding, that the unknown unknowns are always greater than the known knowns. And to try to design your life to survive and hopefully thrive in a world beyond our understanding. So here's an example where the unknown unknowns are going to come back in the future and destroy Gawker.”

    2018-08-02 · Founders · #31 Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue and Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  40. “They rarely are. And on the very next page, great advice, too, about focusing, the power of focusing on doing a few things correctly, which we've heard about in other books that we've covered. So it says, this is Peter. If you think of what you're doing too probabilistically, where you have all these different steps, and there's a chance that all these steps fail, then the conspiracy is very complicated, like a Rube Goldberg contraption where something is just going to break down for one reason or another. What Mr. A convinced me of in 2011 was that this is not a statistical concatenation of probabilities. It was that we simply was that if we simply executed on a few of these things correctly, you could win.”

    2018-08-02 · Founders · #31 Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue and Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  41. “And the idea that this, I always say the internet comments are the bane of our existence. I truly, for the life of me, don't understand why people waste their time doing stuff like that. And if for whatever reason you answer that question, yeah, you have, you might want to consider instead of being a critic, like I always say, this goes to people's, let me talk about in the domain I'm interested in podcasts. There's tons of podcasts where it's just people complaining about stuff they don't like. First of all, I don't know who they obviously have audiences, you know, because they could be popular. Some people I guess like to relish in that, but I just think the world needs far more evangelists than critics. And I think we should be talking about and spreading the ideas that we enjoy than just talking about things we don't like. It's a terrible way to spend your time. I'm sorry if I'm drowning on and on about this. I'm befuddled to use.”

    2018-08-02 · Founders · #31 Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue and Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  42. “To me, it kind of reminds, so I always talk about my favorite network is Twitter. And I don't tweet. I just use it to access information. And sometimes I click on the threads that are interesting. And you just see people wasting time all day being negative and attacking other people. And for the life of me, I don't understand how I understand, like I'm not naive in that sense. I know that gossip is the vast majority of human communication. I just think it's useless. It's a useless way to spend your time. Like how many times you listening to this podcast right now think about in the last 12 months how often did you spend your time being negative online? Have you left you watched a YouTube video and then left a negative comment? Have you attacked somebody on Twitter or Facebook or Instagram? Hopefully the answer is no because you see it's a giant waste of time and it's first of all it's not something you want to do to fellow individuals, but you're not doing anything. You're not adding any value to the world.”

    2018-08-02 · Founders · #31 Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue and Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  43. “And to me, when I say this is an example of what teaches us what not to do is the result of this kind of incompetence is your entire life's works destroyed, your personally bankrupt, you have to beg for leniency so you can get some money out of your company is basically dissolved, which he winds up getting a couple million dollars Nick does, and you basically run away from the United States. and you take exile. I think he lives in like Switzerland now or somewhere in Europe. This was preventable. Like, you could have done something else with your time. I don't understand why you. Why would you do this to other people? It's so bizarre. It's not journalism. It's gossip. It's useless.”

    2018-08-02 · Founders · #31 Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue and Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  44. “That's a real person. That's a husband, a father, a person. I don't understand how you think you could do that over a long period of time and not reap any repercussions. It's unfathomable to me. From what I'm reading, Nick Denton is not a dumb person. He certainly did dumb things. I just don't understand how he didn't understand that.”

    2018-08-02 · Founders · #31 Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue and Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  45. “They're going to have a reaction. And that reaction can be extremely dangerous. It can take the form of a lawsuit or in some cases, in most cases, what I would argue the lowest common denominator of the human species if you just observe our behavior is violence. So it's very, very reckless and very, very dumb to be prodding people and to be building your life around messing with people. And Hulk Hogan's case trying to destroy his life. And that was one thing that I just couldn't get over. They ran what they knew was a stolen sex tape. And what was the reason for doing it? For page views so then they could show advertising against those page views. That's not how you should want to spend your time.”

    2018-08-02 · Founders · #31 Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue and Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  46. “and is forced by necessity either to act or to suffer becomes a very dangerous man to the prince. And to me, that's a. It's just kind of obvious that Gawker had a really bad business when you think of their entire business is Was built around trying to harm others as if they talk about in the book how sometimes they just see him as like you know digital avatars not real people but people The people that you prod at your own peril.”

    2018-08-02 · Founders · #31 Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue and Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  47. “Teal has been asked about one of his strange investments that many people were sure would not work out. That's a good thing, he said. He liked hearing that criticism. We don't really need to worry about those people very much, because since they don't think it's possible, they won't take us very seriously, and they will not actually try to stop us until it's too late”

    2018-08-02 · Founders · #31 Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue and Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  48. “And skipping ahead now, more similarities between a conspiracy and a company. A startup is, in Peter's definition, a small group of people that you've convinced of a truth that nobody else believes in. This is a fitting definition of what has assembled here as well, talking about the conspiracy. More people would be added as time passed. Allies and enemies of enemies would be brought into the fold, but all of it would proceed from the shared belief of these three men that destruction of Gawker might be possible. Now they had their first decision to make together how and the three men are Peter, this guy named Mr A, who is a main character in the book and I'm not going to spend much time on mister and then the attorney that they hire. So Mr. A is the one that gave Peter the idea to do this in the first place several years after he was outed, Peter's having dinner with”

    2018-08-02 · Founders · #31 Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue and Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  49. “I plan on it. So it says his name was Renee Girard. One of the most profound intellectual influences on Peter Thiel is a French thinker named Renee Girard, whom he met while at Stanford, and whose funeral he would eventually speak at in twenty fifteen. Gerard's theory of memetic desire holds that people have no idea what they want or what they value, so are drawn to what other people want. They want what other people have. They covet. It's this, Gerard says, that is the source of almost all the conflicts in the world. So the book I ordered of his was, I think it's called Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World or something like that, which the title alone is like, ooh, I have to order. So I'm going to skipping ahead again. We're going to talk about the high agency person.”

    2018-08-02 · Founders · #31 Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue and Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  50. “And the next note, I came to a few pages later was why did people believe nothing could be done? And Peter is describing why people were telling him it was a waste of time. He says, at the time, it felt like a crazy uphill battle, you know, even with all the financial resources. Teal would save this period of consideration. It was the nature of the thing. Gawker's power in part came from pretending that it was more powerful than it was. Once that power dissolves, as it would eventually by Peter's doing, it's difficult to remember how that once was the view, but it was the view for business purposes I would say there's opportunity where most people are not looking and what was once impossible becomes commonplace. And then we kind of forget that, oh yeah, this wasn't possible before. And you're going to see an example of that in 0 to 1.”

    2018-08-02 · Founders · #31 Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue and Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source