Peter Thiel Quotes - 30 quotes

Share

Peter Thiel

Peter Thiel is a German-American entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and political activist. He is best known for co-founding PayPal, Palantir Technologies, and Founders Fund, and for being the first outside investor in Facebook. He was born on October 11, 1967, in Frankfurt, Germany. Thiel moved to ... show more

quote icon Competition can make people hallucinate opportunities where none exist.

Share

quote icon To an indefinite optimist, the future will be better, but he doesn't know how exactly, so he won't make any specific plans. He expects to profit from the future but sees no reason to design it concretely.

Share

quote icon Rivalry causes us to overemphasize old opportunities and slavishly copy what has worked in the past.

Share

quote icon We knew we'd need more funding to reach that goal. We also knew that the boom was going to end. Since we didn't expect investors' faith in our mission to survive the coming crash, we moved fast to raise funds while we could.

Share

quote icon Sometimes you have to fight. Where that's true, you should fight and win. There is no middle ground: either don't throw any punches, or strike hard and end it quickly.

Share

quote icon A startup is the largest endeavor over which you can have definite mastery. 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.

Share

quote icon A business with a good definite plan will always be underrated in a world where people see the future as random.

Share

quote icon Darwinism may be a fine theory in other contexts, but in startups, intelligent design works best.

Share

quote icon It's true that every great entrepreneur is first and foremost a designer.

Share

quote icon Long-term planning is often undervalued by our indefinite short-term world.

Share

quote icon In philosophy, politics, and business too, arguing over process has become a way to endlessly defer making concrete plans for a better future.

Share

quote icon Every moment in business happens only once.

Share

quote icon The durability question is at least as important as growth; hyper growth without durability is what often leads to miscalibrated valuations in our industry.

Share

quote icon The claim I make in my book is that every successful company is a monopoly, and competition is for losers.

Share

quote icon An indefinite pessimist looks out onto a bleak future, but he has no idea what to do about it.

Share

quote icon Instead of pursuing many-sided mediocrity and calling it "well-roundedness", a definite person determines the one best thing to do and then does it.

Share

quote icon Always err on the side of starting too small.

Share

quote icon However, any firm with close substitutes will see its profits competed away.

Share

quote icon Winning is better than losing but everybody loses when the war isn't one worth fighting.

Share

quote icon We knew we'd need more funding to reach that goal. We also knew that the boom was going to end. Since we didn't expect investors' faith in our mission to survive the coming crash, we moved fast to raise funds while we could.

Share

quote icon What I’ve found is that the answers lie in some tough questions. The ones that people have a really hard time answering either because it’s hard to have a truly unique perspective, or because it takes a certain level of courage to speak up about them honestly.

Share

quote icon If you have something truly unique, it is often hard to explain to people what you’re doing.

Share

quote icon My feeling is that monopolies tend to be bad when you’re dealing with a market situation where no one is challenging the status quo (i.e.: telephone companies creating artificial scarcity).

Share

quote icon All failed companies are the same: they failed to escape competition.

Share

quote icon If you believe your life is mainly a matter of chance, why read this book? Learning about startups is worthless if you're just reading stories about people who won the lottery.

Share

quote icon However, the phenomenon of serial entrepreneurship would seem to call into question our tendency to explain success as the product of chance.

Share

quote icon ...being the first mover doesn't do you any good if someone comes along and unseats you.

Share

quote icon Disruption also attracts attention: disruptors are people who look for trouble and find it. Disruptive kids get sent to the principal's office. Disruptive companies often pick fights they can't win.

Share

quote icon A definite pessimist believes the future can be known, but since it will be bleak, he must prepare for it.

Share

quote icon To a definite optimist, the future will be better than the present if he plans and works to make it better.

Share