The most successful businesses have an idea for the future that's very different from the present.
Peter ThielYou have as much computing power in your iPhone as was available at the time of the Apollo missions. But what is it being used for? Itโs being used to throw angry birds at pigs; itโs being used to send pictures of your cat to people halfway around the world; itโs being used to check in as the virtual mayor of a virtual nowhere while youโre riding a subway from the nineteenth century.
Peter ThielHigher 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 consulting and investment banking. For the privilege of being turned into conformists, students (or their families) pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in skyrocketing tuition that continues to outpace inflation. Why are we doing this to ourselves?
Peter ThielI'm always very excited about trying to do something on next-generation biotechnology and life sciences because I think if we can cure cancer or dementia, we can really make the future a lot better and I think these things are eminently doable.
Peter ThielA 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.
Peter ThielI think markets are often not thinking on a long-time horizon, I think that our government structurally is doing even less so. When we have a government where we have people who are up for election at most once every six years for a U.S. senator, that's a time horizon that is much shorter than in a market that a company is looking at 10, 15, 20 years which is a time horizon over which a stock price is typically valued.
Peter Thiel