Peter Thiel

Beginning with brand rather than substance is dangerous.

— Peter Thiel

“competition and capitalism are opposites.”

— Peter Thiel

“everybody loses when the war isn’t one worth fighting.”

— Peter Thiel

Anti-aging is an extremely under-explored field.

— Peter Thiel

I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.

— Peter Thiel

“Sales matters just as much as product.”

— Peter Thiel

“the knowledge underlying civilization is so widespread today”

— Peter Thiel

What nerds miss is that it takes hard work to make sales look easy.

— Peter Thiel

“THE MOST CONTENTIOUS question in business is whether success comes from luck or skill.”

— Peter Thiel

“The most valuable kind of company maintains an openness to invention that is most characteristic of beginnings.”

— Peter Thiel

Whatever the career, sales ability distinguishes superstars from also-rans.

— Peter Thiel

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

— Peter Thiel

You want to be the last company in a category. Those are the ones that are really valuable.

— Peter Thiel

If you think your initial market might be too big, it almost certainly is.

— Peter Thiel

The value of failure is greatly over-rated. It's a preposterous myth.

— Peter Thiel

“If you have a 10-year plan of how to get [somewhere], you should ask: Why can’t you do this in 6 months?”

— Peter Thiel

Twitter is hard to evaluate. They have a lot of potential. It's a horribly mismanaged company—probably a lot of pot-smoking going on…

— Peter Thiel

If you think about basic science or coming up with new theories of mathematics, these are not the kinds of things which…

— Peter Thiel

“a startup is the largest group of people you can convince of a plan to build a different future. A new company’s…

— Peter Thiel

I think somehow people should be encouraged to think about a very long time horizon and I think this is true for…

— Peter Thiel

Education needs to be rethought. Education does not just happen in college, but it also happens in developing skills which will enable…

— Peter Thiel

Anyone who prefers owning part of your company to being paid in cash reveals a preference for the long term and a…

— Peter Thiel

The business model piece is we're always talking about competing more effectively. If you're starting a company or career you don't want…

— Peter Thiel

“CREATIVE MONOPOLY means new products that benefit everybody and sustainable profits for the creator. Competition means no profits for anybody, no meaningful…

— Peter Thiel

“There are all these things that you never know whether they're features or bugs- in a company or organization, or even in…

— Peter Thiel

Higher education is the place where people who had big plans in high school get stuck in fierce rivalries with equally smart…

— Peter Thiel

Every university…seem[s] to reassure you that ‘it doesn’t matter what you do, as long as you do it well.’ That is completely…

— Peter Thiel

“As a good rule of thumb, proprietary technology must be at least 10 times better than its closest substitute in some important…

— Peter Thiel

Distribution may not matter in fictional worlds, but it matters in most. The Field of Dreams conceit is especially popular in Silicon…

— Peter Thiel

“. . . the bond bubble, the tech bubble, the stock bubble, the emerging markets bubble, the housing bubble. . . One…

— Peter Thiel

“In the most dysfunctional organizations, signaling that work is being done becomes a better strategy for career advancement than actually doing work…

— Peter Thiel

American government is not dominated by engineers, it is dominated by lawyers. Engineers are interested in substance and building things; lawyers are…

— Peter Thiel

“Indefinite attitudes to the future explain what’s most dysfunctional in our world today. Process trumps substance: when people lack concrete plans to…

— Peter Thiel

“The government used to be able to coordinate complex solutions to problems like atomic weaponry and lunar exploration. But today, after 40…

— Peter Thiel

“When Baby Boomers grow up and write books to explain why one or another individual is successful, they point to the power…

— Peter Thiel

“You’ve probably heard about “first mover advantage”: if you’re the first entrant into a market, you can capture significant market share while…

— Peter Thiel

“Every culture has a myth of decline from some golden age, and almost all peoples throughout history have been pessimists. Even today…

— Peter Thiel

I think China thinks information technology is less important than we think it is in the US, economically, and more important politically.…

— Peter Thiel

“Creating value is not enough—you also need to capture some of the value you create. This means that even very big businesses…

— Peter Thiel

“STARTUP THINKING New technology tends to come from new ventures—startups. From the Founding Fathers in politics to the Royal Society in science…

— Peter Thiel