From Zero to One: Peter Theil speaks at U.T.

"No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; or else the new piece pulls away from the old, and the tear is made worse. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; or else the new wine bursts the wineskins, the wine is spilled, and the wineskins are ruined. But new wine must be put into new wineskins."
Mark 2:21-22

Peter Theil spoke recently at U.T; we didn't attend, but our friends at Emergent Order produced this fantastic video of the talk:



Highlights:

• There's no real formula for success.

• Each moment in business only happens once.

• Courage is in shorter supply than brilliance; you need both.

• As an entrepreneur, aim for monopoly.
• Find something no one else is doing and develop a niche.
• The people who have monopolies generally don't talk about it.

• There's a natural tendency to imitate what's worked for others that often shows up in business.
• "Catching the last wave."
• In a military context, Generals tend to fight the last war.

• Most fields are not "complete."
• New discoveries still exist.
• Frequently, "you can get to the frontier relatively quickly."

• There's a difference between copying things and doing new things.

• Disruption is a "chronic buzzword."
• "When you set out to disrupt, you're already taking your bearings by existing industries."

• The goal you should have as an entrepreneur isn't to destroy old things but to create new things.

• Focus on some combination of short term and long term with less on the medium term.

• Tech companies don't go public until much later in the game than they used to....

• Monopolies become bad in a static, unchanging, world.

• At first: Pick a small market, take it over, and scale it.