Some interesting ideas from The Tim Ferriss Show’s interview with Peter Thiel:

  1. Capitalism and Competition are not synonyms but antonyms. Eg. the Restaurant business in SFO is incredibly competitive but not capitalistic because no one makes any money from it.
  2. You don’t have to wait to start something. If you have a 10 year plan to do something with your life you should ask yourself why you can’t do it in 6 months.
  3. Failure is massively overrated. Most businesses fail for more than one reason. When a business fails you sometimes don’t learn anything at all because there were too many factors involved in that failure.
  4. The death of every business is a tragedy.
  5. Successful founders are relentless. Everyday they do more and get better at it.
  6. Stay away from trends as you will have many competitors. Prefer missions. Work on unique problems people are not solving elsewhere.
  7. Ask yourself why are you doing something. Make sure you like the answer.
  8. What do people agree merely by convention and what is the truth?
  9. We never want to use convention as a shortcut for truth. We need to always ask “is this true?”
  10. “Tell me something that is true that very few people agree with you on.”
  11. Always try to think for yourself and break through conventions.
  12. I try to have conversations with smart people every day.