It's good to test yourself and develop your talents and ambitions as fully as you can and achieve greater success; but I think success is the feeling you get from a job well done, and the key thing is to do the work.
Peter ThielRead
The best start-ups might be considered slightly less extreme kinds of cults. The biggest difference is that cults tend to be fanatically wrong about something important. People at a successful start-up are fanatically right about something those outside it have missed.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Successful start-ups share intense commitment and passion, similar to cults, but are focused on a valuable truth instead of misguided beliefs.
In this quote, Peter Thiel compares successful start-ups to cults, highlighting how both involve a deep commitment from their members. However, rather than being misled by incorrect ideologies, the members of a thriving start-up are dedicated to a vision or innovation that others might overlook, emphasizing the importance of being 'fanatically right' in their pursuits.
Themes
Start-UpsInnovationCommitmentBusinessCulture
In practice
Example use cases
During a pitch to investors, you might reference this quote to illustrate the passion behind your start-up's mission.
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People working on bigger ideas on a more protracted timeline will be more on the stealth side. They aren’t releasing new PR announcements every day. The bigger the secret and the likelier it is that you alone have it, the more time you have to execute. There may be far more people going after hard secrets than we think.
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What is it about our society where anyone who does not have Asperger's gets talked out of their heterodox ideas?
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Every time you write an email, it is in the public domain. There are all these ways where security is not as good as people believe.
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Creating value isn't enough - you also need to capture some of the value you create.
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