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
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.
In practice
During a pitch to investors, you might reference this quote to illustrate the passion behind your start-up's mission.
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.
The first question we would ask if aliens landed on this planet is not, 'What does this mean for the economy or jobs?' It would be, 'Are they friendly or unfriendly?'
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.
What is it about our society where anyone who does not have Asperger's gets talked out of their heterodox ideas?
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.
Creating value isn't enough - you also need to capture some of the value you create.
Your customers can tell you the things that are broken and how they want to be made happy. Listen to them. Make them happy. But don't rely on them to create the future road map for your product or service. That's your job.
Businesses fail when they over-invest in what is at the expense of what could be.
All business proceeds on beliefs, or judgments of probabilities, and not on certainties.
We must learn what customers really want, not what they say they want or what we think they should want.
Look after the customer and the business will take care of itself
To make a pleasant and friendly impression is not alone good manners, but equally good business.
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