The Importance of Understanding the Past

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I think the sort of a conventional view is that there are not that many answers left to this question. We believe that all these truths have already been discovered in the past. Maybe there's still some things, but they're just about impossible to figure out. I by contrast think there's still a lot of things left on intermediate level. And it was a key part of inspiring us when we were building PayPal.

On today’s classic episode, we study Billionaire Peter Thiel. Peter co-founded PayPal and he was the CEO until the sale to eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion. After the sale of PayPal, Thiel started a big data analysis company called Palantir Technologies. He also became the founder of a venture capital firm called Founders Fund. With this firm, Thiel became Facebook’s first outside investor when he acquired a 10% stake for as little as $500,000 in August of 2004. Peter’s personal net worth today is about $5 billion and he remains active in numerous tech businesses.

IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL LEARN:

00:00 - Intro

06:26 - Why and how Peter Thiel is always inverting his thinking and why you should do the same.

15:48 - Why do visionaries think in terms of a tipping point for employees rather than a tipping point for revenue.

38:52 - Why computers replacing people is an angst narrative that is not true.

44:45 - Stig and Preston answer a question from the audience and discuss how much value investors should pay attention to the bond yield curve.

Disclaimer: Slight discrepancies in the timestamps may occur due to podcast platform differences.

BOOKS AND RESOURCES

Join the exclusive TIP Mastermind Community to engage in meaningful stock investing discussions with Stig, Clay, and the other community members.
Listen to Preston and Stig’s discussion of Peter Thiel’s book, Zero to One, or watch the video.
Read Preston and Stig’s executive summary of Peter Thiel’s book, Zero to One
Reid Hoffman’s book, Blitzscaling – Read reviews of this book
Ryan Holiday’s book, Conspiracy – Read reviews of this book

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