On: Stagnation, Innovation, and What Not to Call your Company

Episode: 1

Date: April 2015

Background: Founder of PayPal, author of “Zero to One“, etc.

Key Subjects:

• Innovation issue: stagnation in the world of atoms, not bits:
  • Atoms are more regulated than bits.
    • New drug development slow, software development okay.
  • Innovation requires coordination across domains.
    • Gov’t today less efficient in driving this.

• • Environment is more opaque.
    • Specialization has increased the power of self-reinforcing expert communities.
  • Science increasingly politicized.
    • Less room for eccentric professor types.
• Progress pushed by people that take risk despite discouragements of society and social conventions.
  • Entrepreneurs sometimes more oblivious to these deterrents.
  • Some have mild form of Aspergers.
  • [Put differently, they are more willing to accept likely individual negative outcomes of risk-taking behavior; the type of behavior that benefits society as whole, but not always the individual.]
• Political and economic systems changed by non-conformists with strong convictions.
• Benefit of combining apparent opposites:
  • Idiosyncratic individuals with original ideas that are also able to function socially and execute.
• Decline of globalization since 2007.
  • Globalization is about horizontal progress (copying).
    • Maybe running out of things to copy.
  • Technology is about vertical progress (new things).
    • Much less of it today.
    • Requires looking at: what is no one else doing that you are good at and passionate about.
• NGOs: have a counterfactual sense of mission: if you are not doing it, no one else will.
• Democracy and capitalism:
  • Power of representation moderated by judicial system and unelected institutions.
  • Increasingly, decisions made by judiciary and technocratic agencies.
  • Elected officials not necessarily better at making decisions (limited capabilities).

Key Takeaways:

• Pursue something that you are passionate about and that what not happen if you would not do it.

Worth Listening:

This type of interview (short, specific questions) works well to bring out Thiel’s typical contrarian and non-conformist perspective on a wide range of topics.

7/10