Peter Thiel Startup Lectures

Introduction

Peter Thiel gave a series of lectures at Stanford, which were transcribed by one of his students, Blake Masters. They’re all available online, and make fantastic reading.

Thiel was one of the founders of Paypal, and has since become a successful investor. The amount of wisdom and insight contained in the lectures is impressive. They’re well worth downloading, and reading during the daily commute.

Contributors to startup success

In the lectures, he identifies 10 important contributors to startup success:

Markets

Is it the right market?

Mimesis and competition

How hard is it to copy what you’re doing?

Secrets

Is there something you know that the competition doesn’t? Will this allow you to build a decisive lead?

Incrementalism

Is your product just an incremental improvement on the current status-quo, or represents a significant leap forward?

Durability

Being able to survive in the long term.

Teams

Having the correct people on the team.

Distribution

Having access to the right distribution - whether that’s physical channels, or access to consumers online.

Timing

There have been many examples of businesses which were too early (before a market really existed), or too late (after a competitor has dominated the market).

Financing

Having access to sufficient capital to grow and exploit the opportunity.

Luck

This is one people rarely like to here, but there’s always luck involved.