Competition is for Losers with Peter Thiel (How to Start a Startup 2014: 5)

Interesting, fun also some of the reactions I got to my many ideas. I have realised that one needs some sort of monopoly to make any money. ▶ this video

in “I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea (2020)” · View on HN

This post misses the forest for the trees. The reason for the low margins in the restaurant business is the lack of differentiation. Their products are largely commoditized, so they have no competitive advantage or market power. Peter Thiel discussed this in a lecture for YC, where he said that you can work very hard to make the best restaurant in a city, but it doesn't give you much pricing power, because the second best is still pretty good.[1] [1] ▶ this video

in “Why Restaurants Are So Fucked” · View on HN

I'm a little iffy on this idea that there is any monopoly on air travel in the US in any general sense. Maybe for specific routes, but if you look at the big picture, you have: 4 "major" carriers - American, Delta, United, Southwest 1 "mid major" / borderline major in Alaska Airlines 1 "not a major, but not exactly a regional carrier" in Jet Blue and a bunch of regional outfits like Frontier, Porter, Spirit, etc. That's not to say that more competition wouldn't be nice, but it's hardly the case that there is no competition. Heck, as far as that goes, Peter Thiel uses airlines - and their razor thin profit margins - as the prototypical example of why "competition is for losers"[1] in his talks. [1]: ▶ this video

in “How United Airlines Went from “Friendly Skies” to Throwing People Off Flights” · View on HN

“Competition is for losers” - A talk from Peter Thiel hosted by Y combinator ( ▶ this video ) Timestamp 13:50: “If you’re a startup, and you want to get to a monopoly, start with a really small market and you take over that whole market and then you find ways to expand that market in concentric circles” Last I checked Zuckerberg is doing precisely what Thiel taught him to and has done it with preternatural skill. This is the standard for how you’re expected to act as a technology “leader” - which the majority of VC backed unicorn goal founders (like every FAANG founder) have been executing since day zero.

in “Mark Zuckerberg personally lost the Facebook antitrust case” · View on HN

Markets are inevitable: create an arbitrarily oppressive prison and you will watch some “black” market emerge: markets grow like weeds: it’s just silly to argue that we should have markets or not. But markets are not a-priori useful to the broader society just by being markets! A necessary (but not sufficient) condition for a market to be useful is that it substantially avoids lasting and structural market failures. Market failures are almost as common and ubiquitous as markets! They vary in duration and consequence. The ultimate market failure is to have costs which include a profit margin but little or no competition to get the benefits of a market. Healthcare like other mandatory purchases (you can buy an ambulance ride and six figures of hospital while unconscious!) is especially prone to market failure. The United States especially (though late neoliberal “capitalism” to some degree generally) and HN/SV/EA especially now go so far as to actively endorse induced market failure as the goal . Fuck that. Fuck everyone who is on board with it. This is your goblin brainchild @pg: renounce it. ▶ this video

in “The entire healthcare system is broken, not just health insurance companies” · View on HN

I mean, Unit 5 of Thiel’s startup 101 lectures at Stanford is titled “Competition is for Losers”. He leads off with making sure everyone is crystal clear that “attaining a monopoly” aka anti-trust fraud is his “idee fixé”. This isn’t hosted on InfoWars. It’s hosted on YC’s YouTube channel. It’s not a secret what these guys are doing and plan to do more of: ▶ this video

in “Everything You Never Wanted to Know About Linker Script (2021)” · View on HN