Transcription
What do you learn from your time with Peter? What are the things that have stuck with you?
Oh gosh, so many things. He's always, he's always approaching the world from some kind of like orthogonal perspective and finding new ways to pick apart the most important reasons for things. So every time I see him, I learn something. Uh, you know, I, I, I, I wrote this piece on mine a while ago, like with my team, about 15 years ago. It's like, main lessons from Peter Thiel. So I won't, I won't repeat all of them here, but there were nine key lessons. I think one of them was to really value intelligence really highly. I think that was absolutely key. And so it just turns out the very brightest people matter a lot. Um, one of them was you have to break down like the actual reasons for things and their core components and usually the number one reason should be like much bigger than everything else. So if you tell me I have four reasons for doing this business thing, it means you haven't really thought about it enough. There's probably like one thing that's dominant. Mhm. Those were really big.
One thing that he always talked about was that uh, effort on any project is convex. And what convex means is a shape of a curve where if you spend like 80% of your time focused on something, that's maybe half as good as spending 90% of your time focused on something, 'cause those that last bit of effort. And like, it's, it's one of those things where like being 99th percentile is worth so much more than being 90th percentile, also because that means you're the number one. And being number one is worth a lot. So there's, there's a, a lot of things like that that you, you just kind of gave me all these concepts that we all kind of learn when we work with them.
Do you find it difficult to not divide your attention in that way?
It's very, very hard. And I think the most important things I've accomplished has been when I've been able to really focus on something for a while. And then whether it's Palantir, whether it's Addepar, whether that's spending months on a thesis at a VC and a framework at a VC that we're going to work on for our investing. Yeah, it is really important to focus. And and you know, you get to a certain point where you, I have obviously a lot of financial resources now, a lot of influence in the world. And so I'm able to help others who are focusing, but anything I invest in or do, it has to be someone really amazing is making it their main thing. And so someone, the CEO has to be all in. And you know, for, for the things I do. Right. So an advice for talent is to not divide your focus at all. You really just need to like be courageous. I think I think the, a lot of people in our culture nowadays, a lot of them want to do incubators or they just want to do a fund never having built something or they just want to say, I'm going to help five different projects. And that, that's actually kind of like a form, it's a, it's a type of cowardice. It's a type of saying, I'm afraid, I'm afraid to go all in. I'm afraid to say this is the best and I'm going to crush it. And like 99.9% of the people who are crushing it and who are changing the world and who are really, you know, building the future of our civilization, they're, they're focusing on something.
How do you come to think about risk? It's sort of um, built into the conversation around courage is fear and uncertainty and risk and dealing with risk and stuff like that. How do you assess it?
You know, I think we're all really lucky today versus the past. I think it is true that that the conditions under which all of us evolved, if you go all in on something and you fail, you might have starved to death. You might have been eaten by lions or some kind of giant old cave bear. You might have been crushed by the local tribe. So I think we all evolved to have existential risk and to be really afraid. And it's not that it's great not to have money in our society. I can't, I can't speak to that. Obviously, it's not, not great. But come on, like we're, it's not, it's not like 3,000 years ago where you might just get, you might just die if you don't see. So I think I think there is enough of a safety net. At least it's easier for me to say that coming from a middle-class family when I grew up that I knew my parents would be able to take care of me if something didn't work out. So obviously I had some privilege, but I think a lot of people with that privilege still aren't willing, you know, to take the risk they should be.
What about obsessing over perfection? Something else that I think Peter?
That's, that's very big on. 100%. That really ties into the 99.9th percentile thing is like getting something just to be the absolute best. I remember working with him when I was 21 years old and there was some speech was going to go on in New York the next day and we were like, basically pulling an all-nighter with a few of the guys in the office to be ready to like have this thing. It was, it was about inflation versus deflation and the risks for both of those. And it was just, it was just a natural thing to do to just try to make it like absolutely perfect before we're going to go present to the investors. And it was really funny. Actually, I was with Ken Howery, who's the ambassador now to Denmark. He was ambassador to Sweden last time. He's a good friend who's who's who's who's our age and very successful behind the background. We were just like going back and forth with him and a few others just like working hard and then jumping on the plane and sleeping on the plane on the way over. And it's just like, everything has to be as good as possible and pushes you, pushes hard as possible. Which and and if there's something was wrong, he, he would be like, this is totally unacceptable.
How do you avoid that from holding you back? Uh, because perfectionism can be procrastination sort of masquerading as quality control. Like, you know, the classic West Coast move fast, break things mentality. Is there a tension between these?
100%. I think if you have really tight fast deadlines, it's probably good. So had to be as perfect as possible given that it was coming due in the next day. But we did, we weren't going to be able to work on it for five weeks, right? So I think I think there is something about about really making things as strong as possible, but but sprinting and having really tight deadlines and getting it done right away. I think I think if you use perfection as procrastination, then it becomes a problem.
Yeah. Well, I'm, I'm still interested in this sense of not getting distracted and trying to keep the main thing the main thing, especially if your main thing becomes a varied thing. Right? Like built into a lot of people's lives, especially as they end up getting to the kind of place that they want to is where you don't have to do things you don't want to do that much anymore. No one tells you what to do. So you end up in a world where you think, well, I get to choose. But with that comes a lot of responsibility 'cause I have to choose now as opposed to before where I just sat on the set of train tracks. It's got do I want to go left or do I want to go right? The same for yourself. Do I want to invest in it or should I sit down and spend six months working on a thesis? Um, what about the skill set of learning to sort of let go of what was there of how you operated previously, the sort of courage to to do something new even as you've got something that's giving you success in the past.
No, it's, it's totally right. You do have to constantly keep adjusting for what makes sense today. And it's, it's interesting. There's different versions of this. One version is as you're successful, something you would have been really excited about before, you have to be like, I don't have time for that now. And it, 'cause all of a sudden you could just have things you were really excited about before, 10 times a day. And I, I, I do fall into this myself sometimes 'cause there's lots of really exciting things to do. And you have to, so it's like really hard to say no enough. When you go through periods where you don't say no enough, you might be feel like you're getting stuff done, but not actually getting things done. And that's, that's it's really tough. But you know what you said, what you said earlier, uh, about like things you don't want to do, to me that's like one of the most important things that we focus on is what do you like to do? And as you're successful, you should probably mostly only do things you like to do 'cause what, what, what, what, what like to do means to me anyway, is that it's like stimulating your entire brain, right? So if you look at like a grandmaster chess player and the very best chess players, when you map out their brains when they're playing, there's always emotions that are turned on. There's always full parts of their brains that are turned on and it lets them be a lot better at what they're doing. And I think this is true in anything we do. If you really love it, then your whole mind is engaged and you're just able to bring like this, this power to bear on things that if it's something you don't really like, you're probably never going to have just that top, top ability there, you know.
It's almost matching up with what you said about being sort of the 99th percentile within an industry, accumulating the 99% of your brain power onto this.
You have to, you have to be obsessed and love something. And like this is not to say that like everyone should only do things they love to be successful 'cause you got to do all the grunt work too. But then once you have a certain level of where you are, you should structure your company and structure your life where you do the parts that you love and you're good at and other people could do the parts, you know, that you're as good at that you don't love. Joe Hudson, uh, who has just become the head of human performance at OpenAI. Uh, he's like kind of an underground hero coach type person. I mean, where the coach has got a lot of icky uh associations with it, but this guy's legit. Really, really great. And he says enjoyment is efficiency. And that's kind of, yeah, I think referencing what you're talking about here, which is if you absolutely love something, it takes fewer inputs to get more outputs.
100%. You can get into the flow. You could just be great if you love it. And and so that's that's how you should structure your life as much as possible is what are the things that you love, that you're good at, that are worth doing. And that's and do more of those and do less of the things you don't like. And but but have someone else do them if if they're necessary.