Peter Thiel on "Founder as Victim, Founder as God"

The victim/god identity, along with the scapegoat theory of culture described in the lecture, derives from the interesting French thinker (and Stanford prof) René Girard.

Re: Peter Thiel on "Founder as Victim, Founder as God"

#5

Post by ktizo » Thu, Jun 07, 2012, 5:28 AM UTC

Found this really fun to read, a sort of 'how to found a company best practices' for the people who keep dreaming wistfully about armoured elephants and Alps.

Re: Peter Thiel on "Founder as Victim, Founder as God"

#6

Post by lla0ajj » Thu, Jun 07, 2012, 5:43 AM UTC

This was the most interesting of this series of notes yet.

And the conclusion was the weakest.

Thiel seems like a pretty creepy character. When you have enough FU money, you can indulge a really skewed view of the world (former Intel exec comes to mind). And this series of lectures illustrates Theil's. He thinks someone, a young and naive (pre-university) prodigy, is going to make him a wealtier VC by sharing with him their "secret" idea. He criticizes education and America's lack of meaningful innovation, yet he's made wealthy by vacuous ideas of "innovation" like Facebook. Then look at what he's contributed in the way of innovation. What are his qualifications as an "expert"? An online payments company and a company that analyzes data from the web to try to find "terrorists". This is innovation? We should hope his program participants will aspire to do better.

In his last lecture on biotech where he talks about a panel of VC making predictions about the future. Were any of these VC actually in the biotech sector? As long as they have lots of capital under their direction, does it matter?

When you are wealthy people will listen to you, no matter what you say. Alas, it may encourage the speaker to believe their own hype even more. Thiel is taking full advantage of this privilege.

Re: Peter Thiel on "Founder as Victim, Founder as God"

#7

Post by 10dpd » Thu, Jun 07, 2012, 6:03 AM UTC

I've never read as much BS in my entire life...just because someone has made right decisions in the past doesn't give them a platform to spout gibberish in future...

Re: Peter Thiel on "Founder as Victim, Founder as God"

#8

Post by SkyMarshal » Thu, Jun 07, 2012, 6:16 AM UTC

lla0ajj wrote: post #6

This was the most interesting of this series of notes yet. And the conclusion was the weakest. Thiel seems like a pretty creepy character. When you have enough FU money, you can indulge a really skewed view of the world (former Intel exec comes to mind). And this series of lectures illustrates Theil's. He thinks someone, a young and naive (pre-university) prodigy, is going to make him a wealtier VC by sharing with hi…

Gotta love these ~30 minute old accounts with 7 karma howling at the moon that the neither the first successful online payments company, nor the most successful social network in Internet history, nor a ~$100billion/year big data company are 'innovative'.

They may not be nuclear fusion or the perpetual motion machine, but they're more innovative than 99% of what everyone else will ever do.

Your point about wealth buying you a soapbox was interesting, but you went off the rails with that middle paragraph.

Re: Peter Thiel on "Founder as Victim, Founder as God"

#9

Post by cubancigar11 » Thu, Jun 07, 2012, 6:22 AM UTC

What a tripe! There are a lot of cultures where scapegoats were never present (India and China come to my mind). Polarizing figures with leadership qualities polarize the people around them. That doesn't make them founders! They are two different sets which intersect sometimes.

And Bill Gates is NOT being forced to do charity, especially not by those who criticized him before. Most people in third world countries idolized him when geeks hated his guts.

Theil shows that he is an ahole and too much wealth has just reinforced his petty view of the people around him.

Re: Peter Thiel on "Founder as Victim, Founder as God"

#10

Post by ktizo » Thu, Jun 07, 2012, 6:27 AM UTC

lla0ajj wrote: post #6

This was the most interesting of this series of notes yet. And the conclusion was the weakest. Thiel seems like a pretty creepy character. When you have enough FU money, you can indulge a really skewed view of the world (former Intel exec comes to mind). And this series of lectures illustrates Theil's. He thinks someone, a young and naive (pre-university) prodigy, is going to make him a wealtier VC by sharing with hi…

his last lecture on biotech where he talks about a panel of VC making predictions about the future. Were any of these VC actually in the biotech sector?

Just looked at it and it would seem that they were, presuming that you mean Brian Slingerland of Stem CentRx, Balaji Srinivasan of Counsyl, and Brian Frezza of Emerald Therapeutics from the lecture;

"Class 16 - Decoding Ourselves" - http://blakemasters.tumblr.com/post/24253160557/peter-thiels...