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0 pointstedmiston9y ago0 comments

I think when Peter Thiel talks about "secrets" in Zero to One, he's referring to truths you hold that aren't (yet) generally accepted.

> What important truth do very few people agree with you on?

> Recall the business version of our contrarian question: what valuable company is nobody building? Every correct answer is necessarily a secret: something important and unknown, something hard to do but doable. If there are many secrets left in the world, there are probably many world‐changing companies yet to be started.

The text of that chapter is on Genius: http://genius.com/Peter-thiel-zero-to-one-chapter-8-secrets-...

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davidivadavid9y ago

Yep. And presumably such secrets (or "ideas" for some value of the word "idea") are incredibly valuable.

Which, of course, is not to say that ideas in and of themselves build companies. But that point is so obvious it seems a little stupid to have to point it out.

That's the thing with "ideas don't matter, it's all about execution." It's either true by definition (every company has to execute something at some point to even exist), or incredibly shallow and wrong (as long as you execute something you'll get great results).

tedmistonOP9y ago

> Which, of course, is not to say that ideas in and of themselves build companies. But that point is so obvious it seems a little stupid to have to point it out.

It seems stupid to us, but I run into people every few weeks who "have the next big idea if only they can find a dev" but are hesitant to share more than a two-sentence pitch of fear that their coveted idea would get "stolen".

Fixed mindset vs growth mindset is still a battle for many people, especially (would be) first time non-technical founders.

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