1. Peter Thiel’s CS183: Startup - Class 11 Notes Essay

    blakemasters:

    Here is an essay version of class notes from Class 11 of CS183: Startup. Errors and omissions are mine. Credit for good stuff is Peter’s.

    Class 11 Notes Essay—Secrets

    I.  Secrets

    Back in class one, we identified a very key question that you should continually ask yourself: what important truth do very few people agree with you on? To a first approximation, the correct answer is going to be a secret. Secrets are unpopular or unconventional truths. So if you come up with a good answer, that’s your secret.

    How many secrets are there in the world? Recall that, reframed in a business context, the key question is: what great company is no one starting? If there are many possible answers, it means that there are many great companies that could be created. If there are no good answers, it’s probably a very bad idea to start a company. From this perspective, the question of how many secrets exist in our world is roughly equivalent to how many startups people should start.

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    65 notes
    1 week ago
  2. "If the major publishers switch to selling ebooks without DRM, then they can enable customers to buy books from a variety of outlets and move away from the walled garden of the Kindle store. They see DRM as a defense against piracy, but piracy is a much less immediate threat than a gigantic multinational with revenue of $48 Billion in 2011 (more than the entire global publishing industry) that has expressed its intention to “disrupt” them, and whose chief executive said recently “even well-meaning gatekeepers slow innovation” (where “innovation” is code-speak for “opportunities for me to turn a profit”)."

  3. Blake Masters: Peter Thiel’s CS183: Startup - Class 2 Notes Essay

    The telecoms followed in 2001. If you had to pick what sector of economy was at absolute lowest in March 2000, it might have been be military defense companies. The NASDAQ was soaring. No one believed there would ever be another war. But then things reversed. The military defense industry would rise for most of the next decade.


    blakemasters:

    Here are my class notes, typed in essay form, from Class 2 of CS183: Startup. Errors, omissions, and/or poor phrasing are my own. Credit for good substance and wording is Peter’s entirely.

    CS183: Startup—Notes Essay—April 4—Party Like It’s 1999?

    I. Late to the Party

    History is driven…

    Link
    102 notes
    1 month ago
  4. Blake Masters: Peter Thiel’s CS183: Startup - Class 3 Notes Essay

    blakemasters:

    Here is my notes essay for Class 3 of CS183: Startup. Errors, omissions, and/or poor phrasing are my own. Credit for good substance and wording is Peter’s entirely. Please note that I actually missed this class (I was on my honeymoon!). Thanks to @erikpavia and @danrthompson for sending me…

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    41 notes
    1 month ago
  5. "Genba adds 10 points to your lean manufacturing buzz skills ;)"

  6. Blake Masters: Peter Thiel's CS183: Startup - Class 1 Notes Essay

    Quite a few places worth quoting. Need to find more Peter Thiel thoughts somewhere. 

    blakemasters:

    Here are my class notes, typed in essay form, from Class 1 of CS183: Startup. Errors, omissions, and/or poor phrasing are my own. Credit for good substance and wording is Peter’s entirely.

    CS183: Startup—Notes Essay—April 2

    Purpose and Preamble

    We might describe our world as having…

    Link
    195 notes
    1 month ago
  7. "Instagram. Then along comes Facebook, the great alien presence that just hovers over our cities, year after year, as we wait and fear. You turn on the television and there it is, right above the Empire State Building, humming. And now a hole has opened up on its base and it has dumped a billion dollars into a public square — which turned out to not be public, but actually belongs to a few suddenly-very-rich dudes."

  8. Video

    pukomuko:

    Figure App Live Preview (by PropellerheadSW) demonstration starts at 3:00

    Figure is awesome. The only downside is that it is a little bit not intuitive - I had to read manual and watch a few videos before I understood how to use it. But anyway a lot of fun, totally worth its price.

    (via pukomuko)

    4 notes
    1 month ago
  9. "In 2008, Samsung Chairman Lee Kun-hee, one of Korea’s richest men, was charged with tax evasion and breach of trust; convicted of both crimes, he managed to avoid prison, receive a presidential pardon, and return to the company’s helm."

  10. "Companies that study Apple today will benefit by understanding how it re-wrote the rules. The anomaly is the norm. The exception is the rule. The times they are indeed a-changin’."