Whereas a competitive firm must sell at the market price, a monopoly owns its market, so it can set its own prices. Since it has no competition, it produces at the quantity and price combination that maximizes its profits. Peter Thiel Read Quote
Investors are always biased to invest in things they themselves understand. So venture capitalists like Uber because they like driving in black town cars. They don’t like Airbnb because they like staying in five-star hotels, not sleeping on people’s couches. Peter Thiel Read Quote
Education is a bubble in a classic sense. To call something a bubble, it must be overpriced, and there must be an intense belief in it. Peter Thiel Read Quote
There have been a lot of critiques of the finance industry’s having possibly foisted subprime mortgages on unknowing buyers, and a lot of those kinds of arguments are even more powerful when used against college administrators who are probably in some ways engaged in equally misleading advertising. Peter Thiel Read Quote
A conventional truth can be important – it’s essential to learn elementary mathematics, for example – but it won’t give you an edge. It’s not a secret. Peter Thiel Read Quote
If you’re trying to develop a new drug, that costs you a billion dollars to get through the FDA. If you want to start a software company, you can get started with maybe $100,000. Peter Thiel Read Quote
Whenever I talk to people who founded a company, I often like to ask the prehistory questions ‘When did you meet? How long have you been working before you started the company?’ A bad answer is, ‘We met at a networking event a week ago, and we started a company because we both want to be entrepreneurs.’ Peter Thiel Read Quote
One of my first investments was $100,000 in a Web-based calendar startup – and I lost every dollar. Peter Thiel Read Quote
