Blake Masters

First of all, I'll repeat that I'm not an American and neither an expert on (presumably) your country's politics, so this is just my armchair observation. Thiel is funding a new breed of politicians with "hard-right" ideals. The first is Donald Trump [1], which I don't think I need to expatiate following those riots (that was widely used to mock the USA) globally. His, protégé, Blake Masters, is running for the Arizona Senate position (backed by $10 million+ of Thiel's donations [2]). Masters has some unique ideas, such as opposing Roe vs Wade (abortion rights) and expanding gun rights (in his words, "Eliminating or restructuring the ATF, Repealing the National Firearms Act, and Opposing every kind of federal firearms database or gun registry"). You can see them right on his website - https://www.blakemasters.com/. Also, JD Vance (backed by $10 million+ of Thiel's money [2]). Vance also has some unique ideas, such as promoting claims that Trump lost the election because of voter fraud [3] or suggesting that Biden was intentionally allowing fentanyl to flood the US because it mainly affected the Republican base [4]. You can check his website and see policy ideals similar to Masters' - https://jdvance.com/issues/. Now, I'm not saying that everything about them is bad (everyone has flaws). I tried my best to use non-biased political resources (Reuters and Politico have a great rep on my end). I don't understand much about American politics, but from the little I know, if I…

Great post. The "IndieHackers" / open startup culture is pretty much the antithesis of https://blakemasters.tumblr.com/post/22866240816/peter-thiels-cs183-st…

They use 1% because number 1 is an integer and it can represent a whole person. This is useful for scapegoating and hatred. "The 99% vs. the 1% is the modern articulation of this classic scapegoating mechanism. It is all minus one versus the one. And it has to just be the one. 99.99 people or percent is too granular. Scapegoating 0.1 doesn’t really work. You need a whole person to play the victim. Similarly, 98-2 doesn’t quite have the same ring to it either. " Source: https://blakemasters.com/post/24578683805/peter-thiels-cs183-startup-c…

http://blakemasters.com/peter-thiels-cs183-startup is a classic in the genre. Notes from Peter Thiel's Stanford course.

"Zero To One might be the first best-selling business book based on a Tumblr. Stanford student Blake Masters took Peter Thiel’s class on startups. He posted his notes on Tumblr after each lecture. They became a minor sensation. Thiel asked if he wanted to make them into a book together. He did." That's an interesting origin story. I was curious to see the notes in question. Found them here, for anyone else interested: http://blakemasters.com/peter-thiels-cs183-startup

But for whatever reason, people do not get distribution. They tend to overlook it. It is the single topic whose importance people understand least. Even if you have an incredibly fantastic product, you still have to get it out to people. The engineering bias blinds people to this simple fact. The conventional thinking is that great products sell themselves; if you have great product, it will inevitably reach consumers. But nothing is further from the truth. http://blakemasters.com/post/22405055017/peter-thiels-cs183-startup-cl…

From Peter Thiel's CS183 class notes: "People say it all the time: this product is so good that it sells itself. This is almost never true. These people are lying, either to themselves, to others, or both. But why do they lie? The straightforward answer is that they are trying to convince other people that their product is, in fact, good. They do not want to say “our product is so bad that it takes the best salespeople in the world to convince people to buy it.” So one should always evaluate such claims carefully. Is it an empirical fact that product x sells itself? Or is that a sales pitch?" http://blakemasters.com/post/22405055017/peter-thiels-cs183-startup-cl…

Peter Thiel talked about this in Zero to One. http://blakemasters.com/post/24578683805/peter-thiels-cs183-startup-cl… This segues to the pure celebrity version, best epitomized by Lady Gaga. Born This Way is her recent hit album and song. On one level, the whole thing is obviously completely fictional. It’s probably safe to say that she was not, in fact, born like this. The big piece must be nurture. But on another level, maybe it is nature. What sort of people would actually do this to themselves? Yes, it's the choices people make and the drive they have that produces the talent. But isn't John Carmack's ability to push himself to that degree an outlier statistic in itself? Maybe he really was born that way.

My two favorite go to's on the psychology of founders: https://www.harrisonmetal.com/ && http://blakemasters.com/post/24578683805/peter-thiels-cs183-startup-cl…

@pmarca has an interesting thread on this on Twitter [1]. In Peter Thiel’s terminology [2], PG’s view is optimistic nondeterminate, which might be fine for a VC but might not be the best choice for a founder. [1] https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/546533509922160640 [2] http://blakemasters.com/post/23435743973/peter-thiels-cs183-startup-cl…

Thank you for talking to Peter and sharing this. For those interested in more, Blake (the co-author from the book) took Peter Thiel's CS183 class in Stanford, and has class notes freely available on his blog (the notes generated the idea for the book, from my understanding): http://blakemasters.com/peter-thiels-cs183-startup I highly recommend the book.

This is a fantastic series - Class #4 "Last Mover Advantage" and a couple of the others are just great stand alone, but they are all good. Here is the index: http://blakemasters.com/peter-thiels-cs183-startup

Peter Thiel gives a great rundown on the whole biz. http://blakemasters.com/post/21869934240/peter-thiels-cs183-startup-cl… Because of power law distribution, "... the 100th employee at Google did much better than the average venture-backed CEO did in the last decade." So even being late on a $1b+ company is better then being first on a $100m company but orders of magnitude. And it's not worth the opportunity cost of going after $100m companies. There are, on average, four $1b companies created each year, so being even a small part of one of those may not be as crazy as it seems. http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/02/welcome-to-the-unicorn-club/

Peter Thiel (via Blake Masters) has a good discussion about this: http://blakemasters.com/post/21869934240/peter-thiels-cs183-startup-cl… Excerpt: "To a first approximation, a VC portfolio will only make money if your best company investment ends up being worth more than your whole fund." This is the big hit, and VC's are trying to optimize their chances of getting one of these. That's different from trying to precisely calculate expected return. As long as you've found it, it won't matter if you paid a bit too much.

Great post. If you liked this I also suggest taking a look at Peter Thiel's CS183 lectures at Stanford. Blake Masters did a great job taking notes: http://blakemasters.com/peter-thiels-cs183-startup In particular, take a look at the Class 15 one - http://blakemasters.com/post/24122680868/peter-thiels-cs183-startup-cl…

Thanks! I didn't know that about NeXT. It's especially interesting compared to Apple, as you mention! Also, your comment about Peter Thiel led me to discover these great lecture notes from a class of his: http://blakemasters.com/peter-thiels-cs183-startup I want to find a way to combine the transparency and emphasis on personal autonomy of open source projects with the unparalleled productivity of traditional, closed corporations. It's a delicate balance.

Since reading Peter Thiel's excellent essay on secrets [1], I've been more constantly thinking if what people _seem_ to do or say, is actually how it is. For example it can be good for Apple that public (and competition) saw Steve through the great man theory. Public loves heroes, and competition where thrown off with the possibly false explanation for their success ("we can't beat the great Steve"). I've been wondering if the same thing is happening with Elon Musk today. He plays the loveable underdog hero part well for PR (whether it's true or not) and doesn't never mention his staff or anyone by name or what they have done. (When your hero dies, it can be a problem. Except if you make people believe that the hero's ideals still live through the others that we're close him/her.) [1] http://blakemasters.com/post/22866240816/peter-thiels-cs183-startup-cl…

This interview contains some pretty amazing gems. This part[1]: So, really good sofware is software that embodies an idea, some fabulous idea for some new thing that is possible that maybe only the guy writting the software realizes is possible. And maybe people who hear about it while he's working at it think it is the stupidiest idea ... reminded me of Peter Thiel's famous quesetion[2]: what important truth do very few people agree with you on? [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=BDA0t49AaZ4… [2] http://blakemasters.com/post/22866240816/peter-thiels-cs183-startup-cl…

http://blakemasters.com/post/21169325300/peter-thiels-cs183-startup-cl… The usual narrative is that capitalism and perfect competition are synonyms. No one is a monopoly. Firms compete and profits are competed away. But that’s a curious narrative. A better one frames capitalism and perfect competition as opposites; capitalism is about the accumulation of capital, whereas the world of perfect competition is one in which you can’t make any money. Why people tend to view capitalism and perfect competition as interchangeable is thus an interesting question that’s worth exploring from several different angles.

Blake Masters has a great overview from Peter Thiel's Stanford CS183 class about the future of Thorium and why it may be a very promising cleantech energy solution: http://blakemasters.com/post/23787022006/peter-thiels-cs183-startup-cl…

Peter Thiel discussed the underlying worldview for why people think and act like Pincus at his startup class, which Blake Masters wrote up here: http://blakemasters.tumblr.com/post/23435743973/peter-thiels-cs183-sta… Worth a read. I think Pincus' overall approach is actually dominant right now in tech, not an outlier. Most people just aren't so crude about discussing it.

May be in part because the parent is paraphrasing, ie, its from another context, and missing the original frame. Worth checking out, though, original discussion i believe is here. http://blakemasters.tumblr.com/post/22405055017/peter-thiels-cs183-sta…

They are competitors for entertainment eyeballs anyway. Usually, competition is defined by a market (i.e. what customers get from them), not by how they manufacture their product. Of course, each litigant will construe the situation that best suits their case. related: "B. Market Lies" in http://blakemasters.tumblr.com/post/21169325300/peter-thiels-cs183-sta… Meanwhile, it's pageviews for everyone.

Marketing is SO much more than "telling the world about it". But yeah, it's nearly impossible to imagine a successful company without great marketing. Check Peter Thiel's thoughts on the topic (they are amazing): http://blakemasters.tumblr.com/post/22405055017/peter-thiels-cs183-sta…

"The Shakespearean model holds true today. Consider the Square card reader. Square was the first company to do mobile handset credit card processing right. It did the software piece and the hardware piece, and built a brand with the iconic white square device. Then there was a proliferation of copycat readers. PayPal launched one. They shaped it like a triangle. They basically copied the idea of a simple geometric-shaped reader. But they tried to one-up Square; 3 sides, after all, was simpler than 4. Before PayPal’s PR people could celebrate their victory, Intuit came out with a competing card reader. It was shaped like a cylinder. Then Kudos came out with its version, which it shaped like a semicircle. Maybe someone will release a trapezoid version soon. Maybe then they’ll run out of shapes. How will this all end? Do you really want to get involved in making a new card reader at this point? One gets a distinct sense that the companies focused on copycat readers are in a great deal of trouble. Much better to be the original card reader and stay focused on original problems, or an original company in another space entirely." - Peter Thiel, http://blakemasters.com/post/23250566538/peter-thiels-cs183-startup-cl…

That list was a paraphrased version of what I've picked up reading HN and talking to a few entrepreneurs near where I go to college. As a whole if you're trying to start a company I'd say you must be able to answer two questions: 1. What is the need I am satisfying 2. Can this be profitable For the kind of list you're talking about, the business model canvas is a great resource http://businessmodelgeneration.com/canvas/bmc?_ga=1.202783192.85906282… and then if you have more time on your hands, Peter Thiel (Founder of Paypal) led a really good class at Stanford on how to start a company, which is entirely transcribed in a blog by Blake Masters http://blakemasters.com/peter-thiels-cs183-startup <-This was the series that first got me really interested in startups, and is also indirectly how I discovered Hacker News. Definitely worth the read Additionally, Sam Altman taught the class a few years later and recorded the whole thing on video. It's equally excellent http://startupclass.samaltman.com/

Does this remind anyone else of Peter Thiel's notes on value systems? The entire time, I was thinking about how Peter was emphasizing that finding the right size market was key. Too big, and the competition erodes your profit away. The higher level tiered companies had to face much more competition, and Apple utilized that by having them compete with each other. If you are interested in learning more about this, I highly recommend reading Economics of Strategy as it talks about the benefits and costs of being horizontally and vertically integrated. There are also some good anecdotes on how one can obtain economic profits, which reflects the opportunity cost of a venture, compared to accounting profit which just takes into account the total profits, through various forms such as competitive advantages. Value Systems: http://blakemasters.com/post/20955341708/peter-thiels-cs183-startup-cl… Economics of strategy: href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/111827363X/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&c…

Okay, so pardon me for saying this, but why not? Why can't we work to create something out of companionship even if its towards not so idealistic ends? Palantir is a fantastic example for this, if you go beyond their entire CIA hunting down people origins, the function of Palantir is at its core co-operative. It connects some patterns and offers a search based interaction with a numerous set of databases, and in turn the relies upon a human being to work with and match semantic patterns. >>> Peter Thiel: Without trying to start a fistfight, we’ll ask Bob: Why is the correct intelligence augmentation, not strong AI? Bob McGrew: Most successes in AI haven’t been things that pass Turing tests. They’ve been solutions to discrete problems. The self-driving car, for instance, is really cool. But it’s not generally intelligent. Other successes, in things like translation or image processing, have involved enabling people to specify increasingly complex models for the world and then having computers optimize them. In other words, the big successes have all come from gains from trade. People are better than computers at some things, and vice versa. Intelligence augmentation works because it focuses on conceptual understanding. If there is no existing model for a problem, you have to come up with a concept. Computers are really bad at that. It’d be a terrible idea to build an AI that just finds terrorists. You’d have to make a machine think like a terrorist. We’re probably 20…

At the risk of sounding old (I'm 34): at 21 you're still scratching your arse and bumping into things. You still have a great deal to learn and you will be learning for the rest of your life. Doing technical work at any organisation, even a 'boring' one will provide you with opportunities to learn and grow: 1) You may be a brilliant coder but you admit that you lack social ability. Do not view this as a permanent handicap but rather a skill to be developed just as you would a new programming language or methodology. Working as part of a team in a professional environment will teach you to communicate and provide opportunities to build your confidence. 2) You also admit that you have 'created dozens of projects but they were all unsuccessful'. One of the key tenents of building a "change the world" startup like the one that you hope to create some day is to build something that people want and will pay for, (see the notes from Peter Theil's CS183 for more on this: http://blakemasters.com/peter-thiels-cs183-startup). Working in a real company will teach you the importance of building great products which customers want to buy. It might also teach you how you might convince customers that your product is great and that they want to buy. 3) You are fortunate that you will be able to earn a professional salary at such a young age. As mentioned in previous comments, this will allow you to enjoy life but also to put some money aside. If you want the flexibility to do great…

You have two options: Change your mindset or continue burying/ignoring your ambitions. Burying your ambitions can make you relatively satisfied in life, but I believe they will always haunt you regardless of how hard you try. You can change your mindset by developing habits that turns your mind into a force for achieving your ambitions, instead of an obstacle that prevents you from achieving your ambitions (which it appears to be now). Through this you will achieve MUCH more, and I believe be much more satisfied in life. You're only 30. I would suggest you continue reading, looking inward and learning about yourself, and continue searching for answers concerning why you aren't full of passion and motivation for achieving your ambitions. Everyone's journey is different, however here are a smattering of books/resources that may be insightful and have helped me: 1. Carol Dweck on mindset: - Mindset: The New Psychology of Success - Self-theories: Their Role in Motivation, Personality, and Development (Essays in Social Psychology) 2. About the inner journey of high performance, removing mental obstacles, cross-disciplinary learning, and nature vs. nurture: - The Art of Learning: A Journey in the Pursuit of Excellence - Josh Waitzkin - Way of the Peaceful Warrior - The Talent Code - Coyle - Bounce - Syed 3. Add some insightful structure to your perspective. Do you have a pessimistic and deterministic mindset that is a detriment to your success? -…