Founders
Episode 31 #31 Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue and Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future
Founders

Episode 31: #31 Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue and Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

Founders

Episode 31

#31 Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue and Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

David Senra is the host of Founders, where he studies history's greatest entrepreneurs. This is what he learned from reading Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue and Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future.

What I learned from reading Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue and Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

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Culture Eats Strategy [1:45]

Conspiracy as a metaphor for a company [3:56]

It is a story of poetic justice on a grand scale plotted silently for nearly a decade [6:02]

Something in these pages planted itself deep into Thiel's mind when he first read it long ago [15:25]

It was ruthless efficiency and hyper-competence. [21:40]

You were driven to entrepreneurship because it was a safe space from consensus and from convention. [34:36]

What if I do something about this? What might happen? What might happen if I do nothing? Which is riskier, to act or to ignore? [38:52]

Sometimes these books teach us what not to do. [59:06]

Unknown unknowns > known knowns [1:11:10]

How you do one thing is how you do all things. [1:25:47]

He had always been aggressive. He wouldn't have gotten where he was in life if he wasn't. [1:30:35]

Companies routinely focus on silly things. [1:32:38]

The greatest sin of a leader.[1:37:17]

How resourceful is Peter Thiel?[1:41:37]

Just keep asking why.[1:47:29]

Gentlemen: You have undertaken to cheat me. I won't sue you for the laws too slow. I'll ruin you. Yours truly, Cornelius Vanderbilt. [1:53:37]

Brilliant thinking is rare but courage is even in shorter supply [1:58:50]

The business version of our contrarian question is: What valuable company is nobody building? [2:01:39]

This Twisted logic is part of human nature, but it's disastrous in business. If you can recognize competition as a destructive force instead of a sign of value, you're already saner than most. [2:16:11]

Steve Jobs saw that you can change the world through careful planning. Not by listening to focus groups feedback or copying others success. [2:19:53]

You can have agency not just over your own life, but over a small and important part of the world. It begins by rejecting the unjust tyranny of chance. [2:21:05]

A list of all the books featured on Founders Podcast.

#31 Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue and Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

Introduction

The line attributed to the management guru Peter Drucker is "that culture eats strategy. It's a truism that applies as much to conspiracies as it does to businesses. It doesn't matter how great your plan is, it doesn't matter who your people are." "If what binds them all together is weak or toxic, so, too, will be the outcome if you even get that far. But if the ties that bind you together are strong, if you have a sense of purpose and mission, you can withstand great trials."

So that was a paragraph I came across while reading the book that I want to talk to you about today, Conspiracy, Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker and The Anatomy of Intrigue by Ryan Holiday. And today is going to be a little different. Normally, each podcast that I do is centered around one book, today its centered around 2. So a few years ago, I read Peter Thiel's book Zero to One, which as far as business books go contains almost no fluff. It's relatively short, about 180, 190 pages, something you could easily read in a weekend. And as I was halfway through a podcast on Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba, I started listening to the audiobook of Conspiracy.

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