'Avoid competition as much as possible'

A lawyer by education, Peter Thiel is the co-founder of PayPal (an online payments platform) and Palantir Technologies (a big-data analytics firm).

- PETER THIEL

He was the first outside investor in Meta (formerly Facebook). Founders Fund, his venture capital firm, has made investments in a number of startups, including SpaceX, LinkedIn and Airbnb.

So the man is an investing genius. However, he also has a flair for the absurd. Recently, he exited all his Bitcoin holdings just days before an event where he lauded Bitcoin’s immense potential. But his quirks shouldn’t undermine his expertise. In his book, ‘Zero to One’, Thiel outlines the principles of creating a successful company. Though the equity markets are not his home, his ideas and principles can help long-term equity investors.

ZERO TO ONE

Doing what we already know how to do takes the world from 1 to n, adding more of something familiar. But every time we create something new, we go from 0 to 1.

PERFECT COMPETITION VS MONOPOLY

There’s an enormous difference between perfect competition and monopoly and most businesses are much closer to one extreme than we commonly realise… Both monopolists and competitors are incentivised to bend the truth.