“If you’re starting a company, you always want to aim for a monopoly and avoid competition. Hence, competition is for Losers.” – Peter Thiel
Who the Hell Are You Calling a Loser?
In a famous Y Combinator master class, Peter Theil founder of Paypal and Palantir, presented his famous business strategy that requires founders to position their growth for a monopoly of the industry.
‘Competition is for losers’ is one of his mantras. ‘Monopoly is the condition of every successful business’ is another. It is the ultimate test of entrepreneurship to build something that is one of a kind, sufficiently different from what already exists to render the idea of competition redundant.
In this article, we’ll cover how Peter approaches new markets and how to create a monopoly. But first, here’s a brief background on Thiel and why you should even care what he has to say in the first place…
Who the Hell is Peter Thiel?
You could say he knows a thing or two about the tech space. Peter Andreas Thiel is a German-American billionaire entrepreneur and venture capitalist. A co-founder of PayPal, CIA-based Palantir Technologies, and Founders Fund.
He was also the first outside investor in some of the biggest unicorns in silicon valley including Facebook, Stripe and Space X.
His companies and investments have earned him a net worth of $5 billion. He also gives a small number of entrepreneurs $100k over two years to skip college and build their own companies.
You can watch his talk at Y Combinator. Or read the summary below…
