Name: Peter Thiel's investment strategies
Uploaded: 2014-09-04
Duration: 4 min 39 s
Description: thiel-3

You were a co- founder of PayPal. Talk about an investment that you have right now that, that fits your, your aspirations of, of your book. Well we were we're large investors in, in Airbnb and so it is a it is a they, they, you know, it certainly a completely new market that they opened up. Mm- hm. It was this undiscovered inventory that people had in their homes. Mm- hm. and, and basically. That had no value before all of a sudden has tremendous value. It, it's great for the customers. It makes it, it probably costs cuz the, you can get the equivalent of a hotel room for maybe one third of the cost. There's some, some volatility in what you get but it's much cheaper. And and so it's, it's created this, this massive massive new market. And it involves sort of a combination of a really great insight. Some creative design. And then and then a lot of hard work getting, getting the cycle jump started. Anything that is a, is a more of a moonshot, something small, maybe, maybe it won't work but if it does it's going to be huge .>> Well we, we keep um, you know I think probably the, the single area of of technology that's the most bombed out is, is biotech and so it's an area we keep we keep working on so we've. You know there's one, one company, one that's, that has a new approach it's gonna try to, figure out ways to, cure a whole series of different types of cancers. Another has the goal of curing, all viral diseases. And when you, when you look at it, and and look at the theory. All the pieces make sense, you know, there's obviously the question, can you pull it together. But I think we're not trying to do enough, enough things like that. So it's definitely one of the things we keep, being attracted to. We as a society or no? We as a society, we as Silicon Valley, we as venture capitalists in Silicon Valley. You almost seem to be, subscribing to this, to the exceptionalism theory of California right now, that we can have. Blowups in the Middle East, and Russia, and Ukraine, and bad policy in Washington, and the great strengths of California. By which I assume you mean Silicon Valley on the one hand and the entertainment industry on the other hand power along. Yes. Well, it's one of the things I contrast in my book is this idea of globalization and technology. And I think. You know, successful 21st century, we want both globalization to happen and there to be great technological progress. But I think it's very worth contrasting them as very different modes of progress. Globalization involves doing more of the same, involves going from one to N, copying things that work. China is the paradigm of globalization. Technology involves doing new, new things, intensive growth, zero to one. And so I always think of them as even though they often get used almost synonymously, I think the concepts are very very different. And I think California in a way is a paradigm of, of technology. And if you look at on the sweep of the last. Two hundred years, we've had periods of globalization, we've had periods of technology, and we've had times when we've had one or the other. So, the 19th Century had, both globalization and lots of technological progress. 1914 to 71 start of the first World War globalization goes in reverse, but technology keeps progressing very fast. 1971, Kissinger goes to China, globalization gets restarted in the 70s to today. And technological progress, I would argue, has been fast in computers, not so fast elsewhere. And so, I think we're, we're entering the next decade or two will be a time when, maybe there will be some headwinds for globalization. CEG, Russia, middle east, places like that but I think that that there's a lot of room for for more momentum in technology. Is there any chance that. Silicon valley has been very good at, has been particularly good at some of this incremental technological advancement and you've been critical of silicon valley's. Ability to have transformational advancement. How confident are you that, that advancement will happen in Silicon Valley versus other places, where it has happened historically? well, I, you know, I'm, I'm, I think extreme optimism or extreme pessimism are always. Bad attitudes to have, because they they lead to the same conclusions, which is that you don't have to do anything. Huh And so I think the truth on Silicon Valley is something more in- between. It's a place that we've done some of this in past, Tuffwell has built here in Silicon Valley in the last decade. But we haven't done that much. So I think, I think we could do it, but it won't happen on its own, and so, we have to, we have to work at making it happen.