In economics, disbelief in secrets leads to faith in efficient markets. But the existence of financial bubbles shows that markets can have extraordin… - Peter Thiel

the more people believe in efficiency, the bigger the bubbles get.)

Facebook, the best investment in our 2005 fund, returned more than all the others combined. Palantir, the second-best investment, is set to return more than the sum of every other investment aside from Facebook. This highly uneven pattern is not unusual: we see it in all our other funds as well. The biggest secret in venture capital is that the best investment in a successful fund equals or outperforms the entire rest of the fund combined.

As we said, even the best venture investors have a portfolio, but investors who understand the power law make as few investments as possible.

Every monopoly is unique, but they usually share some combination of the following characteristics: proprietary technology, network effects, economies of scale, and branding.