VCs must find the handful of companies that will successfully go from 0 to 1 and then back them with every resource. - Peter Thiel

Today’s companies have an insatiable appetite for data, mistakenly believing that more data always creates more value. But big data is usually dumb data.

But this “spray and pray” approach usually produces an entire portfolio of flops, with no hits at all. This is because venture returns don’t follow a normal distribution overall. Rather, they follow a power law: a small handful of companies radically outperform all others. If you focus on diversification instead of single-minded pursuit of the very few companies that can become overwhelmingly valuable, you’ll miss those rare companies in the first place.

ask yourself: how much of what you know about business is shaped by mistaken reactions to past mistakes? The most contrarian thing of all is not to oppose the crowd but to think for yourself.