Sequencing markets correctly is underrated, and it takes discipline to expand gradually. The most successful companies make the core progression — to… - Peter Thiel

The most successful companies make the core progression — to first dominate a specific niche and then scale to adjacent markets — a part of their founding narrative.

Every university believes in “excellence,” and hundred-page course catalogs arranged alphabetically according to arbitrary departments of knowledge seem designed to reassure you that “it doesn’t matter what you do, as long as you do it well.” That is completely false. It does matter what you do. You should focus relentlessly on something you’re good at doing, but before that you must think hard about whether it will be valuable in the future.

Americans mythologize competition and credit it with saving us from socialist bread lines. Actually, capitalism and competition are opposites. Capitalism is premised on the accumulation of capital, but under perfect competition all profits get competed away.

our surroundings are strangely old: only computers and communications have improved dramatically since midcentury.