The total net profit that you earn on average over the course of your relationship with a customer (Customer Lifetime Value, or CLV) must exceed the … - Peter Thiel

the single most powerful pattern I have noticed is that successful people find value in unexpected places,

So why are economists obsessed with competition as an ideal state? It’s a relic of history.
Economists copied their mathematics from the work of 19th-century physicists: they see individuals
and businesses as interchangeable atoms, not as unique creators. Their theories describe an
equilibrium state of perfect competition because that’s what’s easy to model, not because it
represents the best of business. But it’s worth recalling that the long-run equilibrium predicted by
19th-century physics was a state in which all energy is evenly distributed and everything comes to
rest — also known as the heat death of the universe. Whatever your views on thermodynamics, it’s a
powerful metaphor: in business, equilibrium means stasis, and stasis means death.

Amazon made its first 10x improvement in a particularly visible way: they offered at least 10 times as many books as any other bookstore.