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Comment by mattmanser | Hacker News Reader

After two tours of duty at Stanford (which did little to dissuade him of the notion that college is a waste of time) he founded PayPal

So, um, why did he do the 2nd one then?

Seems a little hypocritical...

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It's also worth noting that 0->1 makes claims about the sort of vision that founders have that are directly at odds with all accounts (including his own) of how Thiel's own successes actually occurred. Not slightly misaligned, but directly 100% contradictory.

It's not a terrible book; it's mediocre. It's a mix of the obvious (perfect competition destroys profit), the confusingly expressed (the bit on secrets sounds "deep" until you realize he's expressing something obvious using confusing language), and noise.

If somebody wants to read a good new business book, I'd recommend Creativity Inc, How Google Works, and The Hard Thing about Hard Things long before I'd recommend 0->1.

Totally concur.

Not arguing for or against, but just to echo a good point Peter made about this criticism:

If he didn't have any college experience and made the argument that college is a waste of time, people would challenge that with "well, what do you know? you never went to college."

What better way to realize college is a waste, then to give two solid tries and still receive little value. It could be argued that that would be the only way one could be qualified to cast that judgement.

Except he received enormous value. There is no chance he would have been even in the top 1% had he not attended Stanford (and then Stanford Law).

How is that possible? Did Stanford help him start his ventures at all and contribute to the success of those? Is there specific knowledge that he learned there that helped him succeed?

If you have a name like Stanford (or MIT, Berkeley, Harvard, etc.) behind you that's an enormous advantage and people will pay attention to you regardless of your merits. Thiel got his start in corporate law, then finance. Had he not had this background and pedigree there is no chance VCs would take a risk on paypal.

Edited to add: Just look at who Y Combinator accepts. It's not random people with good ideas and talent. It's people with strong pedigrees. Sure they're probably bright, but are they the only ones who are capable of succeeding? Of course not. It's rather unfortunate that the opportunities for the largest amount of success go to those who are already successful rather than those who never had the opportunity to succeed in the first place.

Yes, going to and excelling at Stanford was absolutely essential.

It allowed him to go work in a prestigious firm in finance and another in law which provided him with personal capital and also connected him with investors which allowed him to start an investment fund, move back to the Bay area and gave him the time to search for and evaluate investments. Presumably this is how he met Max Levchin and invested in his company.

It also allowed him to be confident and respected by others, both of which were extremely important to his success.

Interesting - the main value of school is signalling and networking. The actual (expensive) education isn't really needed.

If Thiel recognized this, he might try to give people a way to get the signal/network without college, thereby saving lots of money and cutting out the middleman. If he wanted to be arrogant, he might name it the Thiel Fellowship.

There are important signals that come out of academic success, like the ability to do something hard over a long period of time, that are difficult to easily replicate without doing something that is essentially school-like.

So what is going on, then, do you think? Is he oblivious or in denial about it? Is he lying? Or something else?

I think he believes, like most successful people, that he had inherent skill and talent and those qualities pre-destined him for success.

Which doesn't exclude the value of a Stanford degree.

How did he get the money for his first venture?

Had he not gone to Stanford then would he have gotten the same network and met the same role models? Was this addressed?

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