Peter Thiel: observation

Transcript context

…Thank you. To that point, to get people off of the mimetic track, I think the Thiel Fellowship was really amazing and has had tremendous success. Have you thought about trying to scale that in a way that might be profitable or can make a larger impact than, say, 20 folks a year and maybe 20,000 eventually? We’ve thought about scaling. A lot of times, it’s probably quite hard to scale. There’s the paradox of something like the Thiel Fellowship or my Zero to One book or any self-help thing. It’s always bad to give advice where, okay, these are the things you’re supposed to do because . . . I worry that the only way you can scale things is by somehow automating them, mechanizing them, turning them into more of a cookie cutter-type process. Then I always worry that deranges at scale. I can’t give people a formula of what to do. It’s something like, you should think for yourself and figure it out. Then if I try to scale that, it’s like some kind of Mao’s Little Red Book or something you’re producing, and it’s quite the opposite. Thank you. Peter, my question is about diversity, equity, inclusion. DEI has become very prevalent in corporate America. I wanted to get your thoughts on whether you’re seeing this in some of the early-stage companies also, like the companies that Founders Fund is investing in. What are your thoughts? Do you think this is something positive? Are you neutral, or you think this has gone a little over the top? Would love to know your views on that.…

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