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Peter Thiel on a common red flag he sees in startup pitches

December 09, 2024

“There’s a pattern recognition where if I see a presentation that says, ‘We have this great idea and we’re going to make money in one of these 5 ways: A, B, C, D, or E.’… That’s always sort of alarming and not very inspiring.”

Thiel continues:

“It’s always much better if people say we’re just going to make money doing A. It suggests you’ve actually thought it through and you think it’s going to actually work. Whereas when you list A through E, that sounds like a superset and you have more things going on, but the reality is that you often haven’t really thought through them very carefully.”

Thiel generalizes this insight:

“I think whenever people come up with a list of options or choices like this, that’s often a version of being lazy and not thinking really hard about what actually might work.”