Peter Thiel on how to identify great talent

Peter Thiel is famous for discovering undervalued talent throughout his career. The most well-known example is PayPal, where he recruited people who went on to start companies like YouTube, LinkedIn, Yelp, Affirm, and Yammer. But he also recruited Alex Karp, his former classmate at Stanford Law School, to co-found Palantir with him 2003.

Tyler Cowen asks Thiel what traits he looks for in undiscovered talent that everyone else overlooks. Thiel replies:

“It’s very difficult to reduce it to any single trait. A lot of what you’re looking for are these almost zen-like opposites.”

He gives a few examples:

“You want people who are both really stubborn and really open-minded. That’s a little contradictory. You want people who are sort of really idiosyncratic and really different, but then who can work well together in teams… If you focus too much on one end of it, you tend to get it completely wrong… [I like to look for] these combinations of unusual traits.”

Essentially he looks for idiosyncratic people with combinations of unusual traits that counterbalance those idiosyncrasies.

Full video: Mercatus Center “Peter Thiel on Stagnation, Innovation, and What Not To Name Your Company | Conversations with Tyler“ (Mar 2015)

p.s. In case you missed it, there was a new essay in The Founders’ Tribune yesterday: How to be Elon Musk by Justine Musk