Peter Thiel on the question he asks every startup founder he invests in

“Why will the 20th talented person join your company when they can get paid way more at Google, they will have to work way less hard at Google, and it will look better on their resume to go to Google?”

The 20th employee won’t get the equity or prestige that someone on the founding team will get, so there needs to be another incentive if you’re going to build a truly great company and attract the best people in the world.

Thiel believes the best answer is something along the lines of:

“This is the only place in the world where you can work on this incredibly important problem.”

He continues:

“It has to—on some dimension—be a really important problem that at least some people think is the most important problem in the world. Those are the kind of businesses that are unique, and when they work, they end up being leaders in their respective markets.”

If it’s a problem that a bunch of other team are working on, it will be hard to attract a truly world-class employee #20.

Full video: PandoDaily “PandoMonthly: Fireside Chat With Peter Thiel“ (Nov 2012)