Startup insights from Peter Thiel, Palmer Luckey, Jeff Weinstein, Mike Maples, and Reid Hoffman

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Today’s insights:

1. Peter Thiel: “If you are in favor of innovation, founders have to stay in control”

2. Palmer Luckey: “I don’t think it takes that much bravery when you’re young to start a company”

3. Stripe’s Jeff Weinstein shares the best advice he got from founder John Collison

4. Floodgate’s Mike Maples on the best way to come up with startup ideas

5. Greylock partner Reid Hoffman on why early liquidity for startup founders is good for innovation

Peter Thiel: “If you are in favor of innovation, founders have to stay in control”

“I think the founding period is the period when you have innovation. And once that’s over, it becomes a normal business that runs in a bureaucratic, mechanistic sort of way. And it’s a very important question - how can one enable the founding of these companies to last?”

Thiel points to Apple as the classic example:

“The judgement call the board at Apple in 1985 made was that computers were like Pepsi. It was just a marketing thing. There was going to be no more innovation in the computer industry. You could get rid of the founder, and you could replace the founder with someone who would run the business in a much more predictable, mechanistic sort of way. And that turned out to be a bit of a mistake.”

He continues:

“Sort of miraculously, Jobs came back and then we saw another 14 years of innovation… If you are in favor of innovation, you have to figure out ways for founders to stay in control as long as possible and to avoid selling a business or substituting someone other than the founder in as CEO.”

Full video: Institute of Politics Harvard Kennedy School “A Conversation with Peter Thiel and Niall Ferguson“ (Feb 2012)

Palmer Luckey: “I don’t think it takes that much bravery when you’re young to start a company”

“Everyone talks about how scary it is to start a company, but it really depends on where you are in your life. If you are someone with a family and with kids and with a stable job, then that totally makes sense. What I don’t buy - and I always push back on - is this idea that starting a company as a recent college graduate or someone taking a break from college is some kind of crazy, incredible sacrifice…. You don’t have a family to take care of. You don’t have a mortgage. You don’t have a career. You have nothing.”

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