Peter Thiel explains his principle of only working on problems that wouldn’t get solved without you

Thiel shares that he’s “a little bit skeptical” of social entrepreneurship:

“Social entrepreneurship is always ambiguous because it’s unclear what the word ‘social’ means. Social can mean that it’s ‘good for society’ or it can mean that it’s ‘good as seen by society’. In the second meaning, you often end up with something that many people are doing.”

He gives education startups as an example of a social startup - it’s seen as objectively good and lots of people are working on it.

Thiel contrasts this to a mission-oriented company:

“A mission-oriented company is one where if you didn’t work on this problem, nobody would.”

He gives the example of Elon Musk starting SpaceX with the mission of going to Mars and making humans interplanetary. If Elon wasn’t working on it, this problem might not get solved.

Thiel believes this is an important principle in general:

“We always want to do things where… if you weren’t working on it, it wouldn’t get solved. Always go for that sort of counterfactual meaning. You don’t want to ever be in a place where you’re just one of a hundred cogs in the machine… You want to be in a place where you’re doing something that can’t be easily replicated or replaced - either on an individual level or the level of a company.”

Video source: ‪@WhartonLeadership‬    • Authors@Wharton Speaker Series presen...   (2014)

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