Peter Thiel on pivoting and PayPal’s early failure

Patrick Collison on how both Stripe and Facebook doubted their ideas in the beginning

Sam Altman on the biggest mistake startup CEOs make when scaling a company

Y Combinator Partners on DoorDash, Instacart, and doing things that don’t scale

Marc Andreessen on handling a crisis: “There are no silver bullets, only lead bullets”

The essays, talks, and interviews of Peter Thiel

This document is a comprehensive compilation of Peter Thiel’s essays, podcasts, talks, interviews, and advice. Last updated July 2025.

Naval Ravikant on shutting down a startup

Twitch founder Emmett Shear on the best users to talk to for finding product/market fit

Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang on the “common startup failure mode” of hiring too many people

Brian Armstrong on the importance of disagreeableness if you want to do important things

Peter Thiel on how to identify great talent

Steve Jobs: The difference between good people and great people in software is 50-to-1