Peter Thiel Thinks We All Can Do Better

Silicon Valley’s Peter Thiel; the entrepreneur, investor and the PayPal co-founder’s call for deep invention.

Silicon Valley’s Peter Thiel may, famously, be the most successful tech entrepreneur-investor ever.  A PayPal founder, ground floor at Facebook – you saw him played in the movie, "The Social Network."  He’s in Space X and Founders Fund and Clarium Capital and on and on.  But Peter Thiel is not impressed with our technology age.  We’re actually in a tech slowdown, he says.  This techno-libertarian says the US, the world, has to surge forward, technologically, or flame out.  The way we’re headed won’t  cut it.  This hour On Point:  the techno-libertarian, Peter Thiel.
-- Tom Ashbrook

Peter Thiel, technology entrepreneur and investor. Author, with Blake Masters, of "Zero to One: Note on Startups, or How to Build the Future." Co-founder of PayPal and Palantir Technology. (@peterthiel)

The Atlantic: Peter Thiel's Zero to One Might Be the Best Business Book I've Read — "It's surprising in a wonderful way just how simple Zero to One feels. Barely 200 pages long, and well lit by clear prose and pithy aphorisms, Thiel's has written a perfectly tweetable treatise and a relentlessly thought-provoking handbook."

San Francisco Chronicle: Entrepreneur Peter Thiel talks 'Zero to One’ — "Thiel, introvert, billionaire, philosopher and rebel — he tells employees to pass on startup pitches by engineers wearing suits — has written a new book that has already become required reading for tech entrepreneurs. Called 'Zero to One: Notes on Startups or How to Build the Future,' the book asks myriad questions, from, 'What valuable company is nobody building?' and 'How are startups and cults alike?' to 'Can we permanently escape misfortune?'"

Washington Post: Mr. Thiel goes to Washington, vents about America’s government -- "Tuesday afternoon, Thiel, who is a libertarian, found himself at theAmerican Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C. Just a stone’s throw from the White House, he didn’t hold back his views of America’s government during an entertaining hour-long talk with AEI’s James K. Glassman. From the NSA to the FDA, Thiel had stern words."