Over 300 students, professors, and local entrepreneurs gathered at Duke University’s Gross Hall on Monday, March 30th to attend a very special discussion by a very special guest.
“This man hardly needs an introduction,” said moderator Dr. Eric Toone of Duke’s Innovation and Entrepreneurship Initiative as he opened the sold-out event. Of course, to many in the audience, the cofounder and former CEO of PayPal, early investor in Facebook, creator of a fellowship which pays university students to drop out and start companies, challenger of U.S. government and incredibly successful venture capitalist (yes, this is all one person) is a common household name. Peter Thiel was met with a warm welcome and an applause that echoed.
The night began with Thiel giving some general thoughts on entrepreneurship. He urged everyone to think about the following prompt:
“Tell me something that’s true that very few people agree with you on.”
Thiel argues that in a world where courage is in shorter supply than genius, it is a mark of success if your answer is something that makes the questioner uncomfortable. The exercise represents Thiel’s larger theme of advocating against the “ape” mentality and our human tendency to imitate in business.
One of his own answers to the prompt is that there’s a big difference between capitalism and competition.
“You don’t want to be the nth person in a category; you want to be a category of your own.”
Want more? Read the full story at ExitEvent.
Note: ExitEvent is a news partner of WRAL TechWire.
