Peter Thille: Beijing is second only to Silicon Valley in entrepreneurial atmosphere

A lot of people may have heard of the "PayPal Mob," and the founder of Ellon Masc and LinkedIn, Hoffman, are two members of the gang. In this gang, four members have made bombs in high school, and it would be difficult to manage such a group of "freaks"? So who's the lead in PayPal? He is Peter Thille, PayPal's original founder. He was born in Germany, the father is an engineer, because work needs to move frequently, before the age of 10, in different countries in Tyre seven times to learn. He graduated from Stanford Law School and later entered a well-known law firm in New York. But in less than 7 months and 3 days, Peter Thille chose to leave, saying it was not the life he wanted. Tyre back to Silicon Valley Palo Alto, and in 1998 founded the PayPal Company. He led the company to market after PayPal was acquired by ebay in 2002. For the next 13 years, Tyre became an investor and founded several companies, including global hedge fund management firm Clarium Capital Management, technology company Palantir and VC founders Fund. Founders Fund has invested in a number of star-level businesses, such as SpaceX, Linkedin, Yelp, DeepMind, Airbnb and Oculus. Tyre was also the first external investor in Facebook and SpaceX. In 2012, Tyre taught entrepreneurship at Stanford University and tried to explain what he learned about business, technology and entrepreneurship. One of his students, Blake Masters, put his lecture notes online, triggering a huge response, said Mark Andreessen, a leading Silicon Valley venture, and almost every Silicon Valley entrepreneur has seen those notes. Last year, tyre integrated the important point of view into the Zero to one book, the Chinese version of the book "from 0 to 1" just published, he was invited to participate in the 2015 forum in China, combined with their actual combat experience to share the secret of throwing a great enterprise? After the meeting, Tyre received the exclusive video interview of Tencent Technology. What was Tyre's impression of Beijing's entrepreneurship? What does he think of a quick taxi and a drop-by-taxi "holding hands"? Apart from rapid iterative innovation and disruptive innovation, what is the third innovative model that jobs employs? In the exclusive video interview with Tencent Technology, Peter Tildu a wonderful answer. Q: In China, which one is your own conviction, and others disagree? A: Many Americans think China is an optimistic country, but I think China is surprisingly pessimistic because China's savings rate is very high. Americans are barely saving, but China's savings rate is as high as 40%, so the savings rate reflects fears about the future, and I think people's panic is justified. China has been crazy for the past hundred years.Many things, I think the Chinese should be more optimistic, China should have a better future. China has been very good for the past 30 years and believes China will be better in the coming decades. Q: What is your impression of entrepreneurship in Beijing? A: I think the venture in Beijing is very dynamic and entrepreneurs are very focused. They think seriously and work very hard. I do not want to compare the United States, but in the United States, in addition to Silicon Valley, there can be no match with the entrepreneurial atmosphere in Beijing, Beijing has been far ahead of Western Europe, more than the rest of the world. Q: "From 0 to 1" This book speaks of uniqueness, not replicable, do you think China has such an ingenious enterprise? A: When we say that China imitates the west, it is not really criticizing China. If you are not a developed country, the simplest, most natural, and the most correct way is to imitate the successful model. In the past 30 years, China has done a great job, China has a leap of development, to avoid a lot of mistakes, the United States and Western Europe of the city design more modern, Chinese imitation is very good, even on this basis to improve. But if we look ahead, when China catches up with Europe and America, innovation becomes critical for China. Japan's example is well worth learning, and Japan has spent decades chasing the US. But in the the 1980s, it was hard for Japan to overtake the United States. Because, culturally speaking, Japan is a very difficult country to innovate, I think China should do better than Japan, which is a problem facing China for the next ten years. Q: Quick taxi and drop a taxi on Valentine's Day just announced the merger, they currently occupy about 99% of the market share, how do you look at this deal? A: Trying to monopolize a particular market is very valuable. The competition in the car rental service market is very competitive and it is very valuable to be the leader of the market after the merger, as in China and the rest of the world. PayPal is also from the merger of two companies, in March 2000 we took the form of half the merger, for the company to create a great value. I believe that all successful enterprises have some form of monopoly, from the social point of view we can argue is good or bad, if they create new things, the impact on society is good, if they become parasites, the society will have a negative impact. But if you're a founder or entrepreneur, you're always looking for a monopoly, because that's why you end up earning money. Q: Would you please talk about the story behind the merger of PayPal and X.com (founded by Ellon Masc) in 2000? A: 2.5 months, we have been in a state of intense competition. Both of our companies are located in the heart of Palo Alto, Silicon Valley, just four blocks away, but as if two families had a feud, they fought and two companies created a lot of capital. But we all think we should talk about each other. Whether we can consider the power to assemble two, we did merge, and it turns out that the merger was the right choice. In the weeks after March 2000, the entire Internet market burstCrack。 Because we had a merger before, we had enough cash to support that time, find the right business model, and make a profit in the late 2001. In short, our merger proved to be very valuable. But merging is not a panacea for all problems, you have to focus on products, corporate strategy, talent and a range of other things, but sometimes mergers are critical. Q: Why invest in Airbnb, and not invest Uber? Is it because of regulatory issues? A: they are regulated to some extent, I prefer Airbnb to many things, I think the characteristics of the housing environment, let the monopoly appears more natural. Because there are 500 different houses in a city, they all vary. Maybe in 30 houses in a community, there are three houses for you to live with, one is very cheap, then there are 500 kinds of houses, the company will be able to beat only 50 kinds, because each house is different, and consumers need this difference. But if you are a car rental company with 500 cars, you will face competition from companies with only 50 cars because all cars are the same. From a consumer's point of view, they don't care about the source of the car. So for Uber, social marketing is difficult and scale is difficult. As an investor, I always ask myself, am I missing something when I look at these companies? I will answer two questions: First, is this a good company? Second, if so, why don't other people understand? If I could find the perfect answer to the second question, it would usually be a successful investment. Q: Why invest in SpaceX, no investment Tesla? A: As an investor, we always have our own shortcuts, some rules of investment, even though they may not always be correct. But in the last decade, especially from 2005 to 2008, there is a rule of investment in Silicon Valley that we never invest in clean energy technology companies. Many people try to invest, but their business model doesn't work and we decide not to invest in these companies. I don't think it's the right universal rule to invest them, because many of the businesses associated with them fail, but the result is that we should actually look at Tesla more carefully, rather than just judge it by the law, and let the law take the place of real inspection. Q: Last year, Google spent $500 million to buy AI company DeepMind, as an early investor, why do you think it has potential? A: I have been interested in the field of artificial intelligence for some time, I am a little hesitant, I do not know whether this technology can be achieved quickly, or to wait 100 years or even longer. We ran into some AI researchers who recommended the deep Mind team. After we talked, I believed that this was the most powerful team, and they had a thorough understanding of computer science, neurobiology, and how to design generalized artificial intelligence. This is also the deep mind team to their commitment to achieve the goal. They come to theThe conclusion is that the use of a large amount of resources will not be profitable within 10 years and needs to be studied for 10 years. It is very difficult for such companies to attract financing because investors usually focus on short-term benefits, so they finally decide to work with Google. Q: AI, like big data and cloud computing, has become a buzzword now, if there is a company like DeepMind, will you still invest? A: You can understand my idea, this is a bit scary (laugh). I'm very nervous about investing in a company like this, because Ai has become a buzzword. The problem is that there are so many different people talking about artificial intelligence that I'm worried about being wrong and missing something? When everyone agrees with my point of view, I always feel nervous and I wonder if the idea is not so interesting. In May 2012, I attended a forum in Silicon Valley. There are five VCs on the forum, each predicting two trends over the next five years, and then the next 200 guests will vote. One of the least popular trends is that a guest predicts the electric car. Everyone is tired of clean energy technology, and four of our guests voted against it. 91% of the audience voted against it, and the remaining 9% voted in favour. When I left the forum, I thought maybe everyone was too negative, maybe investing in Tesla stocks was a good choice, and it turned out to be the perfect year for us to buy Tesla stocks, which rose several times from May 2012 to the early 2014. Q: Would you like to talk about one of your favorite books? A: I like to read all kinds of books, a philosopher named Renégirard, who wrote a book titled Things Hidden Since The Foundation of the world, has far-reaching influence on me. It is difficult for me to sum up all, but this book has the view that imitation is a very important part of human nature, it has created human society, created our relationship with others, imitate the energy than we think is more powerful. But many people will suppress or conceal this imitation, we will not be very clear to say that we are copying other people's things, because it would be very embarrassing, we imitate more times than we admit. Imitation is a very good ability, it allows us to learn language, understand culture, but in many cases, imitation will be wrong, such as a group of people flocked to lead to market bubbles, financial bubbles. Q: Why did you choose to leave the prestigious New York office when you were young? A: I was in my early 20 and I felt a crisis peculiar to my youth. People often say that over the age of 40, they will experience a mid-life crisis. I began to question the value and reason why I do many things. I grew up in a very competitive environment, more than grades. I am very good at competition, and win in the competition, into a good university, a good company. But I did not ask myself, why do I want to compete? Why do I have to do this? Is it true that I'm really interested in these things? In the end, you enter a homePeople seem to be good companies, but it seems to me that the job is not so interesting, it makes me rethink a lot of problems, I left the bank after a few years of work, and then back to California, just in time to catch up with the rise of the Internet tide. Q: Can you tell me about three innovations in your eyes? A: There are different modes of innovation. First, it's a quick iteration, step by step to improve the product, which may be the most common mode of innovation; second, a major breakthrough, such as Bitcoin; third, complex coordination (Complex coordination), where you integrate what is already there, I think this model is more worthy of wide application. For example, if you look at the original iphone, it doesn't have the current elements, and it integrates the elements in the right way to meet the needs of the consumer. This is the first functional smartphone for consumers. Similarly, if you go to see Tesla, you'll find that every part of it is already there, the steering wheel, doors, batteries, etc. are not new, Tesla simply integrates the parts in the right way, making it an electric car, which gives consumers a great experience. At present, this complex and coordinated innovation is not common, it is the secret of Apple's success, but also the key to Tesla's success, because this innovation model is not common, we currently do not have a model to explain the real reasons for the success of these companies.