Peter Thiel on being a contrarian

you think they’re going to go well it’s
been a it’s been an incredible success I
would I would never bet against a long
in anything so I think that’s sort of
you know hard hard rule number one um
it’s probably you know if you sort of
ask what is it that the innovation
what’s what’s been the innovation in
SpaceX or Tesla on the many different
forms innovation takes the most common
one we’re used to is sort of you launch
something and then you iteratively
improve it sort of this continuous
improvement model we occasionally have a
modality of innovation we have a big
brilliant breakthrough like maybe
Bitcoin where Sony who worked on it in a
closet for 10 years and then release
this amazing discovery to the world but
I think there’s another modality of
innovation that’s that’s very underrated
is what I described is complex
coordination where you just take a lot
of different pieces and the innovation
is to combine them in a new way so if
you ask what is new about SpaceX rockets
or Tesla cars you know all the
components already existed at least in
the initial designs and the critical
thing was to pull them all together in a
in a new form and and that sort of
vertical integration on you know is
somewhat capital intensive which is why
it’s quite hard to get it financed but
it’s done very little and and so and
then once it’s done it’s something that
tends to get underrated I think Apple
Apple’s iPhone the first smartphone that
really worked is another example of
complex coordination and when
people as you know people write
biographies on jobs it’s like well he
was a jerk and that’s that’s the most
interesting thing and what would really
is interesting is how was he able to
motivate all these people to build this
completely new product and it was that
you could you could do something
incredible not by inventing any specific
thing that was new but bringing all the
pieces together in just the right way
and that’s that’s what the iPhone
represented
that’s what Tesla represents with cars
or or SpaceX with rockets and what is
the no pun intended the trajectory of
SpaceX do you think because he’s now
gotten you know to space many times
gotten to the space station many times
and he’s almost landed the reusable
rocket he’s tried twice and it’s it’s
what it’s apparent he’s going to get it
and that’s truly innovative yes well I
think I think I think having built this
vertically integrated rocket company
it’s now possible to innovate on that in
ways that we much harder if you had this
super complicated subcontract or sub
subcontractor system where all the
components are bespoke and you can’t
innovate on the whole thing so having
integrated all the pieces you can
innovate if they if they get to