Peter Thiel vs. Bill Perkins: The Battle of the Zeros
[March MINDness] - Zero to One vs. Die with Zero
This is the first round of March MINDness, a bracket tournament for self-help authors and books. Happier Region: 8th seed vs 9th seed. If you haven’t read the books, no worries. I’m reading it for you.
As the story goes, Alexander the Great’s empire stretched from Eastern Europe to Northern Africa to India, equivalent to the size of the United States. But when he died, he asked for his hands to dangle outside the coffin during his funeral, showing that even the conqueror of the world left with nothing. He came empty-handed and left empty-handed.
Cool story. And it has major modern implications on how you see your life purpose and relationship with money.
Some would say what a great life! He came to the world and built an amazing empire and left a legacy that lasted over 2,000 years. And others would say I’m not so sure about that. I’d rather travel the world without the bloodshed, enjoy different cuisines, dance during the sunset, and let my Chase Ultimate Rewards points pay for everything.
What is life? To build and conquer, or to savor and remember? Should you make a lot of money or spend all the money? When you see those junk mail advertisement that shows couples in infinity pools over a tropical island, do you think that’s the ultimate form of enrichment or the utmost waste of time?
Well, let’s hear some wisdom from two (very) rich guys.
Peter Thiel – Zero to One
The German-born chess player, Stanford philosophy graduate who later co-founded both PayPal and Palantir and also invested in Facebook. He’s an openly gay Christian conservative libertarian who backed Trump, funded the lawsuit that killed Gawker, and thinks most people are wrong about everything. If you argue against him about money, he’ll show you his $25B net worth.
When you listen to him talk, you don’t know if you should be inspired, confused, or scared. He seems to be always just out of a meeting to either save the world or destroy it.
If Thiel’s existence isn’t weird enough for you, read his book. A Stanford student took his class about startups in 2012 and posted it online and it instantly went viral. Instead of zapping that student with his private Terminator, Thiel wrote this book.
Core Ideas:
0 to 1 vs 1 to N. Copying what works is 1 to N. Creating something new is 0 to 1. Only 0 to 1 moves the world forward.
Competition is for losers. It destroys profits and forces sameness. The goal is monopoly, by being so good no one can substitute you.
Start small, dominate, then scale. Don’t capture 1% of a huge market. Capture 100% of a tiny one.
A bad plan beats no plan. Having a concrete vision beats keeping your options open. Options without direction are just drift.
There are still secrets left. Every great company was built on a truth most people missed or dismissed.
These ideas were pretty revolutionary in 2014, but have become the standard talking language in the Silicon Valley startup world. He wrote this book for a specific person - a Stanford graduate with access to venture capital, or ambitious young person doing whatever it takes to become one. In Thiel’s world, life is all about building, thinking and accomplishing. And when you die, there might be no friends showing up at your funeral, but there will be a billion users visiting your app.
Bill Perkins – Die With Zero
An electrical engineer turned energy trader who made over a billion dollars for his hedge fund, then became a film producer and professional poker player with $5 million in tournament winnings. He’s worth $400 million, which is F U money to you and me but wouldn’t get an invite to Peter Thiel’s AI poodle’s birthday party.
When Perkins was 22 making $18K a year, he proudly told his boss he’d saved $1,000. His boss called him a “f***ing idiot.” The logic? You’re 22 and broke, but you’re on a path to be rich. That $1,000 means everything to you right now and nothing to your future self who’ll be making 20 times more. You’re stealing from the version of you who needs it most and giving it to the version of you who’ll barely notice it.
Core Ideas:
Your life is the sum of your experiences, not your bank balance. Money is life energy. If you die with money left over, you wasted the hours it took to earn it.
Memory dividends. A trip with friends at 25 pays dividends for 50 years. The same trip at 65 pays for 15. Experiences compound. Start early.
Time buckets. Don’t have a bucket list. Have time buckets. Backpack Southeast Asia in your 20s, not your 70s. Your body has an expiration date. Your money doesn’t.
Give with a warm hand. $50K to your kid at 25 for a house changes their life. The same money inherited at 55 is just a nice bonus. Stop waiting to be generous.
Your peak net worth should not be the day you die. Most people’s wealth peaks at death. That’s insane. Spend it down. The goal is zero.
By the way, if you have 15 minutes, watch this funny interview between Perkins and two FIRE guys (young aggressive savers who want to retire by 40). Perkins talking about maximizing experiences, while the FIRE bros brag about eating other restaurants’ leftovers to save a penny. You can see Perkins going back and forth from being amused to wanting to strangle them.
The Comparison
Thiel thinks about how to build the next monopoly for AI chip memory, Perkins asks you to build the next best life memory.
Thiel is your ultra-wealthy uncle staring into your eyes and pointing at his own head whispering — everything you need, it’s all in here. Now go conquer the world. Perkins is your college roommate 10 years later telling you duuuuude, stop slaving and start living! Iceland is the minimum. Laucala is the threshold.
But let me be real for a moment, these people are more similar than you think. Namely, they are both rich out of their minds. Thiel is a billionaire (or 25-billionaire), and Perkins is a half-billionaire ($400M). Like any rich people (and you’ll see this throughout the Richer region), they see the world from the view of a made man, not from a starter.
They tell you to dream about becoming a butterfly, without walking through the grind inside the cocoon. They ask you to follow your passion, without teaching you to be barely useful. If all you do is go from zero to one, odds are you are left with zero. If all you care about is dying with zero, you might hit zero long before dying. And if you don’t have health insurance, you might even “die by zero.”
So take their wisdom about the world from the mountaintop, but don’t delete your boring Google Map for your own climb just yet.
Now make your own judgment with the vote.
My Vote
I am voting for the first big upset of the tournament and going with Bill Perkins. For two reasons:
1. There is one thing Perkins wrote that really resonated with me - be generous to your kids when they need it the most. My family helped me with college tuition, so I wasn’t saddled with crippling debt. They could have taught me a lesson to be on my own, but I would not be where I am today.
2. I actually tried a Zero to One strategy for 10 years. The go-big-or-go-home mentality made me think everything I did needed to be world-changing, which eliminated lots of awesome incremental opportunities that could eventually compound into the One. In fact, nowadays I need to actively cleanse my Zero to One thoughts and embrace the everyday improvement.
My life philosophy no longer revolves around the end goal of flipping the world upside down, but the everyday pursuit of enjoyable play, and thus Easy Ambition, the title of this newsletter.
My vote goes to Bill Perkins for the upset.
Hey, maybe my ceiling is only $400M, not $25B. I’ll cry in my room now. Leave me alone.