A frank and productive exchange of views with my counterpart on key issues like expanding the global supply of candy and toys and tightening sanctions against chores.
.@rabois on the most important lesson he learned from Peter Thiel: You can’t hire anybody over 30.
“Peter might not say it exactly the same way today, but basically, what he was trying to say is this: by the time you’re 30, everyone on the planet knows how to assess you pretty accurately. There are enough data points on your resume—back then, it was your resume, and today, it’s your LinkedIn profile—so that everybody can come to a consensus view about your abilities.
But if you come to a consensus view about everybody’s abilities, guess what? Google is going to spend a lot of money on that person. Or OpenAI is going to spend a lot of money on that person. Or Meta is going to spend a lot of money on that person.
And, when you’re a startup, you can’t outspend large companies that are very profitable or have infinite money like OpenAI. You need to be much more disciplined, much more frugal, and you may not even want to hire these people. The people who are motivated by that much compensation may not even be the right builders.
I took that advice with me literally from November 2000, and I’ve been trying to apply it for 24 years now.”