Venture capitalist and Palantir (NASDAQ:PLTR) chairman Peter Thiel has long argued that the real bottleneck in innovation isn’t brainpower but bravery, the willingness to back an idea most people think is wrong.
Thiel Says Genius Means Little Without Courage
Speaking in 2015 about his book ‘Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future’ at an event hosted by the Independent Institute, Thiel said many people are smart enough to spot opportunities, but far fewer are willing to pursue them when they cut against conventional wisdom. The line that has since become one of his most quoted takes is blunt. “Brilliant thinking is rare, but courage is in even shorter supply than genius,” he writes.
In the talk, Thiel explained that entrepreneurship defies formulas because every breakthrough company is a one-off. Copying the “next Mark Zuckerberg” or “next Bill Gates,” he said, misses the point that iconic businesses were built by doing something fundamentally new, not by following a template.
Contrarian Questions Test Unpopular Truths And Nerve
To get at that, he leans on what he calls a contrarian question, asking, “Tell me something true that very few people agree with you on.” Good answers, he argued, are inherently uncomfortable because they surface “secret” or unpopular truths. Many candidates default to safe complaints about politics or education that everyone already accepts. The real test, Thiel said, is whether someone will voice a view their interviewer might strongly disagree with, or a social hurdle that, in his view, makes courage rarer than intelligence, especially when ideas defy prevailing norms.
Other Titans Echo Courage Over Intelligence Mantra
Thiel has tied that mindset directly to building companies. He has said progress comes from finding unpopular truths and organizing a team around them, a principle he has called one of the best filters for hiring.
That emphasis on bold, non-consensus bets echoes through broader business circles. Fellow venture capitalist Ben Horowitz warned that “easy choices” slowly turn people into cowards, while Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) founder Jeff Bezos framed courage as taking asymmetric bets, writing that “given a 10% chance of a 100 times payoff, you should take that bet every time.” Elon Musk has similarly tied innovation to risk, saying, “Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.”
Legendary investor Warren Buffett has offered a parallel lesson in markets rather than startups, urging investors to be “fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful,” a mantra that likewise prizes temperament and contrarian nerve over IQ alone.
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