He quotes Emerson, “weak men believe in luck, strong men believe in cause and effect.” Or as the deeply competitive Thiel supposedly said after a chess match, “Show me a good loser and and I’ll show you a loser.” If you read Zero to One, it’s all there: the necessity of secrets, the drive to monopoly, owning the future. In my study of the billionaire Peter Thiel over the last year for my book Conspiracy I found that he was one of the few from Silicon Valley who understood this as a precondition to success and was willing to openly discuss all of it. He was such a natural fighter that he fought everything, and thus, ensured his own downfall. It didn’t change him and that was the problem. It can’t be said that power changed Travis. It was this unquestioning drive that allowed him to blow past technological hurdles, monopoly power, local regulations, unions, and in some cases, mob-controlled taxi companies. Indeed, many of the early Uber investors I would speak to about Travis would remark that his greatest strength was his intense will to power. Between these two types, there is a Travis Kalanick who saw taxicab drivers not as solid middle class citizens, like many of us mistakenly did, but as a cabal of overpaid, rent-seeking obstacles to be broken apart and put out of work. There are people who tastelessly start a business designed to put bodegas out of business ( as one recent start up attempted) and there are people like Steve Jobs who artfully and heartlessly delivered a mortal blow to Eastman Kodak, a 129 year old company, with one addition to his design for the iPhone. It’s probably better than most of us do not. The ability to willfully seek out this destruction on a massive scale is, in its own way, a skill. Good comes from it, but it’s not without its costs-to society or to the people who make it their living. It’s called creative destruction for a reason. That it was somehow cleaner than coal or oil or steel. Rockefeller, Elizabeth Holmes and Jay Gould-is that it believes, since the “disruption” is orchestrated from behind a computer, it’s not the same. Perhaps what’s set Silicon Valley apart-the difference between Elon Musk and John D. We could compare two photos of Andrew Carnegie and see the same thing. Now, twenty or so years later, he’s jacked like a Terminator-the physical manifestation of his trillion-dollar company which has eaten the world-and his influence is now distributed through one of the most prestigious newspapers in the country…which he owns. At first, you have a skinny nerdy guy who just wanted to sell us books over the computer, and fended off lawsuits by mega-retailers like Barnes & Noble and Wal-Mart for the privilege. In present day, I like to think of this before and after picture of Jeff Bezos as a good example of the arc of a successful businessman or woman, one that is timeless and perennial.
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