Mike Solana worked with Peter Thiel at Founders Fund and noticed something unusual: instead of dominating conversations like most successful people do, Thiel asks probing questions to learn what he doesn't know. When someone new joins a discussion, Thiel gets genuinely curious about their expertise, whether it's construction in Miami or something else entirely.
I feel like Peter is, you know, definitely a good example of a thought criminal. So curious, like, what is working with Peter and seeing that, what has that taught you?
Peter has taught me a lot. And I think my favorite thing about Peter is at, I've met a lot of, I'm lucky enough at this point in my career, I've met a lot of really successful people, people who are known and who have done things and built companies, and they're way richer than I am, and they're smart, dynamic people. And what happens with a lot of these successful people, almost all of them, is they, like, they start holding court, kind of. They stop interacting with you as a person and getting to know new people so much as, like, they're surrounded by their people and they'll be at a dinner table and they'll just be monologuing to you about how the world works. And they're definitely like in charge of the table. And Peter is not like that at all. Peter, who is the smartest person I've ever known, smarter than all of those people, like by far, I would say. He sits down and the first thing when there's new people at the table, he wants to understand what they see that he doesn't see. And he starts asking them all sorts of questions that he doesn't know the answer to. And he genuinely wants to know. He wants to know. He's like, what are you seeing out there? What do you think about this? What do you think about that? And I've been at some of these tables and I'm not as like, I am a curious person. He's way more curious than me. So he'll be asking some new person. So I'm like, I am so like, I'm bored right now. I don't care about like whatever this like, I don't even know what is like construction in Miami. Literally was a conversation not too long ago that I was over. I'm like, I do not care about this at all. But he does. He cares about everything.
