Peter Thiel argues that entrepreneurship is not a good direct goal (similar to wanting wealth or fame); instead, one should found a company to solve an important problem that others ignore. He emphasizes combining substantive passion for a field with psychological insight into why others have blind spots about the problem.
Chapters
I don't think there's anything about entrepreneurship per se that is good. I was talking to one of my friends a few years ago. I was asking him, what do you want to be doing in five or 10 years? Oh, it's really clear. I want to be an entrepreneur. That's like saying, I want to be rich. I want to be famous. Those are good things, being rich and famous. They're not good as direct goals. If you have that as your sole goal, you're unlikely to really succeed. And so I think you become an entrepreneur because you're working on an important problem nobody else is working on. I think you should start a business if you're working on a problem that otherwise would not get solved. And I think it's always some combination of something that's an important problem, and often there's some reason people have a blind spot around it or aren't thinking about it. So I always like to get it from both. Sort of a foundational level, which is maybe some substantive area that you're really passionate about, and this sort of psychological level of why is this something that so many people are missing in one way or another?