Peter Thiel’s advice to his younger self: “Value substance over status”

One of the resolutions I came up with a number of years ago was to always value substance over status, substance over prestige. And, you know, if I sort of was giving my younger self advice on what to do or how to think about one's life, I probably. I think I. You know, I probably would still go to Stanford. I might still go to law school. But I'd ask a lot more questions why I was doing these things. And I think if I was honest about it, too much of it was driven by prestige and status and not quite enough about really the substance of trying to learn things. And I had sort of this. I sort of think of it as this sort of crazy rolling quarter life crisis and sort of culminated in this big New York law firm where from the outside, everybody wanted to get in. From the inside, everybody wanted to get out. I lasted seven months and three days. When I left, one of the people down the hall said, it's so reassuring to see you leave, Peter. I had no idea it was possible to escape from Alcatraz. Which again. And, you know, and again I. And all you had to do was go through the front door. But our identity, people's identities get so wrapped up in the things they compete for that it was inconceivable for people to actually do that. And then the question was, you know, well, how had I ended up there? Why had I not thought about that more? And I think it was that I had taken too many of these shortcuts of valuing sort of what was prestigious, what was conventional over what was what I really want to do. So I think always substance over status.