I love the startup “scene”; cool and crazy people trying to change the world, VC and angel investors who are looking for talent to give them millions to pursue their dream. I find it romantic.
I was excited to learn that Peter Thiel, Paypal founder and Facebook’s first investor, is teaching a course on Startups in Stanford. Peter is a role model for me; he founded PayPal when he was 29, and his vision of Paypal is surprisingly similar to eToro’s:
We’re definitely onto something big. The need PayPal answers is monumental. Everyone in the world needs money – to get paid, to trade, to live. Paper money is an ancient technology and an inconvenient means of payment… PayPal will give citizens worldwide more direct control over their currencies than they ever had before. It will be nearly impossible for corrupt governments to steal wealth from their people through their old means because if they try the people will switch to dollars or Pounds or Yen, in effect dumping the worthless local currency for something more secure.
I met Peter once, in the Summit Series at sea, where he gave an awesome lecture. I managed to talk to him a bit, which reminds me: don’t approach your role models while drunk at a party.
So, just like everything in life, instead of simply reading the notes, I prefer “teaching” them. I am opening a course for eToro employees that will be based on the 19 classes of Peter Thiel CS183 : Startup course.
The idea is very simple: get a few people that read the notes before class every week, give my view and insight into what we read and have group discussions about: The Challenge of the Future, The past: Party Like it’s 1999?, Value Systems, The Last Mover Advantage, The Mechanics of Mafia, Thiel’s Law, VC – Follow The Money, The Pitch,Product – If You Build It, Will They Come?, After Web 2.0, Perception and Secrets, War and Peace, You Are Not A Lottery Ticket, Seeing Green, Back to the Future, Decoding Ourselves, Deep Thought on AI (should invite Yaki Dunitz), Founder as Victim, Founder as God, Stagnation or Singularity? We will also invite guests to some of the lectures, and try to be creative as possible. Most classes will probably be held outdoors.
The best part is, since I am teaching the class, I’ll have to finally read an entire course notes, which I’ve never done in my academic carreer, and hopefully some graduates of the course will be able to build new startups (that will work with eToro off course).