{"id":901,"date":"2014-12-16T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-12-16T18:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.thinkapps.com\/?p=901"},"modified":"2016-03-31T17:11:36","modified_gmt":"2016-04-01T00:11:36","slug":"how-start-startup-competition-losers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thinkapps.com\/blog\/post-launch\/how-start-startup-competition-losers\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Start a Startup: Competition Is for Losers"},"content":{"rendered":"

What does competition actually look like in the startup world? How can young businesses be competitive? And is our society\u2019s relationship with competition healthy?<\/em><\/p>\n

Peter Thiel<\/a> \u2014\u00a0cofounder of PayPal<\/a>, early investor in Facebook<\/a>, and cofounder of Founders Fund<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 answered these questions and more during his lecture<\/a>\u00a0at Stanford University as part of Y Combinator<\/a>\u00a0president\u00a0Sam Altman\u2019s<\/a> How to Start a Startup<\/a>\u00a0course.<\/p>\n

(For more startup advice, check out\u00a0How to Start a Startup: The Book<\/a><\/em>. It’s\u00a0the ultimate reference guide to creating a successful tech startup.)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Creating Value<\/h2>\n

Comparing the size of the airline industry to the size of the search industry, you would come to the conclusion that airlines are more important than search. But Thiel points out that the airline industry\u2019s profit margins are significantly less than those of the search industry.<\/p>\n

In the airline industry, the companies make money, go bankrupt, get recapitalized, and then that cycle repeats itself. This is reflected in the combined market capitalization<\/a> of the airline industry, which is close to a quarter of Google<\/a>‘s. So even though the search industry is much smaller than air travel, it\u2019s actually more valuable.<\/p>\n

So how do you go about creating value when you first start a business and what makes a company valuable? Thiel says you have to c<\/i>reate<\/i> something of value and capture<\/i> some fraction of the value of what you’ve created.<\/p>\n

Perfect competition<\/h3>\n

Perfect competition has pros and cons. Here\u2019s a refresher of the definition of perfect competition according to Investopedia<\/a>,<\/p>\n

“A market structure in which the following five criteria are met:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. All firms sell an identical product.<\/li>\n
  2. All firms are price takers \u2014\u00a0they cannot control the market price of their product.<\/li>\n
  3. All firms have a relatively small market share.<\/li>\n
  4. Buyers have complete information about the product being sold and the prices charged by each firm.<\/li>\n
  5. The industry is characterized by freedom of entry and exit.”<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Pros: Perfect competition is always easy to model and it\u2019s efficient, especially in a world where things are static.<\/p>\n

    Cons: Perfect competition doesn\u2019t make money when a lot of competition is involved. (Thiel touches on this later.)<\/p>\n

    Thiel sees the business world as a binary. On one end of the spectrum you have industries that are perfectly competitive, and at the other end of the spectrum are monopolies. The latter are stabler long-term businesses and they have more capital. And if you get a creative monopoly for inventing something new, it often means you\u2019ve created something really valuable.<\/p>\n

    \u201cThere are exactly two kinds of businesses in this world,\u201d Thiel says. \u201cThere are businesses that are perfectly competitive and there are businesses that are monopolies. There is shockingly little that is in between.\u201d<\/p>\n

    The Lies We Tell<\/h2>\n

    According to Thiel, monopolies tend to lie. They don\u2019t want the government to regulate them, so they won\u2019t call themselves a monopoly. What do they do to escape scrutiny? They pretend to have a lot of competition.<\/p>\n

    For example, Google has a 66% market share of the search industry. But you\u2019ll never hear them describe themselves as a search engine anymore. Sometimes they call themselves an advertising company and sometimes they refer to themselves as a technology company.<\/p>\n

    There\u2019s a good reason for this renaming. The technology market is valued at close to one trillion dollars. So Google\u2019s narrative is that they\u2019re competing with all the car companies with their self-driving cars, they\u2019re competing with Apple<\/a> on TVs and smartphones, they\u2019re competing with Microsoft<\/a> on office products, and they\u2019re competing with Amazon<\/a> on cloud services.<\/p>\n

    They\u2019ve positioned themselves in the humongous technology market where there’s competition everywhere. That\u2019s how they escape the threat of regulating their monopoly.<\/p>\n

    The companies on the other end of the spectrum, who exist in a highly competitive industry, are also tempted to lie because they know they won\u2019t make any money.<\/p>\n

    They\u2019ll say they\u2019re doing something unique that is less competitive than it looks. They want to elevate themselves from the rest of the herd and attract capital. They do this to increase their perceived value, explains Thiel.<\/p>\n

    So a new restaurant that no one wants to invest in because restaurants are notoriously bad investments will be tempted to rebrand themselves. They\u2019ll exclaim that they\u2019re the only British food restaurant in Palo Alto. That\u2019s too small of a market. But because of the way they talk about their place in the market, it seems like they have a monopoly on British food in Palo Alto.<\/p>\n

    In a world where monopolists pretend not to have monopolies and non-monopolies pretend to have monopolies, it seems like the difference between the two is very small. But in reality, the real difference is vast. These lies produce a distortion of the business world, says Thiel.<\/p>\n

    Look at the big tech companies: Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon. They have just been building up cash for years, producing incredibly high profit margins.<\/p>\n

    Thiel says that the U.S. tech industry has been so successful financially because it’s prone to creating monopoly-like businesses. These companies accumulate so much cash that they don’t even know what to do with it beyond a certain point.<\/p>\n

    Go After Small Markets<\/h2>\n

    If you\u2019re a startup, you want to have a monopoly. Monopolies possess a large share of the market. But how do you get there? Thiel advises beginning with a really small market, taking over said market, and then expanding that market in concentric circles.<\/p>\n

    The biggest mistake you can make as a young startup is going after a giant market from the get-go. That signifies that you haven’t defined categories correctly. And you\u2019re going to be dealing with too much competition in one way or another.<\/p>\n

    Amazon started with just a bookstore. Their selling point was that they had all the books in the world. And because it was online, there were things customers\u00a0could do that they\u00a0couldn’t do before. After they established themselves as a bookstore, they expanded into different types of ecommerce.<\/p>\n

    Your company needs to be unique. In Thiel\u2019s words: \u201cYou don\u2019t want to be the fourth online pet food company. You don\u2019t want to be the tenth solar panel company.\u201d<\/p>\n

    In the tech world, there\u2019s this feeling that, in technology\u2019s history, every moment happens only once.<\/p>\n

    \u201cThe next Mark Zuckerberg<\/a> won\u2019t build a social network and the next Larry Page<\/a> won\u2019t be building a search engine, and the next Bill Gates<\/a> won\u2019t be building an operating system. If you are copying these people, you are not learning from them,\u201d Thiel says.<\/p>\n

    \u201cAll unhappy companies are alike because they failed to escape the essential sameness in competition,\u201d Thiel adds.<\/p>\n

    Last Mover Advantage<\/h2>\n

    You want technology whose magnitude is 10x better than the next best thing. Amazon had over 10\u00a0times as many books, but it wasn\u2019t that high tech. Before PayPal, they were using checks to send money on Ebay<\/a>, which took almost 10 days to clear. PayPal was almost 10 times faster.<\/p>\n

    But Thiel says that it’s not enough to have a monopoly for just a moment; you want a business that lasts over time. He disagrees with the notion espoused by Silicon Valley that you need to be the first mover to be successful in business.<\/p>\n

    Thiel cites tech giants to make his point: \u201cMicrosoft was the last operating system, at least for many decades. Google was the last search engine. Facebook will be valuable if it turns out to be the last of social networking sites.\u201d<\/p>\n

    What solidifies his claim that you need to be the last mover is that \u201cmost of the value in these companies exists far in the future.\u201d Thiel adds, \u201cIf you do a discounted cash flow analysis<\/a> of the business, you’ll look at all these profit streams<\/a>. You have a growth rate<\/a>. The growth rate\u2019s much higher that the discount rate. And so most of the value exists far in the future.”<\/p>\n

    When Thiel was\u00a0at PayPal in 2001, their growth rate was about 100% per year. And they had been in business for a little over two years. They were discounting future cash flows by 30%, but in actuality, about three quarters of the value of the business as of 2001 came from cash flows in the years 2011 and beyond.<\/p>\n

    According to Thiel, you get similar results if you analyze Silicon Valley tech companies like Airbnb<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, Facebook, and any emerging Internet companies. The math will tell you that 85% of the value is coming from cash flows in years 2024 and beyond. So he says we need to stop overvaluing growth and undervaluing durability.<\/p>\n

    Everybody wants to have a huge breakthrough in technology, a eureka moment. But unless your breakthrough is the final\u00a0breakthrough, you won\u2019t last. Thiel explains your only other option is to make a breakthrough and constantly improve on it at a pace with which no one can keep up.<\/p>\n

    In the 80s, your disk drive could have been better than everyone else\u2019s and that would probably get you about\u00a0two years of control of the market. But after those two years, another company would come and replace you. So in 15 years, disk drives improved exponentially, which was great for consumers. That was not so great for the people who started these companies.<\/p>\n

    In sum, you want to be the last mover. You need to think about who will be the leading company 10 to 20 years from now.<\/p>\n

    Who Gets Rewarded<\/h2>\n

    Steam engines, railways, the telephone, refrigeration, household appliances, the computer revolution, aviation \u2013 there has been countless incredible technological progress in the past 300 years. There has also been a lot of innovation in the sciences as well.<\/p>\n

    But what many don\u2019t realize is that the people who invent these products do not get rewarded for their inventions. The scientists never make any money.<\/p>\n

    Thiel says that they\u2019re always deluded into thinking that they live in a just universe that will reward them for their work and for their inventions. He calls this the \u201cfundamental delusion that scientists tend to suffer from in our society.\u201d<\/p>\n

    And Thiel says the same thing happened in the technology industry where the people who made these innovations didn\u2019t receive any value for their inventions.<\/p>\n

    The smartest physicist of the 20th century<\/a> comes up with special and general relativity, yet he\u00a0doesn’t get to be a billionaire. Railroads were valuable, but because there was too much competition, they went bankrupt.<\/p>\n

    Competition Is for \u201cLosers\u201d<\/h2>\n

    Thiel questions the seemingly obscure rationalizations for why certain things work and others\u00a0don’t. For science, the rationale is that the scientists aren\u2019t interested in making money; instead they\u2019re supposed to be doing the work for charitable reasons.<\/p>\n

    Thiel does not say that people should always be motivated by money but thinks we should be more critical of these rationalizations.<\/p>\n

    Software is seen as the most valuable thing in the world because so many people have made buckets of money in the industry. The logic is that, if people at Twitter make billions of dollars, then Twitter must be worth more than anything Einstein did. This type of rationalization is dangerous, according to Thiel.<\/p>\n

    \u201cWe think of losers as the people who are slow on the track team in high school or do a little less well on standardized tests and don’t get into the right schools,\u201d Thiel says.<\/p>\n

    Losers are seen as people who can’t compete. Thiel want us to rethink and revalue this concept and consider the possibility that the competition itself is off.<\/p>\n

    \u201cI think it’s more than just an intellectual blind spot, but also a psychological blind spot, where we find ourselves very attracted to competition, and in one form or another we find it reassuring if other people do things. And this is a very problematic thing that we need to always think through and try to overcome,\u201d Thiel advises.<\/p>\n

    Competition is seen as a form of validation in our society. But when a large number of people are all trying to do the same thing, it borders on the ridiculous. Twenty thousand people move to Los Angeles each year in an attempt to become movie stars, and about 20 people make it. Thiel thinks that\u2019s ludicrous.<\/p>\n

    He wants you to ask yourself the question: Does the tournament make sense as you keep going? Does the intensity of the competition really make sense in grad school or post doctoral education?<\/p>\n

    People compete ferociously to differentiate themselves. That’s often more imaginary than real, Thiel says.<\/p>\n

    When Thiel was in eighth grade, one of his friends wrote \u201cI know you\u2019re going to get into Stanford\u201d in his yearbook. He attended Stanford Law School several\u00a0years later. Then he ended up at a big New York law firm where, as he puts it, \u201cfrom the outside everybody wanted to get in and on the inside everybody wanted to leave.\u201d<\/p>\n

    He didn\u2019t like this dynamic and left the firm after seven months and three days.\u00a0His colleagues applauded him for leaving, even though to him it was a simple act.<\/p>\n

    \u201cSo much of people’s identities got wrapped up in winning these competitions that they somehow lost sight of what was important, what was valuable,\u201d Thiel says.<\/p>\n

    Competition does make you better at whatever it is you\u2019re doing; Thiel is not questioning that benefit. But what he\u2019s concerned about is what often comes with it \u2013 \u201cthis tremendous price that you stop asking some bigger questions about what’s truly important and truly valuable.\u201d<\/p>\n

    As Thiel concludes, \u201cDon’t always go through the tiny little door that everyone’s trying to rush through, maybe go around the corner and go through the vast gate that nobody is taking.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

    Next Steps<\/h2>\n

    If you enjoyed this post, be sure to check out\u00a0How to Start a Startup: The Book<\/a><\/em>. It’s\u00a0the ultimate reference guide to creating a successful tech startup.<\/p>\n

    \"How<\/a><\/p>\n

    Featured image was taken from the video of Peter Thiel\u2019s\u00a0lecture<\/a> at Stanford.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Entrepreneur and investor Peter Thiel explains why you always want to aim for monopoly and avoid competition when starting a company.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":914,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[85,104,46,90],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nHow to Start a Startup: Competition Is for Losers<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Entrepreneur and investor Peter Thiel explains why you always want to aim for monopoly and avoid competition when starting a company.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/thinkapps.com\/blog\/post-launch\/how-start-startup-competition-losers\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How to Start a Startup: Competition Is for Losers\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Entrepreneur and investor Peter Thiel explains why you always want to aim for monopoly and avoid competition when starting a company.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/thinkapps.com\/blog\/post-launch\/how-start-startup-competition-losers\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Build Blog by ThinkApps | Content on Entrepreneurship, Mobile Apps, Web Platforms and more\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2014-12-16T18:00:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2016-04-01T00:11:36+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/d1vqbpto5tbbz0.cloudfront.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/16180000\/Screen-Shot-2014-12-16-at-12.10.11-PM.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"981\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"439\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Danielle Small\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Danielle Small\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"12 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/thinkapps.com\/blog\/post-launch\/how-start-startup-competition-losers\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/thinkapps.com\/blog\/post-launch\/how-start-startup-competition-losers\/\",\"name\":\"How to Start a Startup: Competition Is for Losers\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/localhost:8080\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/thinkapps.com\/blog\/post-launch\/how-start-startup-competition-losers\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/thinkapps.com\/blog\/post-launch\/how-start-startup-competition-losers\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/d1vqbpto5tbbz0.cloudfront.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/16180000\/Screen-Shot-2014-12-16-at-12.10.11-PM.png\",\"datePublished\":\"2014-12-16T18:00:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2016-04-01T00:11:36+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/localhost:8080\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/bba073a44ba64f7d3ac369e8f1ea9322\"},\"description\":\"Entrepreneur and investor Peter Thiel explains why you always want to aim for monopoly and avoid competition when starting a company.\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/thinkapps.com\/blog\/post-launch\/how-start-startup-competition-losers\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/thinkapps.com\/blog\/post-launch\/how-start-startup-competition-losers\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/thinkapps.com\/blog\/post-launch\/how-start-startup-competition-losers\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/d1vqbpto5tbbz0.cloudfront.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/16180000\/Screen-Shot-2014-12-16-at-12.10.11-PM.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/d1vqbpto5tbbz0.cloudfront.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/16180000\/Screen-Shot-2014-12-16-at-12.10.11-PM.png\",\"width\":981,\"height\":439,\"caption\":\"Peter Thiel\"},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/thinkapps.com\/blog\/post-launch\/how-start-startup-competition-losers\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"http:\/\/localhost:8080\/blog\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"How to Start a Startup: Competition Is for Losers\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/localhost:8080\/blog\/#website\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/localhost:8080\/blog\/\",\"name\":\"Build Blog by ThinkApps | Content on Entrepreneurship, Mobile Apps, Web Platforms and more\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"http:\/\/localhost:8080\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/localhost:8080\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/bba073a44ba64f7d3ac369e8f1ea9322\",\"name\":\"Danielle Small\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/localhost:8080\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/8c1296b6b91b964003ed4eab10859f0f?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/8c1296b6b91b964003ed4eab10859f0f?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Danielle Small\"},\"description\":\"Danielle Small is a New York-based writer and marketer. In her free time she likes to bike around the city and jam on the harmonica ... but not at the same time.\",\"sameAs\":[\"http:\/\/www.daniellesmall.me\/\",\"http:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/daniellesmall\",\"https:\/\/x.com\/danielleabeda\"],\"url\":\"https:\/\/thinkapps.com\/blog\/author\/danielle\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"How to Start a Startup: Competition Is for Losers","description":"Entrepreneur and investor Peter Thiel explains why you always want to aim for monopoly and avoid competition when starting a company.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/thinkapps.com\/blog\/post-launch\/how-start-startup-competition-losers\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"How to Start a Startup: Competition Is for Losers","og_description":"Entrepreneur and investor Peter Thiel explains why you always want to aim for monopoly and avoid competition when starting a company.","og_url":"https:\/\/thinkapps.com\/blog\/post-launch\/how-start-startup-competition-losers\/","og_site_name":"Build Blog by ThinkApps | Content on Entrepreneurship, Mobile Apps, Web Platforms and more","article_published_time":"2014-12-16T18:00:00+00:00","article_modified_time":"2016-04-01T00:11:36+00:00","og_image":[{"width":981,"height":439,"url":"http:\/\/d1vqbpto5tbbz0.cloudfront.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/16180000\/Screen-Shot-2014-12-16-at-12.10.11-PM.png","type":"image\/png"}],"author":"Danielle Small","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Danielle Small","Est. reading time":"12 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/thinkapps.com\/blog\/post-launch\/how-start-startup-competition-losers\/","url":"https:\/\/thinkapps.com\/blog\/post-launch\/how-start-startup-competition-losers\/","name":"How to Start a Startup: Competition Is for Losers","isPartOf":{"@id":"http:\/\/localhost:8080\/blog\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/thinkapps.com\/blog\/post-launch\/how-start-startup-competition-losers\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/thinkapps.com\/blog\/post-launch\/how-start-startup-competition-losers\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/d1vqbpto5tbbz0.cloudfront.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/16180000\/Screen-Shot-2014-12-16-at-12.10.11-PM.png","datePublished":"2014-12-16T18:00:00+00:00","dateModified":"2016-04-01T00:11:36+00:00","author":{"@id":"http:\/\/localhost:8080\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/bba073a44ba64f7d3ac369e8f1ea9322"},"description":"Entrepreneur and investor Peter Thiel explains why you always want to aim for monopoly and avoid competition when starting a company.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/thinkapps.com\/blog\/post-launch\/how-start-startup-competition-losers\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/thinkapps.com\/blog\/post-launch\/how-start-startup-competition-losers\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/thinkapps.com\/blog\/post-launch\/how-start-startup-competition-losers\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/d1vqbpto5tbbz0.cloudfront.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/16180000\/Screen-Shot-2014-12-16-at-12.10.11-PM.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/d1vqbpto5tbbz0.cloudfront.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/16180000\/Screen-Shot-2014-12-16-at-12.10.11-PM.png","width":981,"height":439,"caption":"Peter Thiel"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/thinkapps.com\/blog\/post-launch\/how-start-startup-competition-losers\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"http:\/\/localhost:8080\/blog\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"How to Start a Startup: Competition Is for Losers"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"http:\/\/localhost:8080\/blog\/#website","url":"http:\/\/localhost:8080\/blog\/","name":"Build Blog by ThinkApps | Content on Entrepreneurship, Mobile Apps, Web Platforms and more","description":"","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"http:\/\/localhost:8080\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"http:\/\/localhost:8080\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/bba073a44ba64f7d3ac369e8f1ea9322","name":"Danielle Small","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"http:\/\/localhost:8080\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/8c1296b6b91b964003ed4eab10859f0f?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/8c1296b6b91b964003ed4eab10859f0f?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Danielle Small"},"description":"Danielle Small is a New York-based writer and marketer. In her free time she likes to bike around the city and jam on the harmonica ... but not at the same time.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.daniellesmall.me\/","http:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/daniellesmall","https:\/\/x.com\/danielleabeda"],"url":"https:\/\/thinkapps.com\/blog\/author\/danielle\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thinkapps.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/901"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thinkapps.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thinkapps.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thinkapps.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thinkapps.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=901"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/thinkapps.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/901\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6432,"href":"https:\/\/thinkapps.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/901\/revisions\/6432"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thinkapps.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/914"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thinkapps.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thinkapps.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thinkapps.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}