Unusual insight by Peter Thiel – founder of PayPal and Palantir Technologies – from his book Zero to One.
On failure of Solyndra and a dozen other cleantech startups between 2008 – 2012:
“The most obvious clue was sartorial: cleantech executives were running around wearing suits and ties. This was a huge red flag, because real technologists wear t-shirts and jeans.
So we instituted a blanket rule: pass on any company whose founders dressed up for pitch meetings. Maybe we still would have avoided these bad investments if we had taken the time to evaluate each company’s technology in detail.
But the team insight – never invest in a tech CEO that wears a suit – got us to the truth a lot faster. The best sales is hidden.
There’s nothing wrong with CEO who can sell, but if he actually looks like a salesman, he’s probably bad at sales and worse at tech.”
The book has an example which compares Solyndra CEO Brian Harrison and Tesla CEO Elon musk.
Moral of the story: Don’t overdress if you’re pitching/interviewing with a technology firm in the valley especially to Founders Fund.
Rating: 4/5
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