Peter Thiel Always Asks Founders These 7 Questions

Ask yourself these questions to validate your strategy

Peter Thiel is worth $4.2 billion due to cofounding PayPal, Palantir, Founders Fund and being the first outside check into Facebook.

He wrote what's widely thought of as the manual for startups — Zero to One.

In the book, he talks about the 7 questions founders should ask themselves about their startups.

They're below, along with some of my thoughts on each one 👇

Read time: 3 minutes

Peter Thiel's 7 Questions for Founders

The Distribution Question

How will you deliver your product to customers?

"If you build it, they will come" is a lie that second-time founders understand.

Here's a quick distribution playbook:

  1. Identify your target persona

  2. Ask them where they spend their time

  3. Use whatever means necessary to get their attention there

Don't spend your money developing a product if you don't have a way to get it in front of the people who may be interested in it. And don't make the mistake of expecting that the growth lever you initially find will work forever — the law of shitty clickthroughs is always true on a long enough timeline.

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