# Tweets From the Startup Archive  ## Metadata - Author: [[@StartupArchive_ on Twitter]] - Full Title: Tweets From the Startup Archive - Category: #tweets - URL: https://twitter.com/StartupArchive_ ## Highlights - **Peter Thiel describes a startup category that is continually underestimated** In the clip below, Peter Thiel explains why he believes “complex coordination” is a company category that’s continually underestimated. “The question we always focus on is ‘can this company become a monopoly?’” He then lists several things that can make a company a monopoly: Super fast distribution on a very thin product (e.g. Twitter) A technological advantage that is continually built upon: you come up with something new and steadily improve (e.g. enterprise SaaS software) A truly brilliant breakthrough (e.g. Bitcoin) However he argues that complex coordination—where you take a lot of little pieces and coordinate them into something new—is continually overlooked as a way to create a monopoly: “This is the thing that’s maybe 180 degrees antithetical to the Lean Startup ethos. It’s complicated. You have to put all the pieces together in just the right way. I think this is on some level what really drove Apple as an innovative company in the last decade… What was new about the iPhone? There was no single component that was new. It was just that you put all of these things together in just the right way… and once you built it, it was actually super hard for people to replicate. You had an advantage for many years. You could get network lock in—in terms of the app community or the brand.” He also points to Tesla and SpaceX as examples: “There’s no component to the Tesla that’s actually that new. It’s just that you put all of the pieces together. You re-engineered the whole distributor network. It was this complex coordination that made it work. There’s like this lost art of accounting where you figure out how much things cost and add them all together. And Elon has discovered this lost art of accounting which no other people practice.”<video controls><source src="https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1728774602199871488/pu/pl/dZneA3VPeH6WuJoj.m3u8?tag=12&container=fmp4" type="application/x-mpegURL"><source src="https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1728774602199871488/pu/vid/avc1/640x360/EwlwtiieTE_rC75b.mp4?tag=12" type="video/mp4"><source src="https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1728774602199871488/pu/vid/avc1/1280x720/H1b_wIce7JMOWjAJ.mp4?tag=12" type="video/mp4"><source src="https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1728774602199871488/pu/vid/avc1/480x270/xRyvHFagR8iPIZif.mp4?tag=12" type="video/mp4">Your browser does not support the video tag.</video> ([View Tweet](https://twitter.com/StartupArchive_/status/1728774788267589964)) - **Steve Jobs on leadership** “The greatest people are self-managing. They don’t need to be managed. Once they know what to do, they’ll go figure out how to do it… What they need is a common vision, and that’s what leadership is. Leadership is having a vision, being able to articulate that so the people around you can understand it, and getting consensus on a common vision.” Borrowing from his tagline for the original Mac, Steve continues: “We wanted people who were insanely great at what they did… and the neatest thing that happens when you get a core group ten great people is that it becomes self-policing as to who they let into that group. So I consider the most important job of someone like myself is recruiting.” This observation on the importance of getting the first ten people right is a refrain you constantly hear from the very best founders. As Patrick Collison put it: “A large part of the reason why the first ten people you hire are so important is because you’re not just hiring those first ten people. You’re actually hiring 100 people because you should think of each of those people as bringing along another ten people with them.” The best leaders recruit “insanely great” people and align them around a common vision. Follow <a href="https://twitter.com/StartupArchive_">@StartupArchive_</a> for more timeless startup advice!<video controls><source src="https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1733850786549891072/pu/vid/avc1/480x270/JIPs6l2a741BQE8U.mp4?tag=12" type="video/mp4"><source src="https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1733850786549891072/pu/vid/avc1/1280x720/v75LuTq4kechEMtM.mp4?tag=12" type="video/mp4"><source src="https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1733850786549891072/pu/vid/avc1/640x360/4jqGHL3fRxlGf2Bx.mp4?tag=12" type="video/mp4"><source src="https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1733850786549891072/pu/pl/ybpu4s9EzGTqA3bR.m3u8?tag=12&container=fmp4" type="application/x-mpegURL">Your browser does not support the video tag.</video> ([View Tweet](https://twitter.com/StartupArchive_/status/1733851030025048130))