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Peter Thiel: Founder as Victim, Founder as God  

Fascinating and quite long "lecture notes" from Peter Thiel. Upfront warning: there is very little directly actionable advice in this lecture, but it presents some very interesting ideas about Founders' place in the world, the social dynamics that surround them, how those dynamics have evolved through history, along the way drawing parallels between the evolution of human societies and the fate of the founders of technology companies.

It's fascinating stuff. Read here.

According to Aristotle, tragedy functioned so as to reduce common peoples' anger toward successful people. The lesson in all tragedy is that even the greatest people have tragic flaws. Everybody falls. It was thus cathartic for ordinary people to see terrible things happen to extraordinary people, if only on stage. Tragedies were political tools that transformed envy and anger into pity. Commoners would retreat contentedly to their small houses instead of plotting against the upper class.

Despite the fact that it doesn't really fit the "actionable advice, useful insight, or practical tools and techniques" criteria, I am including this in the Founder's Library because it is simply great.

More from the library:
How to find and recruit a killer advisory board
How VC firms are managed
Four kinds of entrepreneurial contexts