> But following Thiel's rule isn't actually all that hard.
> The key is to look at the total addressible market for a company or product. It has to be large, or growing quickly, or both. For example, AirBnB might have looked like a bad idea, but the hospitality market is huge, so if it did work out then they could grow to become a giant company.
Again, this just feels like post-hoc rationalization. The guy who wrote this blog post declined to invest in AirBnB despite Paul Graham himself practically begging him to. So maybe it actually is hard?
Just because he decided not to invest doesn't mean he didn't think AirBnB had the potential to become big. It doesn't mean he didn't think they were going after a big market.
He might have just thought the team wasn't very good, or the product wasn't quite right, or any of the other reasons investors pass on companies. The potential was there, but it just wasn't very likely given the details of the company.
I think what Thiel is getting at with his rule is to not bother with companies that don't have the potential to ever get huge, given their product and market. That rules out a huge number of businesses, so following it prevents you from wasting a lot of time.
> The key is to look at the total addressible market for a company or product. It has to be large, or growing quickly, or both. For example, AirBnB might have looked like a bad idea, but the hospitality market is huge, so if it did work out then they could grow to become a giant company.
Again, this just feels like post-hoc rationalization. The guy who wrote this blog post declined to invest in AirBnB despite Paul Graham himself practically begging him to. So maybe it actually is hard?