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Paper Belt on Fire: How Renegade Investors Sparked a Revolt Against the University
Written by a successful venture capitalist (and university dropout), this book is part memoir, part guide for the next generation of innovators who seek an alternative to the traditional path in higher education.
“Part adventure tale, part manifesto, Paper Belt on Fire is a battle cry for anyone who ever dreamed of wresting power back from corrupt institutions—or of nailing the truth to the cathedral door.”
—Peter Thiel, author of Zero to One Paper Belt on Fire is the unlikely account of how two outsiders with no experience in finance—a charter school principal and defrocked philosopher—start a venture capital fund to short the higher education bubble. Against the contempt of the education establishment, they discover, mentor, and back the leading lights in the next generation of dropout innovators and in the end make their investors millions.
Can such a madcap strategy help renew American creativity? Who would do such a thing?
This story is the behind-the-scenes romp of one team that threw educational authorities into a panic. It fuses real-life personal drama with history, science, and philosophy to show how higher education and other institutions must evolve to meet the dire challenges of tomorrow.
“Part adventure tale, part manifesto, Paper Belt on Fire is a battle cry for anyone who ever dreamed of wresting power back from corrupt institutions—or of nailing the truth to the cathedral door.”
—Peter Thiel, author of Zero to One Paper Belt on Fire is the unlikely account of how two outsiders with no experience in finance—a charter school principal and defrocked philosopher—start a venture capital fund to short the higher education bubble. Against the contempt of the education establishment, they discover, mentor, and back the leading lights in the next generation of dropout innovators and in the end make their investors millions.
Can such a madcap strategy help renew American creativity? Who would do such a thing?
This story is the behind-the-scenes romp of one team that threw educational authorities into a panic. It fuses real-life personal drama with history, science, and philosophy to show how higher education and other institutions must evolve to meet the dire challenges of tomorrow.
400 pages, Hardcover
Published November 29, 2022
24 people are currently reading
561 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
December 5, 2022
Philosophy PhD dropout Michael Gibson co-created the Thiel Fellowship with former school principal Danielle Strachman and entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and Bogeyman of the left Peter Thiel. A motley crew to be sure. Gibson’s 2022 tell-all Paper Belt on Fire is at its best and most differentiated when describing:
1) The birth of the Thiel Fellowship, a controversial program encouraging exceptional young people to forgo a university education in exchange for $100k over two years to pursue their ideas;
2) The subsequent launching of Gibson’s and Strachman’s venture capital firm 1517, which invests exclusively in individuals without a college degree; and
3) The thoughts and actions of Thiel from someone who worked with the man intimately over an extended period. Given that Thiel is notoriously private, Gibson serves as a rare primary source willing to go on the record with accurate Thiel anecdotes. This stands in stark contrast to most of the “journalism” about Thiel, which primarily consists of aggrieved establishment reporters who cannot imagine a Trump supporter producing anything of value (see Max Chafkin’s 2021 The Contrarian).
Unfortunately, Gibson spends about a third of the book on content that is only tangentially relevant, like rehashing innovation stagnation already well documented in books like J. Storrs Hall’s Where Is My Flying Car? He also leans away from rather than into his most ~contrarian~ arguments. Still, this is a worthwhile read for anyone with the sneaking suspicion that $70k/yr college increasingly resembles a boondoggle. It is also timely, as Open AI’s release of the GPT-3 chatbot challenges our conventional education model in a world where any student can generate mediocre but passable content.
This is one of the 95 theses Michael Gibson tapes to the doors of university administrators, in homage to Martin Luther’s 95 Theses in 1517. That most people desire the former is a damning indictment of higher education today and the principal reason for the creation of the Thiel Fellowship.
Gibson succeeds in proving the Thiel Fellowship is an unambiguous success. Collectively, the fellows have generated hundreds of billions in value with their startups. Notable names and endeavors include Dylan Field and Adobe’s $20bn acquisition of his design company, Figma, Austin Russell and Luminar (NASDAQ: LAZR), building autonomy technologies, and Vitalik Buterin and Ethereum. A Harvard sorority sister of mine was a Thiel Fellow who founded Legalist, a hedge fund investing in litigation claims. These people are impressive, and Gibson and Stratchman deserve major kudos for talent spotting and incubating said talent. One of the biggest surprises of the book is that Gibson and Strachman aren’t content to let applications to the fellowship flow in. They visit college campuses all over the country, crashing hackathons and staying in dorms. That last part sounds awkward, but I admire the hustle.
Where Gibson loses me is with his argument that the Thiel Fellowship model is extensible for everyone. “[The Thiel Fellows] represent not some group of extraordinary outliers, who cannot be taken as a model for the average student, but the beginning of a new era in education (pg xv).” This is a bold claim Gibson does not properly defend. I am largely in agreement with Gibson that a college degree does not improve the skills of most students. This doesn’t change the reality that the degree is still a necessary signaling device for most employers. Moreover, Gibson does not acknowledge that the Thiel Fellowship is itself a high-status credential and therefore a valuable signaling device; in this case, to investors, not employers. I find this pretty ironic, and I would have expected Gibson to walk us through a hypothetical path for an average student who forgoes college. Is everyone supposed to become an entrepreneur?
Paper Belt on Fire also would have benefited from a chapter on how the university system degenerated to its current state. It would have been relevant to include information on tuition consistently rising while wages stagnate, student loans that cannot be discharged in bankruptcy, the spike in administrative staff on campuses, the proliferation of irrelevant majors, and ideological homogeneity of professors, among other factors. The macro trends are very much in Gibson’s favor, and he should leverage them.
Read this and other reviews at Kinetic Reviews
1) The birth of the Thiel Fellowship, a controversial program encouraging exceptional young people to forgo a university education in exchange for $100k over two years to pursue their ideas;
2) The subsequent launching of Gibson’s and Strachman’s venture capital firm 1517, which invests exclusively in individuals without a college degree; and
3) The thoughts and actions of Thiel from someone who worked with the man intimately over an extended period. Given that Thiel is notoriously private, Gibson serves as a rare primary source willing to go on the record with accurate Thiel anecdotes. This stands in stark contrast to most of the “journalism” about Thiel, which primarily consists of aggrieved establishment reporters who cannot imagine a Trump supporter producing anything of value (see Max Chafkin’s 2021 The Contrarian).
Unfortunately, Gibson spends about a third of the book on content that is only tangentially relevant, like rehashing innovation stagnation already well documented in books like J. Storrs Hall’s Where Is My Flying Car? He also leans away from rather than into his most ~contrarian~ arguments. Still, this is a worthwhile read for anyone with the sneaking suspicion that $70k/yr college increasingly resembles a boondoggle. It is also timely, as Open AI’s release of the GPT-3 chatbot challenges our conventional education model in a world where any student can generate mediocre but passable content.
Would you rather have a Princeton diploma without a Princeton education, or a Princeton education without a Princeton diploma?
-George Mason University economist Bryan Caplan
This is one of the 95 theses Michael Gibson tapes to the doors of university administrators, in homage to Martin Luther’s 95 Theses in 1517. That most people desire the former is a damning indictment of higher education today and the principal reason for the creation of the Thiel Fellowship.
Gibson succeeds in proving the Thiel Fellowship is an unambiguous success. Collectively, the fellows have generated hundreds of billions in value with their startups. Notable names and endeavors include Dylan Field and Adobe’s $20bn acquisition of his design company, Figma, Austin Russell and Luminar (NASDAQ: LAZR), building autonomy technologies, and Vitalik Buterin and Ethereum. A Harvard sorority sister of mine was a Thiel Fellow who founded Legalist, a hedge fund investing in litigation claims. These people are impressive, and Gibson and Stratchman deserve major kudos for talent spotting and incubating said talent. One of the biggest surprises of the book is that Gibson and Strachman aren’t content to let applications to the fellowship flow in. They visit college campuses all over the country, crashing hackathons and staying in dorms. That last part sounds awkward, but I admire the hustle.
Where Gibson loses me is with his argument that the Thiel Fellowship model is extensible for everyone. “[The Thiel Fellows] represent not some group of extraordinary outliers, who cannot be taken as a model for the average student, but the beginning of a new era in education (pg xv).” This is a bold claim Gibson does not properly defend. I am largely in agreement with Gibson that a college degree does not improve the skills of most students. This doesn’t change the reality that the degree is still a necessary signaling device for most employers. Moreover, Gibson does not acknowledge that the Thiel Fellowship is itself a high-status credential and therefore a valuable signaling device; in this case, to investors, not employers. I find this pretty ironic, and I would have expected Gibson to walk us through a hypothetical path for an average student who forgoes college. Is everyone supposed to become an entrepreneur?
Paper Belt on Fire also would have benefited from a chapter on how the university system degenerated to its current state. It would have been relevant to include information on tuition consistently rising while wages stagnate, student loans that cannot be discharged in bankruptcy, the spike in administrative staff on campuses, the proliferation of irrelevant majors, and ideological homogeneity of professors, among other factors. The macro trends are very much in Gibson’s favor, and he should leverage them.
Read this and other reviews at Kinetic Reviews
December 26, 2022
Fairly embarrassing half memoir, half rant. One common feature of the (public-facing) Thielverse is cussedness: being so annoyed and contemptuous, of whatever, that you become annoying and contemptible. As you'd expect, Gibson is incredibly derivative of Thiel and has the same tubthumping view of the productivity and science slowdown and the spiritual failures it uncovers. It is absolutely true that credentialism is out of control and that many authorities do not deserve respect. But dismaying to see people who agree frothing at the mouth and arguing by spicy adjective.
I have no idea if his fund is any good. Something about his pitch rings my alarms. (Merton Scholes.):
(The "paper belt" is the East Coast words-based industry: media, education, ads, banking. Gibson gleefully imagines making a rust belt of it. This would be more convincing if he had some idea of what to replace it with. Remember that the culture war is first of all an intra-elite thing.)
The first few years of the Thiel Fellowship drew in some of the age's defining independent scientists/engineers/businesspeople (e.g. Laura Deming, Chris Olah, Vitalik Buterin, David Luan). It's not clear how much of this is due to Gibson and Strachmann, though subjectively it seems worse since they left. (At least half of this fall will be due to the adversarial hacking of the application process of anything high-status which is older than a few years. In hindsight it's impressive that they held it off for more than one iteration.) It's pretty daft of him to suggest that this kind of programme could replace education, that they "represent not some group of extraordinary outliers, who cannot be taken as a model for the average student, but the beginning of a new era in education".
This bit accidentally makes Thiel look like a shallow rube (or physiognomist):
His concept of "edge control" (basically: stomach for uncertainty, ability to act well despite bad info) is a good one.
Somehow this book makes what he has done seem less impressive.
I have no idea if his fund is any good. Something about his pitch rings my alarms. (Merton Scholes.):
1517 Fund’s returns place it in the top one or two percent of all funds in its class. So the fact that we perform this well, are a brand new fund competing against the Yankees, and limit ourselves to investing in dropouts or people who never went to college is truly extraordinary.
(The "paper belt" is the East Coast words-based industry: media, education, ads, banking. Gibson gleefully imagines making a rust belt of it. This would be more convincing if he had some idea of what to replace it with. Remember that the culture war is first of all an intra-elite thing.)
The first few years of the Thiel Fellowship drew in some of the age's defining independent scientists/engineers/businesspeople (e.g. Laura Deming, Chris Olah, Vitalik Buterin, David Luan). It's not clear how much of this is due to Gibson and Strachmann, though subjectively it seems worse since they left. (At least half of this fall will be due to the adversarial hacking of the application process of anything high-status which is older than a few years. In hindsight it's impressive that they held it off for more than one iteration.) It's pretty daft of him to suggest that this kind of programme could replace education, that they "represent not some group of extraordinary outliers, who cannot be taken as a model for the average student, but the beginning of a new era in education".
This bit accidentally makes Thiel look like a shallow rube (or physiognomist):
At the end of our deliberations, we’d go to Peter’s house to show him who we were picking and why. The first year, we were in his dining room, standing around the table. Peter was looking down at a sheet of photographs of the twenty we’d chosen. Danielle remembers thinking, “Are we really doing this?” Peter scanned the photos in silence, nodded, and gave his customary approval: “Ok, looks good.”
His concept of "edge control" (basically: stomach for uncertainty, ability to act well despite bad info) is a good one.
Somehow this book makes what he has done seem less impressive.
January 15, 2023
Great book. A Spiritual Squeal to Thiel's Zero to One, in many ways. It was very interesting to read about life at Thiel's hedge fund in the early days. There is very little info about this period on the internet, (I have looked) so it was interesting to hear about life at Clarium Capital. Also interesting to read anecdotes about Thiel. I always saw Thiel as uncaring-no-emotion robot (which is a good thing) but Gibson breaks that myth. Thiel is acutally very funny and personal in real life. He uses emotes in text and one time he recited of Mike Ortiz's impression of Dnaiel Day Lewis "Milkshake" from There Will Be Blood. Gibson says Thiel big advice is "To trust your own feelings" All this I found very interesting and never knew about.
Gibson says early in the book Thiel doesn't like to surround himself with copycats or people who believe in the same things he does. Yet, many of Gibson's ideas about education, tech stagnation, and even some philosophy are exactly like Thiel's idea. They are basically the exact same. (I have watched nearly every Thiel interview and read as many articles by/on Thiel as I can) Not there is anything wrong with, because lots of those ideas are true. I just noticed that Thiel and Gibson share the same ideas.
I enjoyed the
Some interesting factors, that one-on-one tutor produces the best results in teaching and far outpaces all of forms of teaching. I found this deeply interesting. Of course, not every kid in America can have tutor as that would be the 1/6 of the US population would have to be tutor (But imagine how cool our society would be if that was the case tho)
I also found the story of Cowperthwaite incredibly interesting. He was the Secrentary of Hong Kong and he implemented a Socialist-Capitalist system in Hong Kong. This casues great economic progress within Hong Kong. Making it one of the great cities of the world. Then Singapore implemented the same stragey with some tweaks and again created a great city. Then China government after Mao wanted to follow Cowperthwaite's idea and made "special economic zones" to test it out. They started with the city of Shenzhen which has become the center of Tech in China and the third biggest city in China. The China government then did this special economic zone program in other regions, which slowly lead to China becoming a powerhouse. This was a very interesting story and more I want to read more about.
The heart of the book is how a new VC that only funds dropouts was started and the struggles they went through. I never knew how diffculty VC was, as just like startups, most VC funds close and fail to return money. Also most VC funds are expected to return incredile returns, way than the SP500. Thus it was hard to convince investors to fund a VC that funds dropouts only. Also it was interesting to hear stories about the drama between VCs and the startups. They don't always have a good relationship. For example, Gibson brings up Loom and 1517 fund drama, where in future rounds big powerful VCs would not allow much allocation to 1517 (which 1517 was contracted to receive) I never knew this was a drama that occurred but it was interesting to hear it layed out.
I found the ending chapter very interesting about the big problems of the 21 century and the possible solutions people are currently working on. I found that chapter very interesting in how he lays everything out.
Very good book. Its is almost like a Zero to One 2020s Edition in many ways.
Gibson says early in the book Thiel doesn't like to surround himself with copycats or people who believe in the same things he does. Yet, many of Gibson's ideas about education, tech stagnation, and even some philosophy are exactly like Thiel's idea. They are basically the exact same. (I have watched nearly every Thiel interview and read as many articles by/on Thiel as I can) Not there is anything wrong with, because lots of those ideas are true. I just noticed that Thiel and Gibson share the same ideas.
I enjoyed the
Some interesting factors, that one-on-one tutor produces the best results in teaching and far outpaces all of forms of teaching. I found this deeply interesting. Of course, not every kid in America can have tutor as that would be the 1/6 of the US population would have to be tutor (But imagine how cool our society would be if that was the case tho)
I also found the story of Cowperthwaite incredibly interesting. He was the Secrentary of Hong Kong and he implemented a Socialist-Capitalist system in Hong Kong. This casues great economic progress within Hong Kong. Making it one of the great cities of the world. Then Singapore implemented the same stragey with some tweaks and again created a great city. Then China government after Mao wanted to follow Cowperthwaite's idea and made "special economic zones" to test it out. They started with the city of Shenzhen which has become the center of Tech in China and the third biggest city in China. The China government then did this special economic zone program in other regions, which slowly lead to China becoming a powerhouse. This was a very interesting story and more I want to read more about.
The heart of the book is how a new VC that only funds dropouts was started and the struggles they went through. I never knew how diffculty VC was, as just like startups, most VC funds close and fail to return money. Also most VC funds are expected to return incredile returns, way than the SP500. Thus it was hard to convince investors to fund a VC that funds dropouts only. Also it was interesting to hear stories about the drama between VCs and the startups. They don't always have a good relationship. For example, Gibson brings up Loom and 1517 fund drama, where in future rounds big powerful VCs would not allow much allocation to 1517 (which 1517 was contracted to receive) I never knew this was a drama that occurred but it was interesting to hear it layed out.
I found the ending chapter very interesting about the big problems of the 21 century and the possible solutions people are currently working on. I found that chapter very interesting in how he lays everything out.
Very good book. Its is almost like a Zero to One 2020s Edition in many ways.
March 10, 2023
I had very high expectations for the book, as I am naturally inclined to the thesis of the decline in modern educational institutions and the need to revamp the entire education system.
The book was engaging but ultimately underwhelming. The story of the creation of the Thiel Fellowship and the fund later created by the author is interesting, but I was hoping for more ideas about how to change o restructure the current system. The book diverged at times to topics that seemed not very relevant to the overall structure (i.e. some autobiographical passages or the author's thoughts on Bitcoin).
The book was engaging but ultimately underwhelming. The story of the creation of the Thiel Fellowship and the fund later created by the author is interesting, but I was hoping for more ideas about how to change o restructure the current system. The book diverged at times to topics that seemed not very relevant to the overall structure (i.e. some autobiographical passages or the author's thoughts on Bitcoin).
August 2, 2024
Great example of cloaking self interest in faux social impact messaging.
Start with saying, I agree wholeheartedly with parts of this thesis. Couple years ago I got into Columbia, and after a lot of consternation, decided to attend a state school with a full ride instead. School is a performative series of hoops one jumps through, it’s increasingly becoming a bad bargain, and I'd agree most of the criticisms of higher ed in this book are valid.
What I view as the steel man here is “modern education doesn’t adequately serve large portion of the population” I think if you follow Turpin and his model of elite overproduction this seems to be fairly true. Used to be that college produced a small number of people for management jobs, but now we’re producing a lot of people for management jobs, without having that many management jobs, and that’s just driving down overall balance of the system. Combine this with the growing trend that middle tier jobs are disappearing or paying relatively less, and I'm on board with the idea that schools fail us.
But it takes no talent to point out what everyone else is already coming around to agreeing. And releasing a book now that points to the failings of modern education is just about as risky and bold as saying “modern politics is really divisive“ in a tweet. And so while I mostly agree with the thesis, I don’t think you get much credit for regurgitating culture war talking points. The modern playbook for books like this is to basically say things that people agree with and then impose your own frame and solutions on to the reader or audience that you’re speaking to. And this author does a terrible job with that. Simultaneously victory lapping while not really making much of a coherent or reasonable argument for their proposed cut to our cultural ailments. It comes across disingenuous and as a cheap surface level solution to what are fairly sprawling problems.
The parts of the argument I think are disingenuous are the comparisons to very extreme outcomes as a template for how we should treat people generally. It’s a bait and switch of the most basic variety. The author points at Shakespeare, Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates as examples of people who dropped out of college or didn’t have college and went to those successful lives. I hope the average reader has enough critical thinking to realize that throwing Shakespeare in that equation is kind of ridiculous. Leonardo Da Vinci didn’t go to an ivy league school either, that doesn’t mean shit. And when we look at Bill and Mark, they had successful businesses and extreme long tail outcomes. Mark had traction and a product before he dropped out of Harvard and they both are a .000001% outcome. There are thousands of businesses and hundreds of thousands of people who have tried to imitate that path without the same results. So to reframe the authors contention, it they're saying something closer to “people should take an outsized amount of risk for their future because we, those who might invest in your outsized outcomes, think so" also known as "You should take the risk and we both will share the reward."
And most of this book reads very similarly to that. The author comes from a place of security, wealth and privilege despite his blue collar bonafides of: arguing with Bill Gates at a dinner one time, and raising millions of dollars for his investment fund. Real “man of the people” shit there, bro. There is a pathological need to brand himself as "outsiders" throughout the book, using themes and language of Martin Luther rebelling against the church, which rings hollow given the context and stories told. The author will describe how they are "the little guy," while raising millions for an investment fund and rubbing shoulders with CEOs and the Davos crowd. I think in this authors head, you have to be an actual Vanderbilt or descendant of JP Morgan to be an elite. I found myself giggling at the lack of self awareness.
Returning to the main issue that I see, is these guys use the language of change and innovation, but it’s cloaked in self interest to the point where actual good can happen and we could improve society, but they’re in conflict with the community because of how they've committed to their self interest. All the while pretending that their opinion is for the redemption of the community.
It’s saying "the system is broken“ but instead of using something like we have for hundreds of years, improving laws or working towards the establishment of better systems for people. Looking at how other countries do education, historical systems of teaching, policy reform. Their answer is that we need more technology to do…. Things. And this has been a popular idea in areas adjacent to technology and technology investors of certain type. People who have more money than a small nation who decide that they should try their hand at social reform. At least the Kennedys were beautiful disasters, these guys are just disasters.
Unfortunately, this idea seems more ridiculous the more that I hear it. The "stagnation of innovation" is a concept that seems tenuous at best and deliberately misleading generally. Scientific revolutions as say Thomas Kuhn talks about, do not happen all at once. True genius is rare. And so bemoaning the fact that we haven’t had some sort of groundbreaking discovery of the last fifty years, while being ignorant of actual scientific discoveries happening, is also just propaganda at this point. It’s the same as the bitcoin people talking about how everything is gonna go to blockchain because…. Things. And even within this book it doesn't hold up, these clowns invest in companies who are somehow the exception to "everything is shit" and THEY seem to do just fine at coming up with translating scientific discoveries into businesses. Since the Thiel bubble seems so enthralled with Gerard, it literally just codes to me as mimesis for fucking money and it colors what seems to be all of their thinking. It's a cheap sales pitch. Im reminded of Upton Sinclair's “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
The penultimate example is towards the end of the book, the author begins to wax poetic about "all the challenges the world faces." All his “largest problems in the world” are all tech related. Not war, not famine, starvation or distribution of food. Nope. “Make the compootor faster” is what we get.
Undoubtedly these things are great. Lets work on them. But its extremely telling that these are all focused on issues that wealthy, tech investors would be concerned with. Theres no awareness of humanitarian crisis, obviously those will be solved as we (checking notes) get better GMO crops. conflict in the Congo naturally goes away if we (reading hold on) just clean the air more, (waving hands frantically) everyone knows this. But really, there’s no accounting for issues that are not US centric. This is so indicative of this worldview, so clearly in their own little bubble, but so confident that their "solutions" solve things for everyone. It's kind of infuriating.
At the end of the day, this was a book with a few interesting personal anecdotes and definitely gives you a level of insight into this guy and how he thinks of himself and his world. But it’s also an intellectual dead end because he’s just talking his book and cherry picked solutions the whole time.
Start with saying, I agree wholeheartedly with parts of this thesis. Couple years ago I got into Columbia, and after a lot of consternation, decided to attend a state school with a full ride instead. School is a performative series of hoops one jumps through, it’s increasingly becoming a bad bargain, and I'd agree most of the criticisms of higher ed in this book are valid.
What I view as the steel man here is “modern education doesn’t adequately serve large portion of the population” I think if you follow Turpin and his model of elite overproduction this seems to be fairly true. Used to be that college produced a small number of people for management jobs, but now we’re producing a lot of people for management jobs, without having that many management jobs, and that’s just driving down overall balance of the system. Combine this with the growing trend that middle tier jobs are disappearing or paying relatively less, and I'm on board with the idea that schools fail us.
But it takes no talent to point out what everyone else is already coming around to agreeing. And releasing a book now that points to the failings of modern education is just about as risky and bold as saying “modern politics is really divisive“ in a tweet. And so while I mostly agree with the thesis, I don’t think you get much credit for regurgitating culture war talking points. The modern playbook for books like this is to basically say things that people agree with and then impose your own frame and solutions on to the reader or audience that you’re speaking to. And this author does a terrible job with that. Simultaneously victory lapping while not really making much of a coherent or reasonable argument for their proposed cut to our cultural ailments. It comes across disingenuous and as a cheap surface level solution to what are fairly sprawling problems.
The parts of the argument I think are disingenuous are the comparisons to very extreme outcomes as a template for how we should treat people generally. It’s a bait and switch of the most basic variety. The author points at Shakespeare, Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates as examples of people who dropped out of college or didn’t have college and went to those successful lives. I hope the average reader has enough critical thinking to realize that throwing Shakespeare in that equation is kind of ridiculous. Leonardo Da Vinci didn’t go to an ivy league school either, that doesn’t mean shit. And when we look at Bill and Mark, they had successful businesses and extreme long tail outcomes. Mark had traction and a product before he dropped out of Harvard and they both are a .000001% outcome. There are thousands of businesses and hundreds of thousands of people who have tried to imitate that path without the same results. So to reframe the authors contention, it they're saying something closer to “people should take an outsized amount of risk for their future because we, those who might invest in your outsized outcomes, think so" also known as "You should take the risk and we both will share the reward."
And most of this book reads very similarly to that. The author comes from a place of security, wealth and privilege despite his blue collar bonafides of: arguing with Bill Gates at a dinner one time, and raising millions of dollars for his investment fund. Real “man of the people” shit there, bro. There is a pathological need to brand himself as "outsiders" throughout the book, using themes and language of Martin Luther rebelling against the church, which rings hollow given the context and stories told. The author will describe how they are "the little guy," while raising millions for an investment fund and rubbing shoulders with CEOs and the Davos crowd. I think in this authors head, you have to be an actual Vanderbilt or descendant of JP Morgan to be an elite. I found myself giggling at the lack of self awareness.
Returning to the main issue that I see, is these guys use the language of change and innovation, but it’s cloaked in self interest to the point where actual good can happen and we could improve society, but they’re in conflict with the community because of how they've committed to their self interest. All the while pretending that their opinion is for the redemption of the community.
It’s saying "the system is broken“ but instead of using something like we have for hundreds of years, improving laws or working towards the establishment of better systems for people. Looking at how other countries do education, historical systems of teaching, policy reform. Their answer is that we need more technology to do…. Things. And this has been a popular idea in areas adjacent to technology and technology investors of certain type. People who have more money than a small nation who decide that they should try their hand at social reform. At least the Kennedys were beautiful disasters, these guys are just disasters.
Unfortunately, this idea seems more ridiculous the more that I hear it. The "stagnation of innovation" is a concept that seems tenuous at best and deliberately misleading generally. Scientific revolutions as say Thomas Kuhn talks about, do not happen all at once. True genius is rare. And so bemoaning the fact that we haven’t had some sort of groundbreaking discovery of the last fifty years, while being ignorant of actual scientific discoveries happening, is also just propaganda at this point. It’s the same as the bitcoin people talking about how everything is gonna go to blockchain because…. Things. And even within this book it doesn't hold up, these clowns invest in companies who are somehow the exception to "everything is shit" and THEY seem to do just fine at coming up with translating scientific discoveries into businesses. Since the Thiel bubble seems so enthralled with Gerard, it literally just codes to me as mimesis for fucking money and it colors what seems to be all of their thinking. It's a cheap sales pitch. Im reminded of Upton Sinclair's “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
The penultimate example is towards the end of the book, the author begins to wax poetic about "all the challenges the world faces." All his “largest problems in the world” are all tech related. Not war, not famine, starvation or distribution of food. Nope. “Make the compootor faster” is what we get.
“It is essential that we find solutions to the top unsolved problems in the following fields: energy creation, transportation, health, education, computation, freshwater abundance, increasing crop yields for less, cleaning the air, and, lastly, the problem of human flourishing.”
Undoubtedly these things are great. Lets work on them. But its extremely telling that these are all focused on issues that wealthy, tech investors would be concerned with. Theres no awareness of humanitarian crisis, obviously those will be solved as we (checking notes) get better GMO crops. conflict in the Congo naturally goes away if we (reading hold on) just clean the air more, (waving hands frantically) everyone knows this. But really, there’s no accounting for issues that are not US centric. This is so indicative of this worldview, so clearly in their own little bubble, but so confident that their "solutions" solve things for everyone. It's kind of infuriating.
At the end of the day, this was a book with a few interesting personal anecdotes and definitely gives you a level of insight into this guy and how he thinks of himself and his world. But it’s also an intellectual dead end because he’s just talking his book and cherry picked solutions the whole time.
December 25, 2022
A smorgasbord of interesting topics. It almost feels like two separate books in one. The author discusses his contrarian philosophy which has led to a successful VC fund as well as predictions for the future in an entertaining story mixed with fun anecdotes and observations.
March 15, 2023
[Disclaimer: I didn't finish the main text and most of my review is based on the appendix.]
I came to this book hoping for an in-depth criticism of credentialism and academic elitism. Those are topics that I care about and was hoping to get a thoughtful critique of. Instead, I found that the main text is largely focused on telling the story of the 1517 fund, presumably with the intent of popularizing a heroic narrative around the founders and advertising it to future investors. I knew there'd be a little storytelling involved, but the obviously self-serving framing of events, and the sickeningly high regard with which the heroes hold themselves, put me off to the main text. I skipped ahead to the appendix. Your mileage may vary.
The appendix, however, was great and worth a standalone read. Gibson details a whole host of societally important problems and shows great creativity and imagination when doing so. This appendix is a good reference and I would share it with any person thinking about how to use their career to do good in the world. Of course, the solutions offered are largely oriented around VC thinking, but that's not surprising given the author. If I were to rate the appendix on its own I would give it 5 stars.
I came to this book hoping for an in-depth criticism of credentialism and academic elitism. Those are topics that I care about and was hoping to get a thoughtful critique of. Instead, I found that the main text is largely focused on telling the story of the 1517 fund, presumably with the intent of popularizing a heroic narrative around the founders and advertising it to future investors. I knew there'd be a little storytelling involved, but the obviously self-serving framing of events, and the sickeningly high regard with which the heroes hold themselves, put me off to the main text. I skipped ahead to the appendix. Your mileage may vary.
The appendix, however, was great and worth a standalone read. Gibson details a whole host of societally important problems and shows great creativity and imagination when doing so. This appendix is a good reference and I would share it with any person thinking about how to use their career to do good in the world. Of course, the solutions offered are largely oriented around VC thinking, but that's not surprising given the author. If I were to rate the appendix on its own I would give it 5 stars.
February 12, 2025
Overall, a decent if meandering summary of many of the ideas floating around the "Thiel-verse." I liked many of his ideas, especially since I'm working in the talent identification space right now. However, I couldn't help being distracted from time to time over his fawning over Peter Thiel. Many times I felt like he was romanticizing what was actually luck; "Cipher" and the Loom founders are a case in point. Having spent time in these circles, I bet most of the "genius" kids were in fact delusional narcissists from wealthy backgrounds that were more capable of overstating their abilities than their actual capabilities.
That being said, there were enough interesting ideas in there that I'll chew on: the misallocation of talent to "analysis" rather than "creation"; computerized adaptive tests administered over texts; freedom cities as experiments, among others.
That being said, there were enough interesting ideas in there that I'll chew on: the misallocation of talent to "analysis" rather than "creation"; computerized adaptive tests administered over texts; freedom cities as experiments, among others.
December 14, 2022
Right from the Bill Gates altercation in the first chapter to his comprehensive vision for progress in the last, Michael engages us with a style that's both irreverent and optimistic.
Paper Belt on Fire is informative, breezy, thought-provoking and captivating all at the same time. What's most impressive about this book is how it manages to tick all these boxes. An enjoyable read!
Paper Belt on Fire is informative, breezy, thought-provoking and captivating all at the same time. What's most impressive about this book is how it manages to tick all these boxes. An enjoyable read!
June 8, 2024
Strongly recommended.
A standout quote that, while said in the context of the author's personal life, captures well the ingenuity of his professional approach: "It is worthwhile, I've found, even when light is absent, to face in the direction it might emanate from."
A standout quote that, while said in the context of the author's personal life, captures well the ingenuity of his professional approach: "It is worthwhile, I've found, even when light is absent, to face in the direction it might emanate from."
January 25, 2025
Some interesting concepts and arguments against the established path to college. Overall the book is a bit meandering, unedited. It feels as though the author put all of his thought provoking ideas into one book regardless of they helped support the main narrative.
December 17, 2022
Thousands of claims with no evidence to back them up. I want numbers, people's names, explanation of impact on decisions and comparisons to other countries.
Want to read
January 14, 2023https://www.sumapositiva.com/p/fuegoe...
Recomendado por Samuel Gil - Su mejor libro de 2022!
Recomendado por Samuel Gil - Su mejor libro de 2022!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 19, 2023
Excellent, optimistic book about the future and the way that Thiel’s people are trying to get us there.
May 1, 2023
Did not finish. All over the place, boring
Want to read
October 21, 2023Rob Henderson
May 31, 2024
Non-linear, lots of great anecdotes, never know what's coming in the next chapter
March 9, 2025
Enjoyable with some good nuggets although Gibson is bizarrely dogmatic on some issues ("solar doesnt work") and its hard to believe he studied Philosophy seriously with his amateur take on stoicism.
January 21, 2025
Worth the read. The main point of the book is easily challenged, but its extensive descriptions of emerging technologies are informative and well-researched and encourage further study.
The book’s thesis is that Universities underperform on a variety of metrics and ultimately fail to contribute to society in a manner that corroborates their purported merits. This thesis is challenged by the fact that 1) the writer himself, Michael Gibson, is an Oxford graduate, and was only afforded the proximity to Peter Thiel that launched his career because of it, and 2) Gibson exemplifies brilliant, top .01% people to support his argument that Universities don’t meet the mark.
I don’t recall Gibson examining at all how the pedigree assigned to prestigious degrees is debased by prospective student’s familial wealth and connections, legacy admissions, and/or affirmative action. The impact of these on the way the actual value of a degree should be perceived is more difficult to quantify, but would also make a more compelling argument against the Paper Belt than the threat of a genius youth launching their start-up after graduating at 22 rather than at 19 does.
Gibson fails to acknowledge that the majority of college graduates are unexceptional (that is, not on par with the world-changing geniuses Gibson highlights), and therefore owe whatever success they’ve had to having obtained a degree, and that those unexceptional students who by way of legacy admissions, etc., make it to top schools, enjoy even greater success on average without the commensurate talent. This is to say that Gibson’s crusade against Universities may have some iota of merit, for not for the reasons he’s given.
The book’s thesis is that Universities underperform on a variety of metrics and ultimately fail to contribute to society in a manner that corroborates their purported merits. This thesis is challenged by the fact that 1) the writer himself, Michael Gibson, is an Oxford graduate, and was only afforded the proximity to Peter Thiel that launched his career because of it, and 2) Gibson exemplifies brilliant, top .01% people to support his argument that Universities don’t meet the mark.
I don’t recall Gibson examining at all how the pedigree assigned to prestigious degrees is debased by prospective student’s familial wealth and connections, legacy admissions, and/or affirmative action. The impact of these on the way the actual value of a degree should be perceived is more difficult to quantify, but would also make a more compelling argument against the Paper Belt than the threat of a genius youth launching their start-up after graduating at 22 rather than at 19 does.
Gibson fails to acknowledge that the majority of college graduates are unexceptional (that is, not on par with the world-changing geniuses Gibson highlights), and therefore owe whatever success they’ve had to having obtained a degree, and that those unexceptional students who by way of legacy admissions, etc., make it to top schools, enjoy even greater success on average without the commensurate talent. This is to say that Gibson’s crusade against Universities may have some iota of merit, for not for the reasons he’s given.
December 14, 2022
I think this is the best book I've read in 2022.
It's the story of the founders of 1517 Fund, itself an outgrowth of the Peter Thiel 20 Under 20 fellowship program, which tries to restore historical dynamism to the economy by breaking free of the college-regulator-industrial complex. There are interesting stories of the Fellowship (I was one of the mentors, so I got to see some of these up close), the founding and operation of a new fund (the irony of running a VC fund opposed to the university when many university endowments are major LPs in VC funds...), and then a great coda about open problems and people working to solve them.
It's the story of the founders of 1517 Fund, itself an outgrowth of the Peter Thiel 20 Under 20 fellowship program, which tries to restore historical dynamism to the economy by breaking free of the college-regulator-industrial complex. There are interesting stories of the Fellowship (I was one of the mentors, so I got to see some of these up close), the founding and operation of a new fund (the irony of running a VC fund opposed to the university when many university endowments are major LPs in VC funds...), and then a great coda about open problems and people working to solve them.
January 1, 2023
Meh.
Gibson promises an "innovators vs credentialed elite" thriller but doesn't deliver. A few interesting anecdotes here and there, some quotable passages; that's it. He is right about almost everything - f*ck universities, degrees, the FDA, all the legacy institutions that stand in the way of progress. He just gets lost in too many anecdotes and digressions and fails to articulate his argument coherently.
You're better off reading Bryan Caplan's The Case Against Education.
Gibson promises an "innovators vs credentialed elite" thriller but doesn't deliver. A few interesting anecdotes here and there, some quotable passages; that's it. He is right about almost everything - f*ck universities, degrees, the FDA, all the legacy institutions that stand in the way of progress. He just gets lost in too many anecdotes and digressions and fails to articulate his argument coherently.
You're better off reading Bryan Caplan's The Case Against Education.
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