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Peter Thiel’s CS183: Startup - Class 14 Notes Essay

blakemasters:

Here is an essay version of my class notes from Class 14 of CS183: Startup. Errors and omissions are mine. Credit for good stuff is Peter’s.

Class 14 Notes Essay—Seeing Green

I. Thinking About Energy

Alternative energy and cleantech have attracted an enormous amount of investment capital and attention over the last decade. Almost nothing has worked as well as people expected. The cleantech experience can thus be quite instructive. Asking important questions about what went wrong and what can be done better is a very good way to review and apply many of the things we’ve talked about in class.

A. The Right Framework

How should one think about energy as a sector? What’s an appropriate theoretical framework?

Revisiting the 2x2 matrix of determinate/indeterminate and optimistic/pessimistic futures may be useful. To recap, here are examples of those respective quadrants:

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