Conclusion

by Evan Baehr

I have always been passionate about changing the world around me—bringing it into conformity with a vision for society in which more people flourish. For much of my youth, that passion was expressed through law and politics. Everyone I saw on television who was talking about “the world around us” was a lawyer or politician. So I followed what I knew and headed into debate and law with an aspiration for politics and public policy.

I joined the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton, worked at major think tanks, the White House, and the United States Congress. And what I saw in front of me was decades of “paying your dues,” slowly working your way into more and more influence in a system based on seniority and who you know rather than excellence and creativity. The system I was part of exerted tremendous influence on society, but I had no agency in it.

Along the way I met a fascinating man named Peter Thiel, with whom I went on to launch a company. His world-view and life experience taught me that entrepreneurship is a valid and, arguably, preferable means to change society. Twenty years earlier, Peter had shared many of the passions I had; as an undergraduate at Stanford, Peter had founded The Stanford Review, the sister publication to The Princeton Tory, the paper I edited as a senior. Peter went on to law school but soon developed a passion for entrepreneurship and technology, going on to found PayPal and later invest in and build Palantir, Facebook, SpaceX, and Airbnb— companies that radically transformed society. Each of these companies began with a vision for transforming society by asking:

Earlier in my life, I would have offered very different answers to those questions, including run for office, write a white paper, publish a book, lobby congress, and so on. I now believe that entrepreneurship is a more effective way to transform society, more thoroughly and more quickly.

A classic definition of entrepreneurship is “marshaling resources beyond your immediate control.” During the first minutes of a new idea, you are alone with it. In front of you is a huge challenge to bring others alongside this idea, initially as conversation partners to give feedback and later as partners. Entrepreneurship is the act of cultivating and harnessing resources to bring an idea to fruition, ideally in a scalable, profitable business model.

Entrepreneurship is more than a mere presentation of facts. After all, nothing happens in the world without something first being sold. And the most effective way to sell—whether recruiting employees, raising investments, or acquiring customers—is to tell a story. This is why I fell in love with pitch decks.

Pitch decks are the initial how of entrepreneurship; they provide the context, framework, and narrative for how you marshal resources beyond your control—resources like funding, feedback, and, most importantly, relationships.

Recruiting and harnessing resources beyond our immediate control is the what of entrepreneurship. Pitch decks are the beginning of the how. And profoundly transforming the society around us so that we may more deeply flourish is the why of entrepreneurship. And, if you accept its invitation, you are its who.

Bringing Ideas to Life

Launching a venture is about attempting, often against great odds, to create the future of which you want to be part. It’s extremely difficult to do that without cash. It’s impossible without relationships. We believe deeply that entrepreneurship is a social good. Entrepreneurs hold the keys to innovation, new job creation, and deep, personal fulfillment. That is, if they are courageous (or should that be crazy?) enough to give it a try.

There’s a good chance you’ve already been crazy enough to try or plan to be very soon. As we think about the ups and downs of our own journeys, the triumph and defeat, the words of President Teddy Roosevelt have consistently reminded us of what we believe to be most true.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

See you in the arena.