Notes on the chapter “The Mechanics of Mafia” from “Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future” by Peter Thiel

“‘Company Culture’ doesn’t exist apart from the company itself: no company has a culture; every company is a culture. A startup is a team of people on a mission, and a good culture is just what that looks like on the inside.”

– Peter Thiel, Zero to One, Chapter 10: The Mechanics of Mafia

Describing two accomplished and intelligent people who started a company that failed Thiel writes:

“But the relationships between them were oddly thin. The spent all day together, but fer of them seemed to have much to say to each other outside of the office.”

– Peter Thiel, Zero to One, Chapter 10: The Mechanics of Mafia

This reminds me of the small company I worked for (for a brief time…) My first career job was at a small startup company and I thought that going back to a company of eleven lonely together souls, I might find a similar experience. Nine of us in a small room and… no one really talked to each other for most of day. Sometimes people would circle at lunchtime, the four of us who sat next to each and back to back flipping our seats around at the designated hour. The two people on the other side of my desk looking over during the break in silence.

“If you can’t count durable relationships among the fruits of your time at work, you haven’t invested your time well – even in purely financial terms.”

– Peter Thiel, Zero to One, Chapter 10: The Mechanics of Mafia

I thought this was a nice sentiment but also true. The best memories I have of “work” have not all that much to do with the work work. I’m reminded of some people I should reach out to…

I think it’s a good sign that friendship came first with my two partners on this new project. In retrospect, it looks planned, especially if we are successful, but this startup seemed to “happen of itself.”

I am borrowing that phrase from my main man Alan Watts:

‘ When you say to anything spontaneous—see, life is spontaneous. It happens—in the words of the Taoists—zìrán, which means “of itself so”—that’s the Chinese expression for nature, what happens by itself.

– Alan Watts, Out of Your Mind