Peter Thiel famously asks the ultimate question:

What important truth do very few people agree with you on?

In my article last year, How to Become a Contrarian, I mentioned that I was on a quest to collect answers to this question along my journey of personal growth and career growth, now as an entrepreneur. I'm in ecstasy every time I come across a valid contrarian view point and I nicked-name these points "gold nuggets".

In one sentence, a contrarian view point, or a “gold nugget”, is something valuable while most people disagrees.

To better evaluate potential ideas, I’ve laid out these four levels to quantify how valuable each of them is.

View point that most people disagree with
View point that most people disagree with but is true
View point that most people disagree with, is true and could be turned into actionable items
View point that most people disagree with, is true, could be turned into actionable items and will generate huge impact

I’ve also made it a point to listen to contrarians, through work, book reading and podcast subscribing. At the same time, I lead a Don Quixote and Sancho Panza kind of life as a struggling entrepreneur. In Chinese culture, we call this process, “路漫漫其修远兮，吾将上下而求索” (Funny how 吾 is my name).

I’m happy to report that I’ve made quite some progress in collecting some level 4 ideas this year, and again I’ll share them because after careful calculation, sharing them does more good than harm. In fact, publishing high quality articles is the most efficient way of socializing.

To quote my observation on famous contrarians from my article last year:

“… one would assume if a contrarian has an unique idea, they would keep it a secret. In reality, they actually share quite often regarding their new theories and their processes of reaching these conclusions, because their ideas are too peculiar and most people simply ignore them. "

Therefore I’ll publish and maintain my 2018 list of gold nuggets in this article.

===== Here we go =====

Gold Nuggets：

On PMF: Strong PMF (product/market fit) is extremely rare and incredibly strong. Travis Kalanick nicknamed it "Double Rainbow". Most companies has no PMF, some has weak PMF and they burn through VC money and die. Adding features won't help.
On Timing to Scale: In order to scale, you have to do things that don’t scale. - Reid Hoffman; In the beginning, fast is slow, slow is fast - Zheng Xu of MissFresh; Start from providing a 6-star experience for 1 guest for 1 night, and then scale. - Brian Chesky
On PR: Say no to all PR (public relations) coverage as a consumer facing startup before Series C. Be calculated and only welcome the press when prize > reward. Say no to early profile story on the founder, because it only boosts his/her ego, reveals company secrets and attracts hostile attention from potential competitors. - MetaApp
On GR: GR (Government Relations) >> PR (Public Relations) in China. Steer off the noise and focus on what truly matters. PR won’t kill you, government's action will.
On Company Culture: Pro Sports team, not a family. “Adequate performance gets a generous severance packages”. The "Keeper Test”: who would I fight to keep? Others should leave. Context, not Control - Reed Hastings; "Even if you did everything right, there's only a 50% chance of hiring the right person.", and "I have never seen anyone fire fast enough." - Feng He
On BigCo: Internet conglomerate with new businesses created internally is better than a holding company with a bunch of spun-offs. (YY vs ByteDance) - David Li of YY
On Idea Framework: “Strong opinions, loosely held + Earned Secrets” is a very strong framework for idea generation, testing and development.
On Social vs Content vs Tools: All products are not created equal. Social platform is at the pinnacle of all products, having the highest value and can expand into content and tools. Tools, however, can never become social platforms, unless they’re content creation tools in the first place.
On Paid vs. Free Acquisition: Industry CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) will keep going up. Can’t expect to maintain a lower CAC than your competitor for an extended period of time. So start paid-advertisement sooner rather than later. - Hang Zhou of Yidao
On Targeted Acquisition: One can’t wishfully think that he/she can acquire very targeted user cheaply. Instead, one should change the product to make it work for a broader audience. That’s why vertical e-commerce will eventually lose out to horizontal e-commerce, and premium internet brands will lose out to generic/cheap ones.
On Premium Internet Products: Following the prior point, Hip/Cool/Trendy internet startups all become fads (think Nice/Enjoy/乐纯/轻芒/即刻), they shouldn’t be able to raise venture money in the first place. Because they did and the money burned through their pocket (scale before PMF), the residual value of the company became a “brand”, where they collect some endorsement fees for a short while. - Yang Fan, Elsewhere
On Paid Acquisition vs. Paying Users: At the beginning of an industry, it’s easy to grow but hard to monetize; towards the end, it’ll get harder to grow but easy to monetize. In consumer mobile internet, days of sustainable free growth hacking is over. Which leads to the next two points:
All future apps will pay users to use.
All future apps will eventually consolidate into super apps.
Point 13 + point 14 = Any future successful app needs to be, and will be, a super app that pays users to use.
Bonus:
ON THE FURURE: The core value for 5G is not throughput, but low-latency, which means real cloud computing, VR and more. http://www.maxwellzhou.com/blog/-the-future-of-computing

===== Even higher quality gold nuggets =====

I’ve also gathered a number of even stronger and more actionable ideas. However, I can’t share them publicly. To quote Peter Thiel again, a company is a cult-like group with one big conspiracy. They’re together because they discovered secrets and these secrets will and only will be shared within the company.

Throughout this journey, what I’ve learned is that the process is immensely powerful and I’ll continue on this journey. Let’s hope this public list next year grows longer!