Paul GrahamVerified account

The worst thing to seem to investors is borderline promising. If a startup is obviously promising, you'll raise money easily. If it's obviously unpromising, you'll get an immediate no. But if it's borderline promising, the no will come after sucking up months of your attention.

Mr. Graham, do you think the consumer internet market is too saturated nowadays? Thiel said all the ideas people can think of have already been tried.

It seems unlikely that it's saturated or that Peter said that.

Well, sure enough, sounds like he did say it. I think that hypothesis has to be wrong though, if only because practically anything can be "consumer internet" in the sense of using the internet as a delivery mechanism.