Take Brian Chesky<\/a>, the young entrepreneur who cofounded Airbnb<\/a>, a service that allows people to rent out their spare bedrooms and sleeper couches to people visiting their city. What kind of crazy person would want to rent out their spare bedroom to a stranger? Hundreds of thousands of people, it seems. Airbnb has booked more than 10-million nights since it launched in 2008.<\/p>\n Had Chesky listened to the dozens of respected venture capitalists who turned him down \u2013 the rudest of which \u00adsimply walked out of a lunch meeting without even finishing his drink \u2013 he and his cofounders would never have persisted for the three lean years it took to make the \u00adcompany viable.<\/p>\n Questioning received wisdom is a theme that runs thick through the SXSW conference. South African-born Elon Musk<\/a>, who made billions by cofounding PayPal<\/a>, has since founded SpaceX<\/a>, the first private company to successfully launch a spacecraft and then dock with the International Space Station. Musk also cofounded Tesla, a company dedicated to making high performance electric cars \u2013 an idea that many experts openly scoffed at.<\/p>\n Or take Bre Pettis<\/a>, founder of MakerBot<\/a>, a company that manufactures relatively inexpensive 3D printers. These devices literally print out objects in a hard plastic,\u00a0 based on any designs that are fed into them. And so, for $2200, anyone can become a small-scale manufacturer overnight. To Pettis, this represents the start of \u201ca new industrial revolution\u201d.<\/p>\n No institution is safe from these free-thinking pioneers. When Jonah Peretti<\/a> founded BuzzFeed<\/a> in 2006, no one in the serious news business suspected that this effervescent mix of cute animal pictures and witty articles would one day intrude on their turf. But today the site is creating hard news and making hard cash.<\/p>\n Bre Pettis<\/p><\/div>\n Division between advertising and editorial<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/strong>For Peretti, there is absolutely no discontinuity between serious news and cute animals. He compares the media to a Parisian sidewalk caf\u00e9: Yes, you may take your news\u00adpaper and your philosophy book to the caf\u00e9 to read, but you may also stop and pat the cute dog at the next table. \u201cWhen you pet the dog, you don\u2019t become stupid,\u201d Peretti says.<\/p>\n BuzzFeed is also challenging that most sacred of conventions, the division between advertising and editorial: \u201cNewspapers got used to hating advertising and putting it off to the side. We realised we could work with brands to make advertising interesting and useful instead of shoving it into a corner.\u201d<\/p>\n This approach is proving wildly successful in a market where other media companies are struggling to survive.<\/p>\n If these true believers had a high priest, they might well choose Peter Thiel<\/a> as their leader. Another PayPal<\/a> cofounder, Thiel has reached \u00adlegendary \u00adstatus by being one of the first outsiders to invest in companies such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Yelp and Quora.<\/p>\n Peter Thiel<\/p><\/div>\n Thiel is convinced that the problem with America\u2019s economy is a lack of bold and well-defined vision. \u201cWhen there\u2019s no definite view of the future, you end up in a place where you stop building things.\u201d<\/p>\n Thiel challenges Warren Buffett<\/a>\u2019s approach as essentially defensive and pessimistic. \u201cWe actually like to invest in companies that are losing money. A company that is making lots of money is often out of ideas,\u201d Thiel says. He relates an anecdote about the early days of Facebook when they were offered $1-billion by Yahoo less than four years after founding the company. They turned down the offer, after minimal debate, and the rest is now history.<\/p>\n What kind of insane people would turn down $1-billion in hard cash for a company without any real \u00adrevenues? The kind of insane people who have the vision to change the world, it seems.<\/p>\n Source: Mail & Guardian<\/a><\/p>\n Brian Chesky: The homeless entrepreneur<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n SpaceX voyage a success<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n![\"Bre](\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/Bre-Pettis.jpg\" "\\"Bre")
<\/a>![\"Peter](\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/Peter-Thiel.jpg\" "\\"Peter")
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