- You might remember a few years back
there was a news story where Hulk Hogan
had a sex tape leaked by Gawker
and there was this lawsuit
that completely destroyed the company.
Gawker's out of business now because of this lawsuit.
At the time it didn't seem like
anything out of the ordinary, but, after a while,
it became clear that the lawsuit from Hulk Hogan
was funded by billionaire Peter Thiel.
It was a real-life conspiracy.
Peter Thiel had created this conspiracy to take down Gawker
because back when Gawker first started,
they exposed Peter Thiel.
They outed him for being gay.
And, on the surface,
that seems like something that wouldn't happen.
But I just read this book called Conspiracy by Ryan Holiday.
It is Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker
and the Anatomy of Intrigue.
And I wanted to share my three main takeaways.
So, let's jump into it.
Number one is, conspiracies are real.
This is something Ryan wanted to
really hammer home in the book.
He talks about conspiracy theories a little bit,
like the moon-landing hoax
and how that's not a real conspiracy
and how in real conspiracies,
the word almost always gets out
because, any time there's three or four people talking,
somebody's gonna leak something to their wife
or something's gonna get out.
So by revealing a real conspiracy that happened,
hopefully you can disprove
most of these fake conspiracy theories.
And that was what was so interesting about this book.
This conspiracy was real.
Peter Thiel was mad at Gawker and, so,
used his billions of dollars,
he's one of the founders of PayPal
and one of the early investors in Facebook,
used that money to fund a lawsuit.
He hired lawyers that would
search through every potential case.
So, anytime Gawker would publish a story
that might be slightly off, or might be breaking a law,
Peter Thiel's lawyer would reach out to them,
as somebody else,
they wouldn't say they were affiliated with Peter Thiel,
and, would fund that lawsuit.
It's every business owner's worst nightmare.
You offend a billionaire
and then he comes after you with all of his resources.
Which brings us to point two.
Unbeatable enemies are beatable.
Peter Thiel was burned and doubled-down.
Gawker relied on this business model of
releasing and publishing everything they possibly could
and then making the process of suing them
so difficult that nobody would do it.
By the time Peter Thiel and his lawyers and Hulk Hogan
got to the courtroom, it was discovered that
they were the only people to actually
file a lawsuit against Gawker even though, in the past,
Gawker had made a lot of similar mistakes,
leaking sex tapes.
They leaked video of a woman through a keyhole
that used to work at ESPN,
where you could see her changing.
They had rumors of people being gay.
They outed other people, not just Peter Thiel.
People that were celebrities and media elites,
and yet, nobody had sued them
because of the way the system was set up.
However, with Peter Thiel, he had just enough of a drive
and, basically, unlimited resources.
Billions of dollars is way more than enough
to take down a company.
I think it ended up costing him like 20 million dollars.
So even though Gawker was
this seemingly unbeatable force with a legal team
that would aggressively send cease and desists,
all it took was one person actively challenging that system
to bring them to court and to bring Gawker down.
The third takeaway is, deliver value to unlock new projects.
That might sound weird in a video about conspiracies,
but there's another player here.
It wasn't just Gawker and Hulk Hogan and Peter Thiel
working alone.
There was this other guy in the book called Mr. A.
No last name, no first name given,
and, according to the book, Conspiracy,
the reason Peter Thiel went after Gawker,
after just talking about it for years and years,
was because he was at a dinner with this guy named Mr. A,
and Mr. A was this young dude who convinced Peter Thiel
that he could actually take down this company.
Ryan Holiday calls people like Mr. A
professional sons and it's an interesting concept.
He means that there are people that are able to
tie themselves to older people that have resources
to fulfill those old people's goals
in order to get those resources for themselves.
Lyndon Johnson is another example of a professional son,
how he was able to trade up in the Senate
and all the way to the presidency
just by helping more powerful people than him.
And I'm sure Ryan Holiday sees himself
in the Mr. A character as well.
I know I did in terms of his career path,
going from director of marketing at American Apparel
to this widely-published author.
But Peter Thiel had completely written off suing Gawker
until Mr. A sat down with him at dinner
and, basically, hit all the right notes.
He told Peter Thiel it was possible.
He promised to do all the work.
And he was willing to get started for a fairly low salary.
So all Thiel had to do is say yes
and Mr. A coordinated with the lawyers.
He found the legal precedent.
He met with the lawyers weekly.
And all Thiel had to do
was the occasional phone call with Mr. A.
So this was a fully-outsourced operation.
And, if you read this book,
Mr. A is clearly the most interesting character here.
How he was able to go from just a college student
to helping this billionaire and,
I assume now he's deep inside the Thiel organization,
which is why they wanted to anonymize his entire identity.
So check that book out.
Conspiracy by Ryan Holiday.
There's a link down in the description below.
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Thanks for watching.