The biggest secret in venture capital...

From Peter Thiel via Zero to One:

The biggest secret in venture capital is that the best investment in a successful fund equals or outperforms the entire rest of the fund combined. 

This implies two very strange rules for VCs. First, only invest in companies that have the potential to return the value of the entire fund. This is a scary rule, because it eliminates the vast majority of possible investments. (Even quite successful companies usually succeed on a more humble scale.) This leads to rule number two: because rule number one is so restrictive, there can't be any other rules.