Hoffman's Pithy Kill-Shot Reframe

““We are living in the heaven of PalmPilots,” observed Reid Hoffman, a Stanford friend of Thiel’s and early Confinity board member, “and we could walk into every single restaurant and go to each table and ask how many people have PalmPilots.” He guessed the answer was between zero and one per restaurant. “And that means your use case can only be used between zero and one times, per restaurant, per meal cycle! You’re hosed! It’s over on this idea.””

“Few on the PayPal team saw that risk dissipating without a deal between the two companies, though. “Reid had a pithy means of describing the challenge: ‘Just because someone shoots five bullets at you and misses... does not preclude the sixth one from killing you,’ ” Keith Rabois wrote on Quora years later.”