Peter Thiel argued that great companies are built on secrets—important truths that most people don’t know or believe. Find the secret, build the solution, distribute it to the people who need it.

But there’s a deeper class of secrets.

Some problems aren’t just unsolved. They’re unthinkable. The pain is real, but the language to describe the problem doesn’t exist yet.

The doctors I worked with were losing patients every time they made a referral. The relationship dissolved. Revenue walked out the door. They felt the friction constantly.

But they didn’t call it a coordination failure. They didn’t frame it as a solvable design problem. It was just how referrals worked. The pain was real. The cost was real. But it wasn’t thinkable as something that could be fixed.

So they adapted. Coped. Built workarounds. Never realizing that doctors across the city were experiencing the same loss in parallel, each assumed their frustration was personal rather than structural.

This is the trap.

When pain can’t be articulated, it can’t be coordinated around. When it can’t coordinate, it doesn’t become a market. People suffer individually. They don’t look for solutions because they don’t recognize they’re facing a solvable problem. The friction feels like weather.

The problem is real. But socially, it doesn’t fully exist as a problem until someone makes it speakable.

Thiel’s contrarian question is: “What important truth do very few people agree with you on?”

The paradigmatic version goes further: What pain has no name yet?

The first finds secrets hiding in plain sight. The second finds secrets that can’t even be seen, because the frame to perceive them hasn’t been built.

This is where distribution becomes something more than reach.

When problems are already legible, distribution moves solutions. You find people who know they need what you have, and you get it to them.

When problems are felt but not legible, distribution builds the category that makes solutions possible. It is not just logistics. It is sense-making.

That second kind of distribution is harder. It is also where the largest opportunities live.

If the problem is already thinkable, someone is probably already solving it. You’re competing inside an existing frame on execution, features, and price.

If the problem isn’t yet thinkable, you get to define the frame. You name the pain. You shape the demand curve itself. You’re not competing for a market. You’re constructing one.

When you describe someone’s pain better than they can describe it themselves, something shifts.

“That’s exactly it.”
“I’ve been trying to say this for years.”
“How do you know my life?”

They don’t feel persuaded. They feel seen.

You’ve taken something that was only felt and made it thinkable. Now it can coordinate. Now people can find each other. Now, a scattered frustration becomes a shared problem, and a shared problem becomes a market.

The founder’s question isn’t just “what problem am I solving?”

It’s “Can my users name this problem yet, or do I have to name it for them?”

If they can name it, you’re in a race. You need to be faster, better, and cheaper than the alternatives they already see.

If they can’t, you’re in a different game. Your first job isn’t building the product. It’s building the language that makes the product make sense.

Thiel’s insight was that the best founders find secrets others miss.

The extension is this: some secrets aren’t hidden by a lack of information. They’re hidden by a lack of language. The pain is everywhere, costing real money and real relationships, but invisible because no one has made it speakable.

Finding those secrets requires a different kind of attention. Not “what do people say they want?” but “where are people quietly struggling with something they’ve stopped trying to explain?”

The answer is usually in the workarounds people have built, the resignation they carry, the friction they no longer question because it has always been there.

Make it speakable, and you’ve done the first and hardest work of distribution.

Everything else follows.

Peter Thiel argued that great companies are built on secrets—important truths that most people don’t know or believe. Find the secret, build the solution, distribute it to the people who need it.

But there’s a deeper class of secrets.

Some problems aren’t just unsolved. They’re unthinkable. The pain is real, but the language to describe the problem doesn’t exist yet.

The doctors I worked with were losing patients every time they made a referral. The relationship dissolved. Revenue walked out the door. They felt the friction constantly.

But they didn’t call it a coordination failure. They didn’t frame it as a solvable design problem. It was just how referrals worked. The pain was real. The cost was real. But it wasn’t thinkable as something that could be fixed.

So they adapted. Coped. Built workarounds. Never realizing that doctors across the city were experiencing the same loss in parallel, each assumed their frustration was personal rather than structural.

This is the trap.

When pain can’t be articulated, it can’t be coordinated around. When it can’t coordinate, it doesn’t become a market. People suffer individually. They don’t look for solutions because they don’t recognize they’re facing a solvable problem. The friction feels like weather.

The problem is real. But socially, it doesn’t fully exist as a problem until someone makes it speakable.

Thiel’s contrarian question is: “What important truth do very few people agree with you on?”

The paradigmatic version goes further: What pain has no name yet?

The first finds secrets hiding in plain sight. The second finds secrets that can’t even be seen, because the frame to perceive them hasn’t been built.

This is where distribution becomes something more than reach.

When problems are already legible, distribution moves solutions. You find people who know they need what you have, and you get it to them.

When problems are felt but not legible, distribution builds the category that makes solutions possible. It is not just logistics. It is sense-making.

That second kind of distribution is harder. It is also where the largest opportunities live.

If the problem is already thinkable, someone is probably already solving it. You’re competing inside an existing frame on execution, features, and price.

If the problem isn’t yet thinkable, you get to define the frame. You name the pain. You shape the demand curve itself. You’re not competing for a market. You’re constructing one.

When you describe someone’s pain better than they can describe it themselves, something shifts.

“That’s exactly it.”
“I’ve been trying to say this for years.”
“How do you know my life?”

They don’t feel persuaded. They feel seen.

You’ve taken something that was only felt and made it thinkable. Now it can coordinate. Now people can find each other. Now, a scattered frustration becomes a shared problem, and a shared problem becomes a market.

The founder’s question isn’t just “what problem am I solving?”

It’s “Can my users name this problem yet, or do I have to name it for them?”

If they can name it, you’re in a race. You need to be faster, better, and cheaper than the alternatives they already see.

If they can’t, you’re in a different game. Your first job isn’t building the product. It’s building the language that makes the product make sense.

Thiel’s insight was that the best founders find secrets others miss.

The extension is this: some secrets aren’t hidden by a lack of information. They’re hidden by a lack of language. The pain is everywhere, costing real money and real relationships, but invisible because no one has made it speakable.

Finding those secrets requires a different kind of attention. Not “what do people say they want?” but “where are people quietly struggling with something they’ve stopped trying to explain?”

The answer is usually in the workarounds people have built, the resignation they carry, the friction they no longer question because it has always been there.

Make it speakable, and you’ve done the first and hardest work of distribution.

Everything else follows.