While I agree with Thiel on a lot of areas, I think he underestimates the power individuals to be more ambitious despite the norms of the local population.

I work for a startup, M1 Finance (https://www.m1finance.com/), based in Chicago which I believe to be an extremely ambitious team: http://chicagoinno.streetwise.co/2016/09/09/a-chicago-fintec....