Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future | International Bestseller by Peter Thiel and Blake Masters

This book provide you knowledge about the business activities works So what is your need understand the points and learn

In the words of Peter, this book (or better to say a compilation of notes) is about how to build companies that create new things. Personally, I would say this book gives a good window into the mind of a great entrepreneur like Peter, which may give solace to other entrepreneurs with out of box idea and who are not getting support from near quarters. This is not a book which will detail out the steps in the journey, but it can tell you about what to expect in the journey. And nothing about the destination – that is for each to define as their own. In the process, there are some gems I collected. Like the contra learnings from the dot com bust – 1. Make incremental advances 2. Stay lean and flexible 3. Improve on competition 4. Focus on product , not sale OR what Peter professes a) It is better to risk boldness than triviality b) A bad plan is better than no plan c) Competitive market destroys profits d) Sales matter as much as the product Which one to choose – all upto you. Peter is unapologetic about monopoly – as he views that every business is successful exactly to the extent it does what others cannot, this making monopoly the condition for every successful business. All happy companies are those who have earned a monopoly by solving a unique problem, all failed companies are those who failed to escape competition In order to get to the monopoly, Peter suggests to analyse the business within some parameters: a) Proprietary technology – should be 10 times better than closest substitute b) Network effects – an expanding network of users will bring in more users. A product is viral if its core functionality encourages users to invite their friends to become users too. c) Economies of scale – the model should have a great potential to scale in its design d) Branding – control the customer experience Peter prefers to start small – target a small group of particular people concentrated together and served by few or no competitors. Dominate a small market than a large one. And then scale up. Peter also serves some words of caution - some of which may not find universal resonance, like a) Don’t Disrupt: focus on the act of creation. Disruptors often attract undue attention and take away substantial time b) Last will be first : Moving first is a tactic, not a goal. Focus on cash flows. It may be better to be the last mover - to make the last great development in a specific market and enjoy years of monopoly profits c) Full time involvement: Everyone you involve with your start up company should be involved full time – even remote working should be avoided to avoid any misalignment. d) Do one thing : Make every person in the company responsible for doing just one thing e) Human beings are irreplaceable: Complementarity between computers and human beings is the path to building a great business (e.g. LinkedIn helping recruiters than aiming to replace them) Using the case of large scale failure of greentech companies, Peter lays out a set of seven questions that every business must answer: 1. The Engineering Question- Can you create breakthrough technology instead of incremental improvements? 2. The Timing Question- Is now the right time to start your particular business? 3. The Monopoly Question -Are you starting with a big share of a small market? 4. The People Question- Do you have the right team? 5. The Distribution Question- Do you have a way to not just create but deliver your product? 6. The Durability Question -Will your market position be defensible 10 and 20 years into the future? 7. The Secret Question - Have you identified a unique opportunity that others don’t see? At the end, Peter addresses the question about the importance of founders. He agrees on the need to have and tolerate founders who seem strange and extreme. They are important as they can bring out the best work from everybody in the company. He also agrees that it can get dangerous when the founder is so certain of his myth that he loses his mind but he feels it is equally dangerous for a business to lose all sense of myth and mistake disenchantment for wisdom There are many other areas on which Peter gives his views like control over future, the power law of venture capital, the case for having secrets etc. He focusses on finding singular ways to create new things that will make future not just different , but better – to go from zero to one, for which the essential step is to think for yourself. His closing comment “Only by seeing the world anew and as strange as it was to the ancients who saw it first, can we both re-create it and preserve it for the future” The book is a recommended read as it is rare to get insights into some great minds. However, as I said in the beginning, don’t mistake this for a handbook for building a great business.

Great book to read , although at few places the concepts needs to be simplified. Go for it if you want to have some startup or entrepreneur journey .

This book is written by Peter Theil who is a venture capitalist, co-founder of Paypal and Palantir, an early investor in Facebook etc. This book is co-authored by Blake Masters who is an entrepreneur. Blake Masters was a student at Stanford and took detailed class notes of the course CS183: Startup taught by Peter Theil. They both worked on the notes and modified the content for a wider audience. This is a very good read for any person who wants to be an entrepreneur. Being interested in entrepreneurship, i chose this book after reading the reviews of other people. This was my first book on entrepreneurship and i really loved this book. This book taught me a lot of new things. Peter Theil emphasises on making something new rather than modifying another idea, which he calls going from zero to one. Modifying a currently existing idea can work in a local area but won't be able to profit much in bigger market because of competition which would eventually reduce the profits of each company. The book discusses a lot of scenarios of building a successful company with its merits and demerits. Peter also mentioned seven questions which one person should ask himself before starting a company which covers different aspects such as Engineering, Timing, Monopoly, People, Distribution, Duration and Uniqueness which i found to be very important. He discussed these aspects in great details with great examples. Moreover, the way he explained all the important things is easily understandable to even people having little to no knowledge in entrepreneurship. He also emphaises on the importance of the marketing of the product which is generally overlooked by technology startups these days. The book also encourages readers to ask "What valuable company is nobody building?" and "If I build it, will they (i.e. investors, customers) come?" before starting a new company and justifies the importance of these questions. The opening lines of the book mentions "the next Bill Gates will not build an operating system, the next Larry Page or Sergy Brin wont make a search engine and the next Mark Zuckerberg wont create a social network. If you are copying these guys, you aren't learning from them". These opening lines covers one of the most important essence for a startup to succeed. Overall this book is a very good read for everyone. This book is not just for people who are/willing to be an entrepreneur, but for everyone. This book discusses a lot of things which are important for us to build a better future. For example, Peter Theil focused on importance of green energy startups as renewable energy is a very important factor for betterment of humans on earth. The books also covers some basic but important aspects of business which benefits everyone. The book also covers some important startups of the past with the key people involved in them. Overall, this is a very good read for everyone

Book has immense insights and very helpful for anyone who is thinking of beginning a start up👏

Ok ok page quality… bcz zyada clear page hota to psychologically increase your reading interest… but kam chal jayega bro kharid le…

Really loved the book because it gives a different view on lots of thing entrepreneurs deal with. I encourage everyone who wants to create meaningful companies which make a difference in people's life to read this book.

Are you planning to start a restaurant serving Indian or British food in downtown Palo Alto (or anywhere for that matter)? Do you think you have a unique advantage over your competitors that will enable you to survive the competition? Think again, says Peter Thiel, in his book “Zero to One”. “If you lose sight of competitive reality…. your business is unlikely to survive.” Peter dispels the notion that competition in undifferentiated commodity business is good for your business. Rather, he favors “creative monopoly” despite the notoriety the word “monopoly” has gained over the years. The preamble of the book states “It’s easier to copy a model than to make something new: doing what we already know how to do takes the world from 1 to n”, but for any founder or investor to achieve exponential growth, he states “Every new creation goes from 0 to 1. This book is about how to get there.” Peter Thiel has reinforced this message throughout the book and supported it with good examples. He strongly argues that starting up an undifferentiated commodity business will wipe away profits and leave the start-up struggling for existence. He argues in favour of “creative monopoly”; a monopoly that encourages creativity in developing new products such that the society as a whole will benefit from such monopoly. These monopolies invest their monopoly profits in long-term projects and research; competitive companies cannot invest long-term because they spend more time struggling to earn and keep their existing profits. He thinks we need more creative monopolies to power the world. Such messages seem to fly in the face of established economic theory; but the presentation of the content makes a compelling read. There are intelligent nuggets all over the book that are very inspirational and useful. He ends the book with a key thought “We cannot take for granted that the future will be better, and that means we need to work to create it today.” The book is written in easy, lucid style in layman’s language. The book captivates the imagination; I read it twice in succession to imbibe the philosophy presented by the book. The book gives an insight into why some start-ups are more successful than others. That makes this book more relevant to today’s world than ever before. If you are a start-up or are planning one, you must read this book. For the rest of us, it makes a very absorbing read nevertheless.

This book is like a pair of Prescription Spectacles that put the Innovation Startup Business world, into Sharp Focus. When I first saw the price I almost hit exit. However, I thought “If this guy has the balls to ask this price, this book had better be good”. Else I'm going to roast him in my Amazon review. I ain't roasting!! As usual I attacked reading this book in concept extraction mode for my normal initial scan read. Chapter 6, You are not a Lottery Ticket, hit me with a Baseball bat right between the eyes. and slowed my reading pace down to almost snails'. Despite this slow first read, this Chapter deserved a re-read, at almost letter by letter speed. Almost every word or phrase brings an idea from the past, often vague, to the fore and into sharp focus. When I finished my first highlighting trip, almost every word in this chapter was lit. I had to choose and eliminate some of them. In Zero to One, Thiel explores the world of New Business Creation. I would have loved using the word entrepreneurship but excessive and inappropriate use by “experts” have stripped this word of it's true meaning. We even invented a new version in South Africa under the ANC – Tenderpreneur. True entrepreneurship from basics is the creation of a New business that facilitates Economic Development by providing an Inventive New Product creating a New Market Sector that facilitates New Consumer Productivity enhancing opportunities. In Thiel's thesis, basic human attitudes can be split into a 2x2 matrix. I also tend to think in 2x2 matrixi. So this chapter fitted my mind. But Wow did he blow my mind with his various Definite vs Indefinite and Optimistic vs Pessimistic discussions. Despite many years in multinational business I could not fault the Author on any of his explanations. He clarified a lot for me. One of them “strategically humble” is certainly a new, yet valid descriptor for a company with a profitable monopoly. Yet in their Financial market press releases, they deliberately select a market description that yields for them a minority market share in a large market and not their true market share in the niche they dominate totally. (Are they hiding from Monopoly acuzations?) A few key quotes. ”In the 1950's, Americans thought big plans for the future were too important to be left to experts”. (San Francisco Dam) Ralph Waldo Emmerson is quoted as saying “Shallow men believe in luck, believe in circumstances …...... Strong men believe in cause and effect.” “you should do what you could, not focus on what you couldn't” Is to my mind the Quote of the Year. Another hand clapper was “No one pretended that misfortune didn't exist, but prior generations believed in making their own luck by working hard” I consider the following a nice funny; When Peter had to use either the words he or she in his text he seemed to consistently use she. I suppose this enables him to duck accusations of Sexism. Showing signs of being scared of Indefinite Pessimists? “We have to find our way back to a definite future, and the Western World needs nothing short of a cultural revolution to do it.” “ A startup is the largest endeavor over which you can have definite mastery. You can have agency not just over your own life, but over a small and important part of the world. It begins by rejecting the unjust tyranny of Chance” The rest of the book is devoted to discussing the practicalities of founding Innovative Startups successfully. These are focused at exploiting what is commonly considered a secret simply because nobody has really explored it before. Their uniqueness create innovative monopoly opportunities - the key source of profit. One of the issues discussed is; Power Law; We all know the Pareto principle is valid and 80-20 describes the unequal distribution of results in everything. Peter adds these considerations; “It defines our surroundings so completely that we usually don't see it”. He continues with; “but everyone needs to know exactly one thing that even venture capitalists struggle to understand: we don't live in a normal world; we live under power law.” In this way many other facets of Startup founding are discussed practically. In the end I came away with the following thought pattern; A potential successful startup founder is someone who is a Definite Optimist with a long term perspective, prepared to take risks. Who has a mind open enough to identify factual or human secrets that need illumination. Who is prepared to do the hard work necessary to acquire the factual knowledge needed to explore this secret and find a way to change this mystery into a solution. Who is capable of funding this idea or selling it to Venture Funders to acquire funding. Who is prepared to expend the effort to develop the idea into a useful practical end product that solves something significant for a new market sector. AND; Who then has the flexibility to turn around from dreaming, research and creativity. To then display the tenacity to knuckle down to make this idea work in practice, prepared to live through the low personal income initial loss making era, building the practical business. Thanks – A stimulating read, well worth the time and money – even for retired me!

Texto muito coezo, muito distuptivo, me deparei com vários conceitos novos e interessantes que me fizeram refletir muito. Oferece um manual completo pra avaliar uma startup e seu potencial de revolucionar a humanidade

inspiring book! really recommend for future entrepreneurs