Monday, January 05, 2015

book: Zero to One



book site: Zero to One

Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future Audiobook | Peter Thiel, Blake Masters | Audible.com

"Doing what someone else already knows how to do takes the world from 1 to n, adding more of something familiar. But when you do something new, you go from 0 to 1. The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page or Sergey Brin won’t make a search engine. Tomorrow’s champions will not win by competing ruthlessly in today’s marketplace. They will escape competition altogether, because their businesses will be unique. "
Zero to One: What You Can Learn From Peter Thiel's Philosophy of Progress | OPEN Forum
Don’t waste time competing with others. Instead, do something new and valuable and unique—there’s plenty left to do. ... we can build a better future, and you can build a great business—but only if you believe that that's possible and work relentlessly to make it happen."

  • Rule #1: Build Proprietary Technology That Is 10x Better
  • Rule #2: Look For Network Effects
  • Rule #3: Create Economies of Scale
  • Rule #4: Build A Strong Brand
Peter Thiel: Competition Is for Losers - WSJ
"Tolstoy famously opens "Anna Karenina" by observing: "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Business is the opposite. All happy companies are different: Each one earns a monopoly by solving a unique problem. All failed companies are the same: They failed to escape competition."

Peter Thiel on the Power of Counterintuitive Thinking
"Business thinking today:
  1. Make incremental advances.
  2. Stay lean and flexible.
  3. Improve on the competition.
  4. Focus on products, not sales.
And yet the opposite principles are probably more correct:
  1. It is better to risk boldness than triviality.
  2. A bad plan is better than no plan.
  3. Competitive markets destroy profits.
  4. Sales matters just as much as profit."