One Sentence Overview
Zero to One is a complete look at Peter Thiel’s philosophy and strategy that can be used to make your startup a success by looking at the lessons he learned from founding and selling PayPal, investing in Facebook, and becoming a billionaire in the process.
Who is this book for?
Zero To One by Peter Thiel is a must-read for startup entrepreneurs everywhere. The book looks at how companies can create a monopoly, and in doing so move society forward.
“Brilliant thinking is real, but courage is even shorter than genius”
The five big ideas from the book
- Don’t Invest in a CEO that wears a suit. If the CEO looks like a salesman, he is probably bad at sales and worst in tech.
- All failed companies are the same: they failed to escape competition.
- The way to success is the way of continuous pursuit of knowledge.
- You should focus relentlessly on something you’re good at doing.
- Moving first is a tactic, not a goal.
Key Insights from the book:
- ” There are two types of progress: vertical and horizontal. Vertical progress happens when you come up with something new, which takes society from 0 to 1 and Horizontal progress is an improvisation on vertical progress that takes society from 1 to N.”
- ” If your product/service is 10x better than your closest competitor, it’s a monopoly.”
- ” Work and hire people who are better than you, serve the mission of the organization and fit in the culture.”
- ” Computers complement Humans, the most valuable businesses of the upcoming decade will be built by entrepreneurs who empower people with technology.”
- ” Don’t Invest in a CEO that wears a suit. If the CEO looks like a salesman, he is probably bad at sales and worst in tech.”
- ” All failed companies are the same: they failed to escape competition.”
- ” The way to success is the way of continuous pursuit of knowledge.”
- ” You should focus relentlessly on something you’re good at doing.”
- ” Moving first is a tactic, not a goal.”
- ” You’ve invented something new but you haven’t invented an effective way to sell it, you have a bad business.”
- ” Once you create and dominate a niche market, then you should gradually expand into related and slightly broadcast markets.”
- ” As a founder, your first job is to get the first things right, because you can not build a great company on a flawed foundation.”
- ” For a company to be valuable it must grow and endure, but many entrepreneurs focus only on short-term growth.”
- ” Customers won’t care about any particular technology unless it solves a particular problem in a superior way.”
- ” A product is viral if its core functionally encourages users to invite their friends to become users too.”
- ” First, only invest in companies that have the potential to return the value of the entire fund.”
- ” Madness is rare in individuals but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule.”
- ” If you can’t beat a rival, it may be better to merge.”
- ” Brilliant thinking is rare, but courage is in even shorter supply than genius.”
- ” In a world of scarce resources, globalization without new technology is unsustainable.”
About the Author
Author Peter Thiel was the co-founder of PayPal, the first outside investor in Facebook, and is now the co-founder and chairman of Palantir Technologies. As far as investors and entrepreneurs go, Thiel is pretty inspirational. Thiel wrote Zero to One with the help of Blake Masters, also a budding entrepreneur, Blake co-founded a legal research technology startup after graduating from Stanford and Stanford Law School.
