Book: Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel. Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.

It’s a good book. There are some good insights, some things that only work for a particular context, and some others that I disagree.

I have to highlight one item of my notes:

“Even working remotely should be avoided because misalignment can creep in whenever colleagues aren’t together full-time, in the same place, every day”

That made me laugh out loud in the street while listening to this book. I’m working remotely for almost two years now. In the past 1 year, I was more aligned than ever with the company ideas. I truly think the author doesn’t have enough experience with remote-first companies to say something like that. As I said, some parts of this book only work in the author’s context.

Other than that, it’s a book worth reading. The author has a lot of experience with startups and a successful career. The questions he mentions (available in my notes) are one of the best parts of the book, and you can try to apply them to most of the companies you know.

Here are my notes:

  • What is one truth that very few people agree with you? (There is no God is a popular answer)
  • Horizontal progress is when you have a typewriter and you build many
  • Vertical progress is when you have a typewriter and build a processor
  • Silicon Valey learned four lessons from the bubble: 1. Small incremental steps - 2. Stay lean and flexible (don’t plan too hard) - 3. Improve the competition - 4. Focus on product, not sales. If you need sales to sell your product, it’s because it’s not good enough
  • But the opposite principles were yet probably more correct
  • It’s better to risk boldly than trivial
  • Bad plan is better than no plan
  • Competitive market destroy profits
  • Sales matters just as much as the product
  • To create the new generation of companies we have to reject the dogmas created in the past
  • If you want to create and capture value, don’t build an undifferentiated commodities business
  • Google is a tech company, which helps to remove all kinds of undesired attention from monopoly laws
  • All failing companies are the same, they fail to escape competition
  • Find a new market and grow. It’s hard to get 1% of a crowded market. Even if you get it, the competition will be really high, making it hard to grow
  • Don’t disrupt, avoid competition as much as possible. Disruptors are people who look for trouble and find it
  • Dominate a small niche and scale from there
  • Sucess is half luck, half good timing, and the rest brains (Jeff Bezos)
  • Statistics doesn’t work when the sample size is one
  • You are not a lottery ticket. It’s more than just luck.
  • Research about the power law
  • The road doesn’t have to be hidden after all. Take the hidden path.
  • A startup messed up in its foundation cannot be fixed
  • It’s very hard to go from zero to one without a team
  • Everyone on your team must be available full time. Anyone who doesn’t own stock options or draws a regular salary is fundamentally misaligned. They are trying to get money in the near turn not to grow the company in the long future. That’s why hiring consultancy or having part-time employees doesn’t work.
  • Hiring is a core of any company and should not be outsourced
  • Software is not meant to replace humans but to be a tool to improve their performance.
  • Clean tech failed because they neglected one or more of the seven questions that most business must answer.
  • Question 1. The engineering question- can you create breakthrough technology instead of incremental improvements?
  • Question 2. The timing question- is now the right time to start your particular business?
  • Question 3. The monopoly question- are you starting with a big share of a small marketing?
  • Question 4. The people question- Do you have the right team?
  • Question 5. The distribution question - Do you have a way to not just create but deliver your product?
  • Question 6. The durability question - will your marketing position be defensible 10 or 20 years into the future
  • Question 7. The secret question - Have you identify the unique opportunity that others don’t see?
  • The engineering question: Your product has to be 10x better than its competitors. Just 20% better will not be enough to justify the change/risk for many users
  • The biggest threat to a founder is to become so self-confident of his mith that he loses his mind We cannot take for granted that the future will be better, so we have to work to create it today