ZERO TO ONE BY

PETER THIEL
Book review
 BREIF INTRODUCTION

◦ “Every moment in business happens only once. The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page or
Sergey Brin won’t make a search engine. And the next Mark Zuckerberg won’t create a social network. If you are copying
these guys, you aren’t learning from them.

◦ ”Author introduction-Peter Andreas Thiel is a German-American billionaire entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and political
activist. A co-founder of PayPal, Palantir Technologies, and Founders Fund.
 1. Challenges Of Futures.
 What important truth do very few people agree with you?
 Zero to One

 Start-up

2. Mistaken Reactions to Past Mistakes.

 Era of 1990’s
 Globalisation replaced Technology

Mistakes learnt Author’s View

 Make incremental advances  It is better to risk boldness than
triviality

 Stay lean and flexible  A bad plan is better than no plan

 Improve on the competition  Competitive markets destroy profits

 Focus on the product, not sales  Sales matters just as much as product.
◦ All Happy Companies Are Different
◦ ● What valuable company is no bodybuilding?
◦ ○ Valuable company=Create value + Capture value.
◦ ● Negative out look on Competition
◦ ● Monopoly vs Perfect Competition○ The author makes the difference between Monopoly vs perfect competition and explains
how both this type of companies are trying to disguise themselves:
◦ ○ Example disguise monopoly: Google has a monopoly on search but emphasizes the small share of global online
advertising.
◦ ○ Example disguise perfect competition: tries to find fake differentiators, “only British restaurant in Palo Alto”
◦ Short term profit-making culture pervades many start ups. He says the most fundamental question instead is: will this business
still be around 10 years from now ? Numbers alone can’t tell you the answers, but you have to think critically about your
business (in contrast to the number-centrism espoused by Michael Gerber in The E-Myth).He says that there’s no sure fire way
to build a monopoly, but each monopoly shares four characteristics : Proprietary Technology: great tech improving on the past
in order of magnitudes (IE: google search, iPad)Network Effects: when so many people use a product the scale tips and
everyone joins Economies of Scale: monopoly businesses get stronger growing bigger (not the case for service
businesses)Branding: a brand should embody an ideology.
◦ Peter Thiel here talks about “luck” and its role in business success . He says the phenomenon of successful serial entrepreneur
calls into question the “luck logic ”.My Note : The serial entrepreneur thing is no proof to be honest. One might easily “get
lucky” twice. Or even thrice. Pretty sure there are several double lottery winners in the world (also read: Fooled by
Randomness). The author talks further about pessimists and optimists and about Lean Methodologies . He says six sigma and
lean methodology is about incremental improvements and will not get you from zero to one.
 THEIL’S LAW
Troublesome Co- Cooperative Co-
Founder Founder

Focused
Vision
Distorted
Predefined
Vision
Roles

Inflexible
Flexible
 PAYPAL MAFIA

Elon Musk Reid Hoffman

Steve Chan Chad Harley Jerry Stoppelman Russel Simmons
Co-Founded Tesla and
Co-Founded LinkedIn
Founder of Space X Co-Founded YouTube Co-Founded YouTube Co-Founded Yelp Co-Founded Yelp

Peter Theil
Jawed Karim David Sacks
Co-Founded Palantir
Co-Founded YouTube Co-Founded Yammer
If you build it will they come ? What question here is suppose if we made a
product will we be able to sell it ? It matters how u sell anything if u have the
ability to convince with positive manipulation .It comprises distribution and
marketing of products In the same manner nowadays technology is growing too
fast as the human labor is getting replaced with technology .Technology has its
pros and cons both it has benefit of time but lack of emotions .The premise is
wrong: computers are complements for humans , not substitutes.
 # CONCLUSION #
PRINCIPLES LEARNT FROM ZERO TO ONE
◦ Become a monopoly and avoid competition
◦ Start with niche market and dominate

4 POSSIBLE PATTERNS FOR THE FUTURE OF HUMANITY

THANK YOU
◦ JAHANVI JOSHI
◦ ABHINAV PANDEY
◦ RAHIL DOSHI
◦ APURV SHARMA
◦ MD NISAR
◦ KAJAL SINGH
◦ VEDIKA KATKADE
◦ PRAKHAR BHATIA