Zero to One, Peter Thiel - Bookclub Friday's #45

eldergill (52)in #bookclub • 5 years ago

About the Author

Peter Thiel is an entrepreneur and investor. He started PayPal in 1998, led it as CEO, and took it public in 2002, defining a new era of fast and secure online commerce. In 2004 he made the first outside investment in Facebook, where he serves as a director. The same year he launched Palantir Technologies, a software company that harnesses computers to empower human analysts in fields like national security and global finance. He has provided early funding for LinkedIn, Yelp, and dozens of successful technology startups, many run by former colleagues who have been dubbed the “PayPal Mafia.”

He is a partner at Founders Fund, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm that has funded companies like SpaceX and Airbnb. He started the Thiel Fellowship, which ignited a national debate by encouraging young people to put learning before schooling, and he leads the Thiel Foundation, which works to advance technological progress and long-term thinking about the future. Peter is also the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future.

A little bit about the book

Peter Theil's Zero to One is a book that is essentially about how to start a business and lead it to success. It is his take on how you would achieve such a thing, indicating what strategies you should take in each phase even from the beginning stage. He uses real-life examples and gives good explanations for his ideas.

He believes that it is better to start a business with a value proposition that nobody else in the market has to offer right now, which seems relatively obvious but there's massive importance in trying to be unique but also to solve a critical issue that consumers may be having - or at least to be the solution to a particular job. Your business needs to be useful to consumers otherwise no one will give a shit that it is unique and different to other businesses.

He stresses the importance of avoiding conflict and attempting to create your own industry or avoid those full of monopolies that you simply cannot compete against. Instead, you create your own monopoly by reinventing an industry.

There is also information about his successes with Paypal and various Investments like Facebook - and more about creating a startup culture and how to handle workers.

Overall the book has good advice, however, if you know much about startups or starting a business the information is commonsensical but still, the book is an interesting read.