Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future - Peter Thiel

My recommendation: 7/10

My main takeaways from this book are staying intentionally small, not worrying too much about planning for the long future and creating a product that is at least 10x better than any competition, otherwise, you will be obsolete.

Notes:

If you can't monopolize a unique solution for a small market, you'll be stuck with vicious competition.

If you've invented something new but you haven't invented an effective way to sell it, you have a bad business- -no matter how good the product.

Startups operate on the principle that you need to work with other people to get stuff done, but you also need to stay small enough so that you actually can.

All companies must be "lean," which is code for “unplanned”. You should not know what your Business will do; planning is arrogant and inflexible. Instead, you should try things out, “iterate,” and treat entrepreneurship as agnostic experimentation.

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.

A great business is defined by its ability to generate cash flows in the future.

Most of a tech company’s value will come at least 10 to 15 years in future.

The clearest way to make a 10x improvement is to invent something completely new.

Every startup is small at the start. Every monopoly dominates a large share of its market. Therefore, every startup should start with a very small market.

The perfect target market for a startup is a small group of particular people concentrated together and served by few or no competitors.

How can the future get better if no one plans for it? - Progress without planning is what we call “evolution”.

advertising doesn't exist to make you buy a product right away; it exists to embed subtle impressions that will drive sales later.

You should focus relentlessly on something you're good at doing, but before that, you must think hard about whether it will be valuable in the future.

The best entrepreneurs know this: every great business is built around a secret that's hidden from the outside. A great company is a conspiracy to change the world; when you share your secret, the recipient becomes a fellow conspirator.

Two metrics set the limits for effective distribution. The total net profit that you earn on average over the course of your relationship with a customer (Customer Lifetime Value, or CLV) must exceed the amount you spend on average to acquire a new customer (Customer Acquisition Cost, or CAC). In general, the higher the price of your product, the more you have to spend to make a sale and the more it makes sense to spend it.

If you have any comments or questions about this book notes, you can write me at Twitter @oykun or email me at hello[at]oykun.com.

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