Zero to One: Notes on Startups, Or How to Build the Future by Blake Masters and Peter Thiel

Description

Zero to One: Notes on Startups, Or How to Build the Future by Blake Masters and Peter Thiel

This book is like a pair of Prescription Spectacles that put the Innovation Startup Business world, into Sharp Focus.

When I first saw the price I almost hit exit. However, I thought “If this guy has the balls to ask this price, this book had better be good”. Else I’m going to roast him in my Amazon review. I ain’t roasting!!

As usual I attacked reading this book in concept extraction mode for my normal initial scan read. Chapter 6, You are not a Lottery Ticket, hit me with a Baseball bat right between the eyes. and slowed my reading pace down to almost snails’. Despite this slow first read, this Chapter deserved a re-read, at almost letter by letter speed. Almost every word or phrase brings an idea from the past, often vague, to the fore and into sharp focus. When I finished my first highlighting trip, almost every word in this chapter was lit. I had to choose and eliminate some of them.

In Zero to One, Thiel explores the world of New Business Creation. I would have loved using the word entrepreneurship but excessive and inappropriate use by “experts” have stripped this word of it’s true meaning. We even invented a new version in South Africa under the ANC – Tenderpreneur.

True entrepreneurship from basics is the creation of a New business that facilitates Economic Development by providing an Inventive New Product creating a New Market Sector that facilitates New Consumer Productivity enhancing opportunities.

In Thiel’s thesis, basic human attitudes can be split into a 2×2 matrix. I also tend to think in 2×2 matrixi. So this chapter fitted my mind. But Wow did he blow my mind with his various Definite vs Indefinite and Optimistic vs Pessimistic discussions. Despite many years in multinational business I could not fault the Author on any of his explanations. He clarified a lot for me. One of them “strategically humble” is certainly a new, yet valid descriptor for a company with a profitable monopoly. Yet in their Financial market press releases, they deliberately select a market description that yields for them a minority market share in a large market and not their true market share in the niche they dominate totally. (Are they hiding from Monopoly acuzations?

✅ Genre: Self-help Book, Business Motivation & Self-Improvement, Leadership.

✅ Premium Quality Books.

✅ High Printing quality.

✅ Eye Friendly.

✅ Matt cover (Paperback).