Author: Peter Thiel is an American billionaire entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and political activist. He is best known for being the co-founder of PayPal, Palantir Technologies, Founders Fund, and the first outside investor in Facebook. He has also funded companies like SpaceX and LinkedIn, and started the Thiel Fellowship, which encourages young people to put learning before university.
Book: Zero to One is a collection of Peter Thiel´s thoughts on business, investing, and venture capital. Some of the key ideas I took from the book include: (i) In order to change the future, you must be right and contrarian at the same time. (ii) Each moment in business happens only once (e.g., The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system) Doing what we already know how to do takes the world from 1 to n, adding more of something familiar, but every time we create something new, we go from 0 to 1. (iii) There is no formula for entrepreneurship – it is better to think in terms of principles. (iv) A new company´s most important strength is new thinking. (v) Progress comes from monopoly, not competition. (vi) Rivalry causes us to overemphasize old opportunities and slavishly copy what has worked in the past.
Opinion: Even if I have no experience in entrepreneurship, I will dare to say that Zero to One is an excellent read for future founders to establish high level principles and a good framework to reflect on start-up ideas. I found the book quite basic as I was already familiar with most ideas, however, the author should still be given credit because he was the original proponent in many cases. While I agree with most of the points of Mr. Thiel, I think that he understates the role of chance and doesn´t consider survivorship biases at all when he makes the case against indefinite optimism, claims that you are not a lottery ticket, or uses successful entrepreneurs as examples. The optionality chasing of most “brilliant” students / professionals may not be ideal from the standpoint of society at large, but is fully rational from an individual perspective (higher expected value for each one).
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