Book: Zero to one

Author

Peter Thiel

Summary

Practical advice for founders how to build a successful startup and create something new.

Takeaways

Competition is a concept that has a high value in our educational system and economic thinking. The emphasis on competition leads to a uniform approach to development and only incremental improvements. Innovation and success come from avoiding competition and focusing on individual strengths and believes that set yourself apart from others.

If we believe the future to be something definite, we can create bold plans and see them through completion. An indefinite attitude leads to a lack of specific plans, missing innovation, and prevents us from shaping the future.

Quotes

“Competition means no profits for anybody, no meaningful differentiation, and a struggle for survival. So why do people believe that competition is healthy? The answer is that competition is not just an economic concept or a simple inconvenience that individuals and companies must deal with in the marketplace. More than anything else, competition is an ideology –the ideology– that pervades our society and distorts our thinking."

“If you treat the future as something definite, it makes sense to understand it in advance and to work to shape it. But if you expect an indefinite future ruled by randomness, you’ll give up on trying to master it. Indefinite attitudes to the future explain what’s most dysfunctional in our world today. Process trumps substance: when people lack concrete plans to carry out, they use formal rules to assemble a portfolio of various options."

“Instead of pursuing many-sided mediocrity and calling it ‘well-roundedness’, a definite person determines the one best thing to do and then does it. Instead of working tirelessly to make herself indistinguishable, she strives to be great at something substansive–to be a monopoly of one."