Selling and delivering a product is at least as important as the product itself.

If you can get just one distribution channel to work, you have a great business. If you try for several but don’t nail one, you’re finished.

Cash is more about the present. Equity is more about the future. Whereas big companies can compensate with fat checks, statups can pay in equity, promising a higher returned value later rather than now.Wanting equity means believing in the company.

Cash vs equity

The dot-com bubble taught people 4 lessons:<ol><li>Make incremental advances</li><li>Stay lean and flexible</li><li>Improve on the competition</li><li>Focus on product, not sales</li></ol>And yet, Thiel argues exactly the contrary, providing the opposite principles which he believes to probably be more correct:<ol><li>It is better to risk boldness than triviality</li><li>A bad plan is better than no plan</li><li>Competitive markets destroy profits</li><li>Sales matter just as much as product</li></ol>

4 lessons to guide your business

The amount of people in a startup is about the maximum number of people you can convince of a plan to build a different future.The small size of a startup is what gives us space to think, it's what allows us to quickly entertain thoughts and not be bogged down by a slow-moving mass of people to talk to and convince.

New company  = new thinking

Every startup starts small+ Every monopoly dominates it market= Start with a small market and own itIt's better to own 90% of a small market than 10% of a large market. Dominate a niche and then scale to adjacent markets.

Dominate small

"To say that there are no secrets left today would mean that we live in a society with no hidden injustices."If we know everything, then the majority of a democratic society practices only what is deemed to be just. If we admit we don't, we can explore, we can come up with change and admit that we are not doing things in the perfect way.

Disbelief in secrets

When hiring, you need to sell your mission. Not only that, but you need to convince others that your company is the only one who can get it done.As for getting new additions to the team, if you can't explain to them why your company is the best match, they probably aren't the best match for you either.

Getting the right person for the job

You should strive to be the last mover in a particular market, being not necessarily the innovator, but the one who does it best.Thinking long-term is key here: what would the world look like in 10, 20 years from now and how would your business fit in?

Strike last, strike best

“The lesson for founders is that individual prominence and adulation can never be enjoyed except on the condition that it may be exchanged for individual notoriety and demonization at any moment—so be careful."A founder's importance lies not in the value of his or her work, but in the ability to bring out the best work from everyone in the company.

Pride and prejudice

The best company keeps an open mind towards invention. The founding a company stops when creation stops. Doing the founding right means setting the company on the path of creation and experimenting rather than that of stewardship of success.

The founding of a company stops when creation stops

You can only reap network effects if the very first users of your product find it valuable, when the network can only be small.To put it differently, it's hard to build a product whose main selling point revolves around having a huge network when in the beginning you don't have a huge network. Initially, it must provide value not through the size of its network.

The key to successful growth

Non-monopolists define their market as the intersection of smaller markets.Monopolists disguise their monopoly by defining it as the union of larger markets.

Non-monopolists versus monopolists

The few who knew what might be learned,Foolish enough to put their whole heart on show,And reveal their feelings to the crowd below,Mankind has always crucified and burned.

<ol><li>The Engineering Question: Can you create breakthrough technology instead of incremental improvements?</li><li>The Timing Question: Is now the right time to start your particular business?</li><li>The Monopoly Question: Are you starting with a big share of a small market?</li><li>The People Question: Do you have the right team?</li><li>The Distribution Question: Do you have a way to not just create but deliver your product?</li><li>The Durability Question: Will your market position be defensible 10 and 20 years into the future?</li><li>The Secret Question: Have you identified a unique opportunity that others don’t see?</li></ol>

The 7 questions a business must answer

The value of a business is the sum of all the money it will make in the future.

Why is Google worth more than every U.S. airline combined? Economists like to put the "blame" on two things:<ul><li>Perfect competition</li><li>Monopoly</li></ul>The first manifests itself when producer supply meets consumer demand. In this scenario, no company makes an economic profit in the long run.The second, however, stands opposite to the first, with the winner being so good compared to the rest that it distances itself and manages to control quantity and prices. So, if you want to thrive, don't build an undifferentiated commodity business. Don't fail to escape competition.

Monopoly is the condition of every successful business.

“Conventional beliefs only ever come to appear arbitrary and wrong in retrospect; whenever one collapses, we call the old belief a bubble.” To put it simply, what may appear perfectly normal and rational and believed by many or most today may be downright ignorant or stupid by the people of tomorrow.

Beliefs only appear wrong when guided by hindsight

<ul><li>Ownership: who legally owns the equity</li><li>Possession: who runs it daily</li><li>Control: who govers its affairs</li></ul>This trio can lead to misalignment and big companies are prone to misalignment.

Distinguish between a company's...

Kaczynski claimed that an individual "needs to have goals whose attainment requires effort, and needs to succeed in at least attaining some of his goals".Goals can be grouped into three:<ol><li>Those satisfiable with minimal effort</li><li>Those satisfiable with considerable effort</li><li>Those that cannot be satisfied, no matter the effort</li></ol>

The key to happiness

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER If you want to build a better future, you must believe in secrets. The great secret of our time is that there are still uncharted frontiers to explore and new inventions to create. In Zero to One, legendary entrepreneur and investor Peter Thiel shows how we can find singular ways to create those new things. Thiel begins with the contrarian premise that we live in an age of technological stagnation, even if we’re too distracted by shiny mobile devices to notice. Information technology has improved rapidly, but there is no reason why progress should be limited to computers or Silicon Valley. Progress can be achieved in any industry or area of business. It comes from the most important skill that every leader must master: learning to think for yourself. Doing what someone else already knows how to do takes the world from 1 to n, adding more of something familiar. But when you do something new, you go from 0 to 1. The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page or Sergey Brin won’t make a search engine. Tomorrow’s champions will not win by competing ruthlessly in today’s marketplace. They will escape competition altogether, because their businesses will be unique. Zero to One presents at once an optimistic view of the future of progress in America and a new way of thinking about innovation: it starts by learning to ask the questions that lead you to find value in unexpected places.

books

Books

WHAT VALUABLE COMPANY IS NOBODY BUILDING? The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page or Sergey Brin won’t make a search engine. If you are copying these guys, you aren’t learning from them. It’s easier to copy a model than to make something new: doing what we already know how to do takes the world from 1 to n, adding more of something familiar. Every new creation goes from 0 to 1. This book is about how to get there. ‘Peter Thiel has built multiple breakthrough companies, and Zero to One shows how.’ ELON MUSK, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla ‘This book delivers completely new and refreshing ideas on how to create value in the world.’ MARK ZUCKERBERG, CEO of Facebook ‘When a risk taker writes a book, read it. In the case of Peter Thiel, read it twice. Or, to be safe, three times. This is a classic.’ NASSIM NICHOLAS TALEB, author of The Black Swan

Peter Thiel is an accomplished writer whose work has resonated with readers around the world. Peter Thiel has published several books that explore a range of topics, from fiction to nonfiction, and has received critical acclaim for the ability to weave compelling narratives. Peter Thiel's writing style is known for its depth and authenticity, and has earned quite a loyal following of readers.

Peter Thiel

Blake Masters is an accomplished writer whose work has resonated with readers around the world. Blake Masters has published several books that explore a range of topics, from fiction to nonfiction, and has received critical acclaim for the ability to weave compelling narratives. Blake Masters's writing style is known for its depth and authenticity, and has earned quite a loyal following of readers.

PETER THIEL

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Nihilism

The main selling point