Author: Co-founder of PayPal and Palantir and an investor in hundreds of startups,

including Facebook and SpaceX

Goal of the book: - p.7

"Zero to One is about how to build companies that create new things."
"My [the author's] primary goal in teaching was to help my students see beyond the
tracks laid down by academic specialties to the broader future that is theirs to
create."

--Book--

Chapter 1:
2 types of progress:
Horizontal progress - copying things that work, going from 1 to n, globalisation
Vertical progress - doing new things, going from 0 to 1, technology

The future gets made when vertical progress is made. Startups have to question
received ideas and rethink businesses to make vertical progress.

Chapter 2:
The world has market crashes: dot-com crash, real estate crash, etc. Entrepreneurs
have learnt the following lessons from these:
1. Make incremental advances
2. Stay lean and flexible
3. Improve on the competition
4. Focus on product, not sales

However, since we should question received ideas, the opposite principles might
also be true:
1. It is better to risk boldness than triviality.
2. A bad plan is better than no plan.
3. Competitive markets destroy profits.
4. Sales matters just as much as product.

A lot of the world is still shaped by these ideas and we should always question
them.

Chapter 3:
Businesses exist on a spectrum from perfect competition on one end and monopoly on
the other, but they tend to be closer to one extreme. A business should strive to
be a monopoly for the following reasons:
1. Monopolies earn more since they set the market price; they don't have to worry
about their customers going to their competition if their prices are high
2. Monopolies don't have to fight to survive to not be outmatched by their
competition. They are able to plan into the future and think about its employees,
products, impacting the world, etc

Monopolists lie to the world that they're a monopoly as to not get competition.
They do this by framing their market very large.
Non-monopolists tend to fool themselves to think they're a monopoly while in
practise they aren't. They do this by framing their market as very small.

Chapter 4:
Deeply rooted into our society is the ideology of competition. It starts with
school when students are praised for outperforming their peers and reach higher
status and go to better schools. People who don't defeat others get taught that
they're inferior. People are being forced to spend a lot of time working on
projects, studying, rote memorisation, etc. Without them ever thinking about
whether this is really the best way to spend their time.
Example:
Doctors get praised in our society for being smart and successful. For that reason
a lot of students spend a lot of their time trying to get accepted into university
to study medicine and have to waste a lot of their time by studying things they
will forget anyway, doing extracurricular activities that don't benefit them in the
long run, getting sleep deprived, stressed, etc.

This want for competition is really bad in businesses, as competitors threaten the
monopoly that you want. Fights should always be avoided, but if you do have to,
punch hard and end it quickly.

Chapter 5:
By all of these previous chapters it's clear that you should create a monopoly, but
to stay one it's likely that you will need some of the following characteristics:
1. Proprietary Technology
2. Network Effects
3. Economies of Scale
4. Branding

A common misconception is that successful businesses earn a lot right now. But the
value of a company is measured by how much it will earn in the future. Therefore
you should focus on long term growth and think about whether it can really
withstand the test of time.

To build a monopoly you should always start small in a niche community to avoid
competition and then gradually scale up.

Chapter 6:
A common question people can ask is whether success comes from luck or hard work.
When it comes to this there are 4 general sides you can take. Indefinite optimist,
definite optimist, indefinite pessimist and definite pessimist.
-Definite: These people believe that the world isn't simply governed by chance but
that their plans will shape it
-Indefinite: The world is let by chance so these people won't make specific plans
for it
-Pessimism: These people believe that the world will always get worse
-Optimism: These people believe that the world will always get better

In our society indefiniteness rules. The way in which most people expect indefinite
optimism to work is by pseudo-Darwinian metaphors. This works by creating lean
startups and making minimum viable products, but this will only create local
maxima. What we need is to be definite and create plans, because even if there was
a part of businesses that was governed by chance there would be no point in
worrying about it since we can't do anything about it.

Chapter 7:
The world follows the power rule. Although a company might off small, a good
company grows exponentially and outperforms all other companies around it. Don't
try to do a lot of small things to diversify yourself. Your company should have the
ability to outperform the entire market by itself. And not all moments are created
equal.
Chapter 8:
To create a successful startup you have to base it around secret in this world.
There are secrets all around us, just look at companies like Airbnb, Lyft, Uber,
etc. These companies take things we never would've even taught of as something
important to a business.

There are 2 types of secrets: natural secrets and human secrets. These are things
that nature is hiding from you and things that people don't want you to know. The
best way to find these kinds of secrets is in very unconventional places where no
one is looking. When you have these secrets you have to find a nice trade-off
between telling people in the form of your company and keeping it a secret.

Chapter 9:
The founding of your startup is the most important part of its life. If your
startup is messed up at its foundation it cannot be fixed, as the mistakes you make
early on are very difficult to correct.

The first and most crucial part of starting your company is who to start it with.
Technical abilities and complementary skill sets matter, but how well the founders
know each other and how well they work together matter just as much.

It's not just the founders that must get along. Everyone in your company needs to
work well together. To anticipate sources of misalignment it's useful to
distuingish between 3 concepts:
1. Ownership: who legally owns a company’s equity?
2. Possession: who actually runs the company on a day-to-day basis?
3. Control: who formally governs the company’s affairs?

In a boardroom less is more. The smaller the board, the easier it is for the
directors to communicate, to reach consensus, and to exercise effective oversight.
A board of 3 is ideal.

As a general rule, everyone you involve with your company should be involved full-
time. People who aren't will be biased to claim value in the near term instead of
creating more in the future.

A company does better the less it pays the CEO, if he earns a lot he risks becoming
a politician instead of a founder. Cash can be very attractive to get people to
work for you, however it teaches workers to claim value from your company as it
already exists instead of creating new value in the future. Therefore startups can
offer equity instead of high salaries. To allocate this equity you must be very
careful as it will make people in your company feel as if they're being treated
unfairly. Founders would do well to keep the details secret. Anyone who owns equity
shows long term commitment rather than short term value

Chapter 10:
The people you work with should have the same obsession over your company as you.
The people that you recruit should have the right personality and mindset to work
there. When assigning responsibilities everyone should only be assigned 1 task,
this will reduce internal conflict.

Chapter 11:
Distribution of your product is an extremely important part of the process that
often gets overlooked. But this is because sales works best when people hide it.
It's not necessarily true that the best product is able to sell itself.
Two metrics set limits for effective distribution. Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)
must exceed the Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC). In general the higher the CAC the
more important the target audience has to be and the more care has to be put into
each product. The lower the CAC the more viral the marketing has to be.

In order to be successful your company will also need a good image in the media.

Chapter 12:
Computers are everywhere nowadays, and although there is a lot of fear for them
taking over people's jobs, this is really not something we should worry about but
rather use. Computers are best used when they work together with a human host to
empower him, instead of trying to replace him and vice versa.

Chapter 13:
A lot of cleantech companies flopped because they couldn't correctly answer these 7
questions:
1. The Engineering Question
Can you create breakthrough technology instead of incremental improvements?
2. The Timing Question
Is now the right time to start your particular business?
3. The Monopoly Question
Are you starting with a big share of a small market?
4. The People Question
Do you have the right team?
5. The Distribution Question
Do you have a way to not just create but deliver your product?
6. The Durability Question
Will your market position be defensible 10 and 20 years into the future?
7. The Secret Question
Have you identified a unique opportunity that others don’t see?

Chapter 14:
It can be noticed that founders of businesses often have very eccentric and extreme
personalities. This might be due to the necessity of these personalities in
inspiring their workers to work hard, but make sure that you never let this go up
to your head as it might backfire.