title: [Book Sharing] Zero to One - Uncovering the Unknown Secrets of How the World Works, Discovering Value in Unexpected Places
published: false
date: 2021-07-22 00:00:00 UTC
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canonical_url: http://www.evanlin.com/reading-zero-to-one/
---
[](http://moo.im/a/aqDLRW "從0到1")
Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future
Author: Peter Thiel, Blake Masters
Original Author: Peter Thiel, Blake Masters
Translator: Ji Jingjing
Publisher: Global Views Publishing
Publication Date: 2014/10/07
Language: Traditional Chinese ISBN: 9789862419533
#### Book Recommendation Website:
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E-book: [Readmoo](http://moo.im/a/aqDLRW)
-
Books.com.tw: [Purchase URL](https://www.books.com.tw/exep/assp.php/kkdailin/products/0010651050?utm_source=kkdailin&utm_medium=ap-books&utm_content=recommend&utm_campaign=ap-202107)
## Preface:
This is the ninth book I've read this year. The author, Peter Thiel, is a co-founder of PayPal and is currently a partner at the Founder Fund. He has a lot of ideas about entrepreneurship. This book is based on a course he taught at Stanford University. The content of the entire book is really like a course. The preface starts by talking about many past events, the appearance of businesses, and then discusses some ways to achieve business success and how to achieve them. Finally, looking to the future, he hopes that every student can become a unique entrepreneur.
## Content Summary and Thoughts:
A course at Stanford University that changed the future
Peter Thiel, a legendary Silicon Valley entrepreneur and founder of PayPal, shares his firsthand experiences
It's easier to copy others' models than to innovate.
Doing what everyone knows how to do, providing more familiar things, is from 1 to n.
However, if you only copy the paths of your predecessors, you won't be able to learn their essence.
Innovation is from 0 to 1. Innovation is unique, and the timing and results of innovation are also fresh and unique.
This book is about the secret of innovation.
This is not just a business book; it will take you through history, from philosophical, economic, and business perspectives, to interpret the development of the world, and further analyze Peter Thiel's entrepreneurial mindset and thinking perspective. It is hoped to bring readers beyond academic limitations, to understand more about the logic and experience of the real world's operation, to help you think about the secret of going from 0 to 1, and to discover opportunities from the secret.
Peter Thiel is the co-founder of PayPal and Palantir, the first external investor in Facebook, and the first to invest in startups such as Yelp, LinkedIn, SpaceX, and Spotify. He studied philosophy and law, but has achieved great success in the technology and venture capital world; he established the Thiel Fellowship to encourage young people to drop out of school to start businesses and stimulate their own potential.
### Chapter Outline
#### 01 The Challenges of the Future / 02 Lessons from 1999 / 03 Building a Creative Monopoly
At the beginning, the author first proposed "horizontal progress" and "vertical progress." What is the difference between these two?
- **Horizontal progress**: From producing one typewriter to one hundred typewriters. It is the progress of manufacturing processes and techniques.
- **Vertical progress**: From producing one typewriter to a word processor, or even evolving into a computer.
Compared to vertical progress, horizontal progress is easier to occur. It only requires companies with global scale, which can increase manufacturing volume by expanding factories or reducing costs. This further evolves into better techniques. Vertical progress is relatively less common, and it is often a kind of innovative thinking, which is the opportunity for entrepreneurs.
The reason for the Silicon Valley gold rush in 1999 came from the MOSAIC browser, and NESCAPE was also a well-known company that created the Silicon Valley boom. The popularity of the Internet made many ".com" companies famous overnight, but it also hid many crises. The Internet bubble of 2000 was the result. The author also suggests that we should learn the following things from the Silicon Valley bubble:
- **Step by step**: Don't be too optimistic and overestimate future profits.
- **Keep it lean and flexible**: The scope and expansion of the business need to be kept at the most concise state to maintain the flexibility of the entire business scope.
- **Seek progress in the face of competition**: Keep making continuous progress, instead of taking commercial means to win in the face of competition (price reduction, or various sales strategies).
- **Focus on products rather than sales**: This part is similar to another book I read, ["What is the Hardest Thing to Manage - Silicon Valley Venture Capital King Tells You the Truth of Management Wisdom"](https://dev.to/evanlin/-ai3-temp-slug-1796301). True entrepreneurs will focus on the product itself, and will believe that under the Internet channel, what needs to be worried about is not sales itself, but the product itself.
#### 04 The Myth of Competition / 05 The Advantage of Being Late / 06 Success is Not a Lottery
Competition in business can create a perfectly competitive market in the economy, which is better for consumers. It means that there are more choices, and there are products with different prices to choose from. But it's not good for entrepreneurs. Competition often leads to many vicious cycles.
The author made an analogy. When PayPal was going to create an online credit card mechanism, the first person to propose using a mobile external card reader was Square's square card reader, but it immediately faced competition from five or six other companies. There were companies with semi-circular, circular, and triangular card readers. If you care about the actions of your competitors, it often wastes the entrepreneur's focus. This is why `many entrepreneurs with Asperger's syndrome` are likely to succeed, because they don't care about the actions of their competitors, so they can focus on developing their own products.
"The advantage of being late" refers to the fact that many entrepreneurial services do not have relevant advantages at the beginning, or even have no way to make a profit at all. They need to reach a certain economic scale before they can start talking about profits. The book uses PayPal and LinkedIn as examples, and it can even be said that the company's profits in just two years may account for more than 50% of the company's profits since its inception. In other words, the company only started making money in recent years (and made a lot of money). What kind of industries have related characteristics:
- Patented technology
- Network externality
- Economies of scale
- Brand
So how do you build related businesses?
- Start with a small business monopoly: Like Amazon, start with selling books, which are not very different and can be done in the online retail industry.
- Expand the scale
- Don't cause disruption: This refers to not causing challenges to the existing market. It is easy to be suppressed by many external forces (similar to Uber, AirBnB).
- Come from behind: Be patient and wait for the day of profit (similar to Amazon).
#### 07 Follow the Money / 08 Great Companies Have Secrets / 09 Fundamentals Determine Destiny
At the beginning, it talks about the profit process of venture capital companies. A good investment case usually needs time to accumulate before it can have high enough returns, which is also why many venture capital companies will go bankrupt at the beginning. Many venture capital companies normally belong to "J-shaped profit", that is, they will go down at the beginning, and it will take many years before those investments will be cashed out one after another. (Conversely, it is also possible to confirm failure).
#### 10 The Gang Culture of the Organization / 11 Customers Don't Come Automatically
This part talks about some corporate culture. What is corporate culture? It's not that everyone can stay in the company and not go home, and they can bring their dogs to work. You often have to think about why employees want to come to your company and not other companies? Similar content and ideas can be used to think about cultivating a corporate culture. Gang culture is similar to the Vatican culture, both of which are influenced by a strong founder. This is also a kind of corporate culture, and the founders of the company need to think carefully about the relevant details when recruiting.
#### 12 The New Relationship Between Humans and Computers / 13 Clean Technology and Tesla / 14 The Indispensable Qualities of Entrepreneurs
These three chapters talk about future development, the future that clean technology may bring. Finally, they also share many different qualities of entrepreneurs.
## Thoughts:
To be honest, this book is not an easy book to finish reading. It may be because of the content arrangement, which deliberately did not mention too many of the author's own more detailed experience parts, which made me not like it as much when reading. It really feels like a classroom book, and many of the descriptions of entrepreneurs are quite insightful.
## Reference Websites:
- ["Book Review: What is the Hardest Thing to Manage - Silicon Valley Venture Capital King Tells You the Truth of Management Wisdom"](https://dev.to/evanlin/-ai3-temp-slug-1796301)
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