Zero to One

Peter Thiel's book has many valuable ideas for entrepreneurs, however two stood out to me. The concept of Zero to One in itself, and the defense of efficient monopolies. Zero to One is a challenge to the me too culture of entrepreneurship and society. While Entrepreneurship is becoming more and more a buzzword and more people want to be entrepreneurs, schools turn their programs to entrepreneurship, colleges and universities claim that they teach entrepreneurship, most of the initiatives are dull me too projects. In order to keep up growing the world needs more dare initiatives, the ones that are truly disruptive, the Zero to One's.

Tied to this is Thiel's defense of efficient monopolies. In order to be a Zero to One company entrepreneurs have to make outstanding differential products. Once they achieve these they can gain a monopoly because none can compete with them (not as a result of government protection). Thiel claims that in history great innovations were followed by monopolistic dominance in their markets. He doesn't mention the "Robber Barons" who earn bad press from government and inefficient competitors or the Sherman Act enacted to destroy them, but it is a time in history where the efficient monopoly got a bad reputation. Capitalism is about creation of wealth not redistribution, efficient monopolies create wealth, perfect competition is a zero sum game.

Thiel presents an invitation to entrepreneurs to dare to create truly different product, avoid the red blood competition game.

Some chapters of the book are a little hard to follow, probably because the book itself is an edited written version of lecture notes. Yet the book is worth reading and discussing to put the feet on the ground of entrepreneurs.