#278 Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

What I learned from rereading Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel.Subscribe to listen to Founders Daily (my new daily podcast)[4:01] Jobs's return to Apple 12 years later shows how the most important task in business-the creation of new valuecannot be reduced to a formula and applied by professionals.[5:00] A really important sentence to understand one of the main points in Peter’s book: Apple's value crucially depended on the singular vision of a particular person.[5:00] A unique founder can make authoritative decisions, inspire strong personal loyalty, and plan ahead for decades.[6:00] Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue and Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future (Founders #31)[7:00] Properly understood, any new and better way of doing things is technology.[8:00] By creating new technologies we rewrite the plan of the world.[9:00] The paradox of teaching entrepreneurship is that such a formula necessarily cannot exist; because every innovation is new and unique, no authority can prescribe in concrete terms how to be innovative.The single most powerful pattern I have noticed is that successful people find value in unexpected places, and they do this by thinking about business from first principles instead of formulas.[10:00] The minute that you understand that you can poke life and actually something will pop out the other side, that you can change it, you can mold it. That's maybe the most important thing. It's to shake off this erroneous notion that life is there and you're just gonna live in it, versus embrace it, change it, improve it, make your mark upon it. —Steve Jobs[11:00] Brilliant thinking is rare, but courage is in even shorter supply than genius.[13:00] A startup is the largest group of people you can convince of a plan to build a different future. A new company's most important strength is new thinking.[14:00] What follows is not a manual or a record of knowledge but an exercise in thinking. Because that is what a startup has to do: question received ideas and rethink business from scratch.[14:00] The Founders: The Story of Paypal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley by Jimmy Soni. (Founders #233)[17:00] Their casual way of conducting affairs did not appeal to me. — Random Reminiscences of Men and Events by John D. Rockefeller (Founders #148)[18:00] My number one repeated learning in life: There Are No Adults. Everyone's making it up as they go along. Figure it out yourself, and do it. —Naval Ravikant[19:00] Bill Gurley’s answer to the question For people who were there, does this feel like dot-com bust level unwiding yet? Yes.  Link to tweet[21:00] Peter’s 4 principles for founders: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.[22:00] The most contrarian thing of all is not to oppose the crowd but to think for yourself.[22:00] By “monopoly,” we mean the kind of company that’s so good at what it does that no other firm can offer a close substitute.[24:00] Every business is successful exactly to the extent that it does something others cannot.[25:00] Durability has always been a first rate virtue in Charlie’s eyes. — Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom