Book Review: "Zero to One - Notes on Startups, or How to Build The Future" by Peter Thiel with Blake Masters.

TWO households, both alike in dignity, in fair Verona where we lay our scene, from ancient grudge break to new mutiny, where civil blood makes civil hands unclean. Well, you got me, that is Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet opening. War, and eventual death in families that are not different. What has this got to do with businesses and building startups? Peter Thiel unpacks this with a thinking startup course he taught at Stanford. Borrowing from his experience in building companies that create new things like PayPal and Plantir-a data analytics company and investing in Facebook, SpaceX, LinkedIn and hundreds more.

The book is about 160pages and can be read in one sitting. However, it has taken me longer than I thought to write this review, exploring through the wealth of knowledge from the Bible, ancient and modern philosophers, contemporary real-life experience across many cultures that create success, failures and dogmas that are then debunked.  It is not just a book that carries a formula for building and investing in successful startups. It is a course in thinking, the questions you need to ask and answer in your venture, an exercise in thinking; questioning received ideas and rethinking businesses from scratch. A paradigm you must adopt to create new things and not just improving the old.

Zero To One opens with the thoughts of the future as any forward thinker would and questioning what we think we know of the past, the first step of thinking clearly. The importance of singularity of focus and the dangers of crowd thinking since madness is rare in individuals. The books revolves around the fundamental question – what important truth do very few people agree with you on?

Think business competition and why it is unhealthy for your growth, creating monopolies and why they thrive, planning and chances, secrets and new ideas, ownership and control. This is where the thinking magic is brewed. This can’t be done in one sitting. That is the caveat. Understanding the Shakespearian thinking model of war in relation to business among similar companies would make you want to read Romeo and Juliet (again) before you get to the following chapter or Brandenburger and Nalebuff’s Co-opetition (not mentioned in the book). Thinking about planning and chances after reading Malcom Gladwell’s Outliers will bring a lot of questions to what you thought you knew and why you are not a lottery ticket. Finding the secrets to a formidable foundation and thinking technology and globalization as going from 0-1 and 1-n respectively would whet your appetite for a second reading of the book and further reading before you write anything about it.

It is practical to think for yourself and important to collaborate. It is also paramount to succeed. Zero To One shows how, through an easy thought provoking read. I rate it a full 5/5 and recommend it to anyone who cares about thinking new ideas, entrepreneurship and economics of creating a valuable company.