Peter Thiel is the co-founder of Paypal (online payment system used for online money transfers) and a successful venture capitalist.
The headline on the cover of the book reads 'Notes on startups or how to build the future'-It is really some notes one of his students (Blake Masters) took in his class in Stanford and published into a book.
Where does the title come from? According to Peter, progress can happen either horizontally or vertically.The horizontal progress ('1 to n' in a graph) happens because of Globalization and vertical progress ('0 to 1' in a graph) happens because of Technology. In other words, growing horizontally means copying the ideas that work, growing vertically means doing something completely new, doing something better with a better technology, creating or capturing the untapped supply and demand. Following this idea, Peter suggests that as a company you will have to want to be a monopoly instead of wasting time in fighting over competitions.
It also has a few guiding points for investors and venture capitalists what to look for while assessing the potential of a startup.
A few insights for startups:
A startup messed up at it's foundation cannot be fixed.
In the initial phase, hire everyone full-time (no part-timers or consultants) and everybody should work from the same place because misalignment can creep in when colleagues are not in the same place together every day. "There are going to times when we can't wait for somebody.You are either on the bus or off the bus"- Ken Kesey
A great business is defined by it's ability to generate cash flows in the future, simply stated the value of the business today is the sum of all money it will make in the future.
It is much easier to reach a few thousand people who really needed our product than to try to compete for the attention of millions of scattered individuals.
Grand visions are dangerous, small and incremental steps are the only safe path forward.
Peter's ideas are very clear and precise, you may agree with some and you may not agree with some but they are for sure thought-provoking!
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