Zero To One [Book Review]

If you don't feel like reading - check out the video here

##Introduction

The more I read into Peter Thiel's background, the more ridiculous it seems..

He’s been involved in controversies over:

Racism, Sexism, and, [Radical Right wing libertarianism.] (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-21/the-strange-politics-of-peter-thiel-trump-s-most-unlikely-supporter) He’s built a tech company that helps the NSA spy on the world. He supported Donald Trumps presidential campaign. He’s funding research on immortality

And to top it off, he helped bankrupt online media company and blog network Gawker by funding Hulk Hogan’s sex tape lawsuit - after a report of his rumoured Homosexuality rattled his chain…

Zero to One clearly reflects his unique attitude and doesn't pull any punches with a genuinely interesting point of view, that has clearly worked in the past, to the tune of almost 3 billion USD. But at times, his infatuation with the All American attitude is a little much…and, quite frankly, he’s not the kind of guy I could sit and have a pint with…without grinding my teeth anyway.

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The content is adapted from Blake Masters' lecture notes from Thiel's 2012 Stanford Course. This definitely helped keep the book concise and fast paced, at least compared to other books I’ve reviewed.

The type of content is also quite varied, with a good spread from completely abstract theories — like the Technology vs. Globalisation concept, where the book get's it's title — to practical examples such as the analysis of personalities in chapter 14, "The Founders Paradox" covering Elvis Presley, Sean Parker, Lady Gaga and Bill Gates to name a few.

###Pros

Monopolies
To most people a monopoly is a negative thing. But while perfect competition can drive down costs and benefit the consumer - competition is bad for business. In fact, in Thiel's opinion, every startup should aim to be a monopoly or, as he puts it:

Monopoly is the condition of every successful business.

I like his honesty about it. While I’m not sure about the morality of encouraging monopolies at a large scale, I can see the benefit of thinking that way when developing a startup. When you're small, you can’t afford to compete. The best way to avoid competition is to build something nobody can compete with.

The concept is summed up nicely at the end of chapter 3:

Tolstoy opens Anna Karenina by observing: ‘All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.’ Business is the opposite. All happy companies are different: each one earns a monopoly by solving a unique problem. All failed companies are the same: they failed to escape competition.

Pareto
The Pareto Law, which you might remember as the 80/20 rule in Tim Ferris’ The Four Hour Work Week, is often used synonymously with the power law of distribution, and shows up everywhere. Thiel refers to it in his section on The Power Law of Venture Capital. If Tim Ferris recommends identifying and removing the 20% of things that take 80% of your effort - Thiel recommends finding the 20% of investments that make 80% of your return. Anything else is a waste.

Soberingly, he also suggests that the Pareto Law means:

...you should not necessarily start your own company, even if you are extraordinarily talented.

But to me this seems more like a venture capitalists problem, than an entrepreneurs problem - Personally, I believe there’s far more benefit in starting up your own company that purely profit.

###Cons

Man and machine?
Content-wise, there is very little to dislike in this book. As long as you accept that the book is written specifically for startups - where anything short of exponential growth is considered a failure - it’s exceptionally on point. However, there are a couple sections dotted throughout the book where opinion and wild speculation began to creep in.

Chapter 12 is a good example of this entitled: Man and Machine. It’s a short chapter, 12 pages in total, and Thiel essentially preaches and speculates about the impact of better technology and strong AI. I like to dog ear pages with interesting or useful content so I can come back later, but this entire chapter remains untouched.

America, fuck yeah!
It would be really difficult for a personality as pungent as Theil's to go entirely unnoticed in a book like this, and indeed it breaks through every now and then. I only had a feint idea of Thiel's personality before I read the book, but having read up on his background, I’m actually surprised the book achieves such a neutral, if pragmatic, tone.

Pretty early on in the book however, we are introduced to Thiel's concept of Economic Optimism and quite frankly the whole of chapter 6 should have been printed on star spangled, red white and blue pages.

I’m not necessarily against the egotistic American spirit but when Thiel writes, in relation to European Pessimism:

the US treasury prints ‘in god we trust’ on the dollar; the ECB might as well print ‘kick the can down the road’ on the euro

I can smell the bacon double cheese burgers, with those tiny little American flags from here.

Ooh Rah!

###TL;DR (a.k.a: Conclusion)

Overall, however, I really did enjoy this book and I can see myself coming back to it.

Peter Thiel IS controversial, but he has also been undeniably successful with a career punctuated by bold business decisions. The ideas in the book reflect this mind set well.

Yes, he backed Trump, be he also (sadly) backed the winner.