Zero to One — Book Review

Book #2 that I read in 2016. Running behind on the 24 books that I want to read this year. Review also on GoodReads

I read Peter Thiel’s Zero to One right after reading Ben Horowitz’s The Hard things about Hard Things.If I go back to classifying books like the way I used to find it at my college’s library, both would be in the Entrepreneurship section. That is where the difference ends.Horowitz is more about the how part of startups — things you need to know when you are in the middle of a startup up in flames. Thiel focuses more on what you should startup on.Thiel is famous for his ‘wished for flying cars, got 140 chars’ comment. I was never able to understand it (this coming from a guy whose one of the claims to fame is being an early investor at Facebook). This book helps in that aspect. Why we need to believe in secrets? Why we need to aspire for something great?

Three quarters through it, you would feel pumped — much in the same way you would feel after seeing The Social Network — a movie where Thiel is a character, and which Thiel calls a ‘caricature of capitalism by Hollywood’

Towards the end, Peter tries to round it out by extolling the need of distribution and sales, and being focused on the individual difference that a new product will make, no matter, how hot or not the individual space is. (He explains it well using example of Cleantech)

As Thiel finishes off talking about how founders and celebrities are weird, and reinforce their weirdness (Branson, Gaga, Jobs), I couldn’t help but think how well that question applies to Thiel and this book too — did he write it to reinforce his status as a leading advocate for radical change, or is it a by product of his radicalism itself to have written this?For all those enraptured by new ideas and what’s next, this is a good read.

This is also the first book that I read on the new Kindle that was gifted by my parents earlier this year.