The 365 Best Business Books Of All-Time: Zero To One

I spent the past week getting settled in here in San Antonio, both at home and at work.

At home, there were boxes to unpack and things to put away. It seems like we’ll never get finished.

At work, we unpacked everything we’ve done over the past 5 years here at Readitfor.me, and asked ourselves where we want to head in the next 5.

One of the books that kept coming up in our discussions was Zero To One by Peter Thiel, which is one of those rare books that helps you question everything you do in business at a foundational level.

I’m excited to share the principle with you this week.

My Key Takeaway/Principle

Build a monopoly instead of competing.

Thiel tells us that all great companies are actually monopolies, even though they’d have us believe they are not.

Most advice around starting and growing a business focusses on competition. Standing out from the crowd, differentiation, and even creating a Blue Ocean Strategy — all start with the premise that you have competition and that you need to be better than them in some important way.

But as Thiel points out in the book, focussing on competition misses the point. Because when it comes down to it, competition means no profits for anybody, no meaningful differentiation, and a struggle for survival.

Monopolies, on the other hand, enjoy years or even decades of monopoly profits. And it’s a virtuous cycle, because monopolies can then use those profits to keep innovating, make long-term plans and finance the ambitious research projects that firms locked in competition can’t dream of.

Consider Google, who most definitely enjoys a monopoly in the search engine market. Of course, they like to tell the world that they are a technology company with vast ambitions in things like self-driving cars, mobile devices and wearable computers. But 95% of it’s revenue come from search advertising, where it owns 68% of the market.

That’s the type of company you should be striving to build. And there are some important questions you can ask yourself in order to get there.

Questions to ask yourself

• What important truth do very few people agree with you on?
• Based on this contrarian truth, what valuable company is nobody building?

What else is covered in this book?

The book goes into great detail around what a monopoly company looks like in the real world, which will give you a crystal clear picture of the company you can/should build after you answer the questions above.

This year (2018) I’m reading and summarizing the top 365 business books of all-time. You can get the full list of books, and links to my reviews of each book, by clicking here.