Read, execute, profit: ‘Zero to One’
Entrepreneurs need a clear vision for their company in order to go from zero to one.
Peter Thiel and a team of about 50 spent years turning PayPal into the market-leading payment processor used by eBay customers. Finally, Thiel’s team leveraged its near-monopoly to sell PayPal. What was that push factor — that drive that kept everyone involved in hot pursuit of their goal?
Answer: vision. When you look at founders of successful companies, you’ll find 90% of them are weird in some way.
Steve Jobs may be the most famous example, but actually plenty of entrepreneurs have a few quirks. Being a little weird is what lets leaders develop a grand, if slightly delusional, vision for the future — exactly what companies need to go from zero to one.
Thiel is among those big, quirky thinkers who aren’t afraid of big visions. In 1999, he said, “PayPal will give citizens worldwide more direct control over their currencies than they ever had before.”
A bit too ambitious? In fact, Thiel was right on the nose. His vision of the future painted a different reality from the one he lived in, and the passion and drive it instilled in himself and his team is exactly what led them to creating the very future they imagined.
According to Thiel, Lean and Agile approaches to entrepreneurship are a methodology, not a goal. They can take you to a local maximum, not the global maximum. "The most successful businesses have an idea for the future that’s very different from the present — and that’s not fully valued," he said.
Having a big vision and plan is essential. For example, Facebook turned down the $1 billion acquisition offer from Yahoo because Mark Zuckerberg could really see where Facebook could go, and Yahoo did not.
Jobs developed a long-term vision for Apple with a pipeline of products for years to come — that’s how you put your vision to use.
So if you haven’t already, put your own“Grand Vision” in writing or be more specific on the one you already have — and put it in a place where you can see it every day.
As Norman Vincent Peale said, “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss it, you’ll be among the stars.”
