
Peter Thiel's Zero to One Might Be the Best Business Book I've Read - markmassie
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/09/peter-thiel-zero-to-one-review/380738/?single_page=true
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jeffreyrogers
I've mentioned this before on other threads, but it is worth repeating here.
Thiel is basically making the same claims (but with less evidence and I think
less rationality) that Tyler Cowen (an economist) has been making for several
years. Cowen's views are more nuanced (and in my opinion more reasonable) than
Thiel's. Cowen's book "Average Is Over" is an excellent distillation of his
thesis.

~~~
kartman
i used to read tyler cowens blog a long time ago and visit it sometimes.
started out impressed but soon realized he is good as an aggregator of
interesting bits.

if even the sentences happen to be the same, i prefer to listen to someone who
has real world experience building companies vs just economists whose being
wrong has no direct impact on themselves. skin in the game and all that.

~~~
Mvandenbergh
There's a balance between the value that comes from having experienced it
yourself and the value from being able to step back and generalise the
experience of other people.

First-hand accounts always run the risk of generalising the particular but
academic accounts run the risk of being too general. In both cases the problem
comes from falling in love with your own model and not paying enough attention
to inconvenient data.

------
ManuelSalazar
The Hard Thing about hard things by Ben Horowitz seemed to me to be a more
focused book, especially if you are reading it to find more about business and
startups, Thiel's book is very good, but he tends to deviate from the main
subject too much for me.

~~~
davidw
From what I read, Horowitz' book is very much about the typical VC fueled
startup.

At this point in my life, I'm not interested in that except out of curiosity,
I'd rather read books by/for/about boostrapped startups.

Where does Thiel's book fall in that range? Reading the comments, it looks
like it's way more of an idea book than anything practical, and targetted at
people who want to do something new and radical. Fair enough, but it looks
like an entertainment read rather than anything applicable.

[http://www.softwarebyrob.com/2010/08/05/why-startup-
founders...](http://www.softwarebyrob.com/2010/08/05/why-startup-founders-
should-stop-reading-business-books/)

~~~
slavoingilizov
If you want to know about bootstrapping, then Thiel is not the guy to read.
Zero to One is all about growth. And bootstrapping creates small businesses
rather than startups (i.e. slower growth).

~~~
davidw
Slower growth does not necessarily imply smaller or less successful if you
extend the time horizon beyond a few years. Data on this is probably hard to
come by, but I'd guess also that this is especially true if you consider all
the VC backed firms that simply die because they were not a raging success,
and burned through all their cash.

~~~
slavoingilizov
Velocity is relative, but slow growth contradicts the definition of a startup.
See [http://paulgraham.com/growth.html](http://paulgraham.com/growth.html)

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LiweiZ
It seems no one mentioned the purpose of this book in the first place and I
believe it's one of the important dimensions. Here is part of my review on
Amazon: When I started to read the book, I only paid attention to the facts
and thoughts the author provides. After a while, I found it is a book that
gives readers more questions to pull them from the world they are familiar
with so that they may be able to begin to discover a different world. That's
the real purpose of this book. The author did a great job on this. I guess he
put a lot of thoughts to prepare for the book. And this is what the original
materials is for in the first place, lectures for students.

------
norseboar
I've read all of the Stanford 183 notes that Blake Masters took, but not the
book that just came out. Have any of you read both? Did you think the book was
worth it if you already have the notes?

~~~
applecore
The class notes, in my opinion, are better. You certainly don't need to read
both.

~~~
graeme
Why did you find them better?

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mindcrime
To add one more point to the discussion... after reading _Zero to One_ , I
found that I had a renewed interest it thinking about "big idea stuff" /
futurology, etc. I had a realization that I've been pretty negligent about
reading up on stuff which purports to talk about "the future to come" and
ideas about the kinds of things that Thiel's "definite optimists" might want
to work on.

Now futurology is clearly not without it's own issues, and we all know that it
is damn hard to make predictions (well, accurate ones anyway) about the
future. But I think if nothing else I've been reminded that it's a good idea
to at least make some effort to keep up with what the "futurist" crowd are
talking about, and also to pull my head up from time to time and look around
in domains other than my particular current niche. Materials science? Yay!
Energy? Yay! Artificial biology? Yay!

Of course it may be the case that nothing comes from any of this, but it
strikes me that it's probably important for an entrepreneur (or would be
entrepreneur) to make some effort to stay abreast of this stuff. So I finally
finished _The Singularity is Near_ and started looking for good futurist blogs
to subscribe to. I feel like I should probably also start reading those
"general purpose" science magazines (Sci Am, Discover, Popular Science, New
Scientist, etc.) again as well.

What do you guys think? Do you make it a point to keep up with forward looking
"stuff" outside of your own domain, or read any "futurist" writing?

~~~
increment_i
The book (and the notes) definitely will get you excited about 'big picture'
thinking again. If business books can be separated into 'strategic' and
'tactical' categories, I'd say this book falls undoubtedly into the
'strategic' camp. While these kinds of philosophy-heavy books always give me a
high, the lack of tactical content is somewhat disappointing once the initial
high dies off. This very well may be the author's intention, as the actual
entrepreneurship product-market adventure is left as an exercise for the
reader. I suppose that would be my main criticism of the book.

In any event, I found it a very worthwhile read.

------
brandonmenc
I agree. He articulates things I've been unable to.

In particular, that encouraging specialization in our adolescents, at the
expense of "well roundedness," can be a good thing for some of them.

~~~
alok-g
Can you expand on the message please? :-) As I read it now, saying "some of
them" makes this nearly a tautology.

I have been on the well-rounded side (and have learned some pros and cons of
the same the hard way), so am additionally curious to hear. :-)

~~~
brandonmenc
I get the impression Thiel really means "most if not all of them," but I
didn't want to misrepresent.

When he says "well rounded," he means kids who participate in a glut of
extracurricular activities to pad college applications and create many
possible career paths for themselves.

The argument being that with many potential paths, people tend not to commit
to any particular future vision, which results in fewer people with the
concentration or desire to build those futures. Elon Musk is presented as a
counter-example.

------
charlie_vill
As a college student myself, I think this book should be a required reading
for every first year student considering starting something during their
college years.

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tim333
>His most provocative thesis, excerpted in a popular WSJ column, declares that
"competition is for losers" and entrepreneurs should embrace monopolies.

I saw him talk a couple of days ago and he said the "competition is for
losers" phrase was not what he wrote but the WSJ rewrote the title. His intent
(I forget the exact wording) was to avoid competition by doing something
sufficiently innovative that there is no close competition, and he cited
Google search and the iPhone.

The original title was a variation of Tolstoy's "Happy families are all alike;
every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way" along the lines of companies
that are alike are unhappy and happy companies do things their own way.

~~~
baddox
This sounds like a confusion between the specific economics definition of
"competition" and the everyday colloquial definition. If you find an
innovative solution to a problem that is unlike any other firm's offering,
that's not "avoiding competition" in the economics sense. In fact, that's
textbook competition in the economics sense. Colloquially, we might refer to
this as "avoiding your competitors by staying way ahead of them" or some
similar phrase.

~~~
graycat
You make a lot of sense. A lot of good sense. Yup, you do a good job!

But, but, but, and you are not nearly alone, you are not Peter who did PayPal,
now has the big bucks, dreams big dreams, and gets famous, and maybe some
revenue, by writing books that mostly people at HN can find mostly obvious and
mostly improve on!

So, I ask you: Between smarts, hard work, and luck, you'd pick which one?

~~~
graycat
Thanks a lot guys:

I don't know what they heck you are so upset about: What I wrote is not
facetious but genuinely complimentary to baddox. The baddox post was good.

How good? The thinking in that post seems to me to be better than the thinking
in the book under discussion.

And, moreover, much of the thinking of posts on this thread at HN seems to me
to be better than what is in the books, and I said that.

So, in comparison, the thinking in the book is not very good.

And I read a chapter of the book, have read the corresponding VC Web site, and
did get a call from the VC firm and talked for about an hour. Still,
generally, the thinking in this thread is better.

So, a question arises: How could the book and its author have done so well for
themselves? I offered luck as one possible answer.

And you are torqued at some of that?

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graycat
> "The biggest secret in venture capital is that the best investment in a
> successful fund equals or outperforms the entire rest of the fund combined,"
> he writes. This power law distribution of VC investments means that a few
> bets will get fabulously unequal returns and it's almost impossible to
> predict which ones those will be.

Well it's "almost impossible" as long as they believe so and don't learn how
to do it. C.f.,

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8359765](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8359765)

------
carlosgg
Thiel will be on On Point today. Excerpt of his book there.

[http://onpoint.wbur.org/2014/09/29/peter-thiel-technology-
po...](http://onpoint.wbur.org/2014/09/29/peter-thiel-technology-politics-
libertarians)

------
mattmanser
_After two tours of duty at Stanford (which did little to dissuade him of the
notion that college is a waste of time) he founded PayPal_

So, um, why did he do the 2nd one then?

Seems a little hypocritical...

~~~
jamieraquat
It's also worth noting that 0->1 makes claims about the sort of vision that
founders have that are directly at odds with all accounts (including his own)
of how Thiel's own successes actually occurred. Not slightly misaligned, but
directly 100% contradictory.

It's not a terrible book; it's mediocre. It's a mix of the obvious (perfect
competition destroys profit), the confusingly expressed (the bit on secrets
sounds "deep" until you realize he's expressing something obvious using
confusing language), and noise.

If somebody wants to read a good new business book, I'd recommend Creativity
Inc, How Google Works, and The Hard Thing about Hard Things long before I'd
recommend 0->1.

~~~
chadk
Totally concur.

------
progx
Should we not better read the books that this people read, to get rich and
famous ?

Which books did they read ?

------
sandstrom
It's available as a sane [drm-free] epub book to buy anywhere?

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azmenthe
Does anyone else have an opinion on this book, I dismissed it at first but
this has me reconsidering.

~~~
jeffreyrogers
It's largely a rehash of Tyler Cowen and Michael Porter (whether Thiel has
read them or not I don't know, but he covers very similar ground). Some
interesting ideas, but it's not going to change your life. One thing that
bothered me about it was his assumption that the important problems he's so
interested in aren't being solved due to lack of effort. The idea that certain
problems just aren't economically feasible currently was not explored.

------
CarlHoerberg
I think it's awful. I only finished it because we're discussing it in a book
circle.

~~~
deeviant
Your statement has a near zero amount of useful information in it.

~~~
CarlHoerberg
True, just trying to balance the overly positive comments, without spending a
lot of time laying out arguments.

~~~
tericho
You literally just defined the least valuable form of participation in any
discussion.

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ThomPete
I agree. In my mind only Clayton C. Christensen and Peter F. Drukert have been
able to write about business without saying the obvious and actually
delivering a philosophy rather than obvious observations.

~~~
ThomPete
Would anyone mind to tell me exactly what I said that triggered the download.
I am seriously interested.

~~~
diydsp
No idea. Sometimes ppl just downvote for spurious reasons. It seems like you
added some information to the conversation, so I upvoted your comment.

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wahsd
Along with several things that Peter Thiel has said recently that made me
think "well, that surely decreases his authority in my mind" when he recently
professed his love and addiction to the Drudge Report I could not help
thinking that he really lacks any credibility. Someone who is addicted to
drudge mental trash and right wing rage-baiting really kind of shows a deep
lack of significant mental capacities.

~~~
seizethecheese
This could be in a textbook as an example of an ad hominem attack.

------
vijaykumar13
Been hearing a lot about Zero to One. Time for my kindle to wake up and get me
Zero to one.

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onedev
It's great but all that content was available for years right? Are people just
now finding out about the Stanford 101 Blake Masters notes?

~~~
avalaunch
obligatory:

[http://xkcd.com/1053/](http://xkcd.com/1053/)

