Zero to One

I liked that this book highlighted how supposedly tried-and-true approaches to innovation fail to deliver results.

The book’s insights about how to drive radical innovation informed the advice I now give executives about how to approach organizational transformation, starting with an ambitious vision, communicating the “why,” and enlisting great people to go on the journey with them.

It helped me to understand that building organizations to develop disruptive technologies requires leaders to envision things that may sound crazy until they are realized. 

I like practitioners who use what they’re talking about.

Peter Thiel is a successful entrepreneur and investor who has field tested the concepts in this book. If you’re looking to increase your creativity and ability to think outside the box this book is for you.

There’s no fat in the writing so your time won’t be wasted.

I’ve always believed that the most successful entrepreneurs don’t do what everyone else has done. They carve new paths.

Peter Thiel was the co-founder of Paypal, Palantir, and several other very successful ventures.

In each case, he created something completely new; he went from zero to one. Later he became a venture capitalist investing in unique ventures.

Blake Masters was his student at Stanford and the notes he took in class became an Internet sensation. According to Thiel, there is no formula for success because a great innovation is by definition new and unique.

The best new companies are the… show more.

Both Peter Thiel and Blake Masters have real-life business and entrepreneurship experience, and thus their advice are practical ones.

The book is mainly addressing the mind-set that entrepreneurs should adopt and differentiates an evolutionary approach of a company vs. a revolutionary one, or as they call it, the vertical vs. the horizontal progress. It really makes you think of entrepreneurship and disruption in a more structured manner.

It is easy to duplicate something that’s already out there in the market, or create something similar to it. It is when we try to do something absolutely new — create something original — that several stiff challenges arise. Noted entrepreneur Peter Thiel’s book throws some light on how we can tackle these and create an enterprise of consequence. He lays out the digital business landscape well and gives us strategies and ideas to set up something new and grow it in the new-age economy. I like how he draws unconventional references (e.g. The Mechanics of Mafia, Follow the Money,… show more.