Peter Thiel

Zero to One is a book about startups, or so it claims to be.

It's mostly about the author's ego, over and artificially inflated.

The book is cited as a must-read for whomever wants to launch a startup, but going over the book, the information is scarce and lacks any meaningful insights.
What follows is Peter Thiel's own philosophy, and this is also sketchy because it lacks any argumentative-objective base, such as calling Europeans indefinite pessimists and making them lazy (vacation maniacs).

So, what are you left with? With the ramblings of a young-old man. Starting with: "back in the day, in America, the land of honey and glory, people were optimistic about a future and had a plan, that is why they brought success to this country" to "I finished law school and didn't had a plan of joining a tech startup", thus favouring Malcom Gladwell's circumstance evidence and chance being a major factor of success, which a couple of lines earlier he berated.

For those who don't know Peter Thiel, Mr Thiel made his money after selling PayPall to eBay, afterwards he invested his money, so the back cover reads from Elon Musk: "Peter Thiel has built multiple breakthrough companies, and Zero to One shows how". But the author "co-founded" PayPall and currently has a stake of 6.77% of Palantir and the book doens't tell you how to build a great start-up, unless...you "read between the lines ;) ;)"

Without further ado, here is a breakdown of the chapters (over-simplified):

Chapter 1: Think outside the box, challenge status-quo
Chapter 2: Think for yourself
Chapter 3: Monopoly is the condition of every successful business
Chapter 4: Competition is not good
Chapter 5: Be the last mover and some steps on how to achieve a monopoly
Chapter 6: You control your fate, Malcom Gladwell is a conservative Boomer, Europeans are lazy and thats why they don't have a Silicon Valley (not because of two world wars and local circumstance of Stanford, not because you're on a remote continent)
Chapter 7: Growth is not linear (better read Taleb's Black Swan)
Chapter 8: Businesses have secrets and you should too if you want to be successful
Chapter 9: The way you start a company matters
Chapter 10: Conspirators not employees
Chapter 11: Sales matter ( the most useful chapter so far )
Chapter 12: AI won't take over
Chapter 13: Don't go with the flow
Chapter 14: Filler chapter about founder personality
Bonus chapter: Filler chapter

If you favour critical-thinking, and have actually worked your life off to start something and to learn, this book is not for you, you will be left frustrated with more questions than answers.

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