"Zero to One" Book review by Peter Thiel

Part 1 - Introduction

I recently started reading this book called "Zero to One". I was initially interested in reading the book after I saw it was on one of Elon Musk's extensive book recommendation lists. I thought if this book was a good enough read for Elon, then it must be a good enough read for me. I also thought "Zero to One" was a good book to start from Elon's list rather than a longer book like The Lord of the Rings books that he also recommends reading. This book is written by Peter Thiel. As I read through this book, my father came across Peter Thiel's name while watching a Russell Brand YouTube video. At that time my Dad and I had a conversation about Peter Thiel I was around 40% through his book. I immediately began describing the amazing things I found in his book without knowing the controversial businesses he is involved in. My Dad described what he had seen in this Russell Brand video.

"This book is on Elon Musk's recommended reading list. If the book is good enough for Elon, then it is good enough for me."

I understand my readers may not have heard of Peter Thiel's name before but he is apparently working on a new controversial start-up at the moment. This company is linked to trying to extend human life through blood transfusions on young people into older people allegedly. Apparently, this has been linked to extending life spans in rats through these methods. According to a few sources, they have started human trials on students in Mexico to then pump blood into elderly people in the USA. This is quite a scary vampire-like idea and I do not condone the harvesting of blood from younger people into older rich people. I didn't know this before reading the book. However, I think it was a good exercise of control for me. Although I frankly find some of the new research Peter Thiel allegedly is doing on students quite freaky and disturbing. I still believed I could gain value from this book, so I continued to read the book.

I believe you can learn something from anybody. Peter Thiel has created a few successful start-ups in the past, including co-founding PayPal and Palantir Technologies.

Although I find his new research quite repulsive to think about and drawing quite large ethical lines in the process, I find myself thinking about the immense nuggets of knowledge I gained from his book. I feel like I should still share the information I gained from the book because in terms of the purpose of the book, to help young entrepreneurs start up their first company, or outsiders wanting to know how start-ups work this book is phenomenal in terms of the way it wrote the concepts that are shared in them are second to none and the way it intrigued me throughout was a certain winner. Elon didn't let me down.

"It is impossible to agree with a person, 100% of the time."

For me writing about this book and the author is still conflicting however I'm willing to put my personal opinions aside in order to grow my knowledge for myself and my readers. In fairness, I don't think I can name a person I agree with 100% all of the time. Take for example my parents, I love them but I do not agree with the 100% of the time. I think I would only admit I agree with my parents 80% of the time or less. I think that is the same situation for most people. If I only agree with my parents 80% of the time, I should expect someone like Peter Thiel to have a much lower percentage than that. I have been lucky in my own life where I have had good friends living with me who have completely opposing views politically in the past. I think that was a healthy thing and to accept that people can differ from you quite radically but it doesn't mean we can't still be good friends. We can still enjoy each other's company and have a cup of tea together.

Part 2 - The things I have learned from this book

I'll give a quick review of the book without ruining it for others who fancy reading it themselves.

The first thing that stands out for me about this book is it is very well written and this made it very enjoyable for me to read. The book includes many thought-provoking and interesting concepts. The author has plenty of graphs for every interesting idea in the book. These graphs and visual aids made the concepts more interesting to read. I enjoyed peering into how the 'Silicon Valley geniuses' probably see the world. They probably see the world through mathematic models and standard distribution graphs as portrayed in the book

"Thiel challenged my previous beliefs about what makes a successful start-up business."

I found the author and the concepts he wrote about rivalled many of my preconceived ideas about what makes a business successful. For example, Thiel tells the reader you should not "create" a business that is based on a current successful business. This advice was taught to me in school in A-level and GCSE business classes. Most people would agree this is sound business advice I would think.

Instead, Thiel says entrepreneurs aim to make a new monopoly business in a brand-new market. In this book, Thiel challenges many of my previously accepted business and entrepreneurial knowledge. This is the level of complexity and insider knowledge that is soaked through each page, which I find commendable to Thiel and his team. The book also informs the reader about the cold, realistic questions you should ask yourself before creating a start-up company. For example, are your products and services 10x better than the next alternative or not? Will your company be making money in 10-20 years?

"Thiel does well to balance the optimistic side of entrepreneurship, as well as informing the reader of the harsh reality of it too."

I think there is plenty of motivational, warm advice on YouTube about how to start a business and "be" successful. Budding entrepreneurs may have a bias against hearing negativity and therefore these content outlets gain more popularity. New entrepreneurs may not want to hear, how your business may fail and may get outcompeted by someone else. Which is the most likely outcome according to Thiel. He suggests entrepreneurs make plans to combat these outcomes or 'trash' the idea altogether because the business world is highly competitive.

The book also takes the reader to areas that I did not expect. Thiel at the beginning of the book talks about large mindset changes in generations over the last 70 years and how this has affected the world of business. This broad lens he puts on to readers at the beginning of the book, then in later chapters going into the 'nitty gritty' details of start-up companies is genius in itself. Thiel uses several real examples and situations he faced when co-founding PayPal with Elon Musk.