I’m starting this lesson with a personal story. Lesson Three: Building a successful and profitable company is achieved slowly Using Google for an example, if a competitor was to try and take over the search engine industry, they’ll have to innovate and find a better method than what Google currently has. This is why the existence of monopolies drive forward innovation. If someone wants to try and do something like Google but not as good, why should they have an even market share? You have a market share where you can set the standard for pricing, along with greater buying power.Īnd, let’s be honest. In fact, being a monopoly on a market is a sure fire way to solidify future growth. While Google’s monopoly isn’t great for competitors, it is great for the general public who use Google, along with the company itself. Google, for example, has a monopoly of the search engine industry – sorry to the three people who access this site using Bing. If a business is so good at something that nobody else can copy their results, that isn’t a bad thing for society. However, a monopoly isn’t always a bad thing… Most of the time, a business has just found a way to be more effective than their opposition. When most people think of the term ‘monopoly’, they think of a massive and evil company squeezing the weaker opposition. Lesson One: Monopolies are actually good for innovation He was influential in a few businesses you’ve probably heard of… he co-found PayPal and was the first outside investor for Facebook. Peter Thiel knows a thing or two about startups. Hell, you can even start with a laptop in your local Starbucks.

The barriers to entry to business are at an all-time low. Odds are, if you’re reading this, you’ve probably already started your own startup. Would you rather want to read this summary as a PDF? Then download the summary of Zero to One as a PDF

The lowdown: Learn the secrets to startup success form one of the world’s most famous venture capitalists in this Zero To One summary.Īlmost anybody can fund a startup these days. You should consider buying this book if….Lesson Three: Building a successful and profitable company is achieved slowly.Lesson Two: Your product or service will never sell itself.Lesson One: Monopolies are actually good for innovation.

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