Hello and welcome back!
To be very truthful my title should say February read, as I only actually read one book last month and that’s “Zero to One: Notes on startups, or how to build the future”. My curiosity has been triggered and alerted towards the world of business and entrepreneurship and I’ve been listening to podcasts, reading articles and now buying books. I have always been someone who reads a lot since I was a child. I really believe that books are invaluable to our growth as individuals.
What I read in February
So onto this book, there were quite a few gems which I eagerly underlined and nodded to as I read them. Below I’ve listed my top 6, I would list way more but we’d be here forever:
- Spreading olds ways to create wealth around the world will result in devastation, not riches.
- A business with a good definite plan will always be underrated in a world where people see the future as random.
- You should focus relentlessly on something you’re good at doing, but before that, you must think hard about whether it will be valuable in the future.
- If you think something hard is impossible, you’ll never even start trying to achieve it. Belief in secrets is an effective truth.
- Only by believing in and looking for secrets could you see beyond the convention to an opportunity hidden in plain sight.
- So when thinking about what kind of company to build, there are two distinct questions to ask: What secret is nature not telling you? What secrets are people not telling you?
What’s interesting about this book is that it offers a historical perspective on startups. Peter Thiel; the author talks and mentions companies that we are very familiar with. In fact, he is one of the co-founders of PayPal, so you know he knows his stuff. The book reads in a conversational tone and a theme and phrase repeated throughout the book is the idea of going from 0 to 1 rather than 0 to n. 0 to n represents familiarity, whereas 0 to 1 is the creation of something completely new. As a startup, you do not want to create something that already exists but you want to create a new reality and I think this way of thinking really enables readers to critique whatever it is that they’re thinking of starting. He talks failures, lessons and successes. Although some parts were slightly boring as it went too deep into the history, I still read them as they were necessary to understand the bigger picture. Overall I have enjoyed this book and I would recommend to anyone trying to go into business, and people who are just curious to expand their knowledge.
Until next time,
Koko
xo
