How To Start A Startup/business - Zero To One Animated Book Summary

Peter Theil is a billionaire Entrepreneur, Venture capitalist and the founder of Paypal, once he took a lecture at Stanford University, Related to Startups and businesses.

Where he told students some of the principles, from which even they can start their own billionaire companies by making this world a better and improved place to live.

A student named Blake Masters made a detailed note of that principles.

People found those notes so useful, that they started spreading outside the college as well.

Then Peter started working with Blake and improved those notes and made a book of it, so that not only stanford university students or his country can use that knowledge, but also the entire world. Today I will share some of the principles from that book, so let's begin.

Principle Number 1: Go From Zero to One-

A time when horses were used for travelling purposes. At that time if you provided people with Faster horses, or by the doing the business on making a better or an improved Horse cart.

Then you would have achieved progress, but that progress will be said going from 1 to N. But instead of making horse carts if you had been given a new way to people for travelling by making a car.

Just the way Henry Ford did, then that progress will be called going from zero to one.

If you want to become successful, then do something new Go from zero to one which is also known as vertical progress.

Do something which has never happened before.

Because, if anything is already made and you are making that same old (copying) by some modification on it. Then you are going from 1 to N which is known as Horizontal Progress. But by doing this there will be less chance of getting success, And if by mistake you get success it will not be huge and wont last for long.

In the Business world, every Big Event happens only once. World's Second Bill Gate will not be the operating system.

Next Mark Zuckerberg will not create the social networking site, Or the next Lerry page will not create the Search Engine. If you are copying their product then you are not learning from them because they got huge success when they went from Zero To one. But if you try to copy them then you will go from 1 to N, which is not the best option.

Principle Number 2: Become a Monopoly Avoid Competition-

We live in a society where competition is given more importance. Our Education System teaches students to compete at a very young age.

First, they compete for marks/grades, then for the job and when don't get anyone they start competing with their neighbours. Having better and big Cars compared to their neighbours, having big tv etc.

All these small and stupid things create competition, but the reality is competition most of the time gives you a loss for everything.

Related to Education and other fields we will talk about next time for Business competition is like Poison. Peter says,Competition and capitalism are opposite.

One is related to generating profit, and the other one is related to finishing the profit.

The more you have competition in the market for your business, the less you will generate profit. Even if your business is very huge example.

US Airline Companies earn billions, Still in 2012, That company earned on 37%profit on one passenger. Now Let's compare this with google. In that same year, google earned 50 Billion whereas Airline earned 160 billion, But Google from that 50 billion earned 21%of profit which is 100 times huge profit than airlines.

This happened because Airline companies were competing with each other,

Because of that, they were reducing the price of the ticket.

On the other side google was dominating most of the market individually, without competing with anyone for profit.

Today, if we put all airline companies' profit together still google earns Three times more profit then them. Google is able to do this, because Google's Search Engine is a Monopoly, And It has No competition in the market.

If I asked you to search for something on the internet, without a second thought, you will go to Google. Because you know that Google is the best search engine.

Similarly, even if you want huge success, you need to create a monopoly of your product or service so that no one has any other option compared to yours.

Principle Number 3: Start with a Niche Market and then Dominate-

Amazon is a website where you can get almost every product, but Amazon has not stated this way.

In the Beginning, Amazon concentrated on the small market, which was only for book readers. Earlier books were found only in the book stores, Because of this, it was very difficult to search the book And it also resulted in the loss for the book publishers.

Then Amazon has come up with an Online Amazon store, by taking Zero to 1 progress.

It gave lot of benefits to many people, After getting success on the books business.

Amazon has came up with other books related products, such as CD, DVD ETC

And slowly Dominated the other markets. There is another example of Paypal.

Peter Theil in the beginning didn't think of it, that every individual should start doing an online payments but he only focused on the niche market.

This market was for eBay Users, Where they have to use cheques for every purchase and the buying purpose.

Peter gave them a solution as PayPal where they can easily transfer money, and easily receives money not like a cheque where they have to wait for a long time.

After Dominating the small market of eBay, Paypal slowly made the general public understand, the ways of doing online payments and their importance, after which Paypal Became a Billion Dollar Company, similarly if you want to make your business a huge success, then start concentrating on the Niche market, Solve the big problem of a small group, where nobody is focusing, where there is less competition or No competition at all.

At start give your best service and later slowly expand your business and dominate the market. Always remember, instead of becoming the small fish inside the big pond, where other big fish can eat you, try to become the big fish of the small pond, and then go to the big pond, when you follow these things and start your business, there will be higher chances of you getting success.

These principles I have shared with you all are from the book Zero to One by Peter Thiel.

If you have some interest in business or startups, then definitely you should read this book, it contains many other valuable principles, which can help you to understand, how to make the next billionaire company.

And Finally, Thanks for reading. ....