Zero to One_ Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future ( PDFDrive )

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5. The Distribution QuestionDo you have a way to not just create but deliver your product?6. The Durability QuestionWill your market position be defensible 10 and 20 years into the future?7. The Secret QuestionHave you identified a unique opportunity that others don’t see?We’ve discussed these elements before. Whatever your industry, any greatbusiness plan must address every one of them. If you don’t have good answers tothese questions, you’ll run into lots of “bad luck” and your business will fail. Ifyou nail all seven, you’ll master fortune and succeed. Even getting five or sixcorrect might work. But the striking thing about the cleantech bubble was thatpeople were starting companies with zero good answers—and that meant hopingfor a miracle.It’s hard to know exactly why any particular cleantech company failed, sincealmost all of them made several serious mistakes. But since any one of thosemistakes is enough to doom your company, it’s worth reviewing cleantech’slosing scorecard in more detail.
THE ENGINEERING QUESTIONA great technology company should have proprietary technology an order ofmagnitude better than its nearest substitute. But cleantech companies rarelyproduced 2x, let alone 10x, improvements. Sometimes their offerings wereactually worse than the products they sought to replace. Solyndra developednovel, cylindrical solar cells, but to a first approximation, cylindrical cells areonly 1 / πas efficient as flat ones—they simply don’t receive as much directsunlight. The company tried to correct for this deficiency by using mirrors toreflect more sunlight to hit the bottoms of the panels, but it’s hard to recoverfrom a radically inferior starting point.Companies must strive for 10x better because merely incrementalimprovements often end up meaning no improvement at all for the end user.Suppose you develop a new wind turbine that’s 20% more efficient than anyexisting technology—when you test it in the laboratory. That sounds good atfirst, but the lab result won’t begin to compensate for the expenses and risksfaced by any new product in the real world. And even if your system really is20% better on net for the customer who buys it, people are so used toexaggerated claims that you’ll be met with skepticism when you try to sell it.Only when your product is 10x better can you offer the customer transparentsuperiority.
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Copyright © 2014 by Peter ThielAll
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PrefaceZERO TO ONEEVERY MOMENT IN B
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THE CHALLENGE OF THE FUTUREWHENEVER
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century air conditioning, and even
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STARTUP THINKINGNew technology tend
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A QUICK HISTORY OF THE ’90SThe 19
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MANIA: SEPTEMBER 1998-MARCH 2000Dot
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hurry. A South Korean firm wired us
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The entrepreneurs who stuck with Si
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dogmatically rejecting them. Instea
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In this book, we’re not intereste
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Think about how Google talks about
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between Hackers and Jaws: rap star
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RUTHLESS PEOPLEThe problem with a c
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monopoly profits provides a powerfu
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competed even harder for the standa
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Office vs. Docs, and Surface vs. Ne
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If you can’t beat a rival, it may
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In March 2001, PayPal had yet to ma
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CHARACTERISTICS OF MONOPOLYWhat doe
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3. Economies of ScaleA monopoly bus
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BUILDING A MONOPOLYBrand, scale, ne
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Silicon Valley has become obsessed
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YOU ARE NOT A LOTTERY TICKETTHE MOS
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CAN YOU CONTROL YOUR FUTURE?You can
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merry in the meantime: hence Europe
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hubris. You can still visit the Bay
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businessman, but actually his own a
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opinion exactly, so for the most pa
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Francis Bacon wrote that “the pro
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American households were saving, at
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THE RETURN OF DESIGNWhat would it m
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YOU ARE NOT A LOTTERY TICKETWe have
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to understand: we don’t live in a
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The error lies in expecting that ve
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of companies that will successfully
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After 10 years, however, the portfo
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WHAT TO DO WITH THE POWER LAWThe po
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SECRETSEVERY ONE OF TODAY’S most
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WHY AREN’T PEOPLE LOOKING FOR SEC
Page 83 and 84: are found mostly in history books a
Page 85 and 86: THE WORLD ACCORDING TO CONVENTIONHo
Page 87 and 88: THE CASE FOR SECRETSYou can’t fin
Page 89 and 90: HOW TO FIND SECRETSThere are two ki
Page 91 and 92: WHAT TO DO WITH SECRETSIf you find
Page 93 and 94: FOUNDING MATRIMONYWhen you start so
Page 95 and 96: To see misalignment at its most ext
Page 97 and 98: ON THE BUS OR OFF THE BUSAs a gener
Page 99 and 100: VESTED INTERESTSStartups don’t ne
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Page 103 and 104: BEYOND PROFESSIONALISMThe first tea
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Page 107 and 108: DO ONE THINGOn the inside, every in
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Page 111 and 112: NERDS VS. SALESMENThe U.S. advertis
Page 113 and 114: himself). The polar opposite busine
Page 115 and 116: The traditional U.S. aerospace indu
Page 117 and 118: mass appeal but lack any method of
Page 119 and 120: One of these methods is likely to b
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Page 123 and 124: SUBSTITUTION VS. COMPLEMENTARITYFif
Page 125 and 126: people. We don’t trade with compu
Page 127 and 128: computer hybrid approach from PayPa
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Page 132 and 133: SEEING GREENAT THE START of the 21s
Page 136 and 137: THE TIMING QUESTIONCleantech entrep
Page 138 and 139: THE MONOPOLY QUESTIONIn 2006, billi
Page 140 and 141: Cleantech entrepreneurs’ thinking
Page 142 and 143: THE DISTRIBUTION QUESTIONCleantech
Page 144 and 145: gas, and gas prices had fallen more
Page 146 and 147: THE MYTH OF SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Page 148 and 149: broader markets in the future.TEAM.
Page 150 and 151: world needs energy, only a firm tha
Page 152 and 153: THE FOUNDER’S PARADOXOF THE SIX P
Page 154 and 155: THE DIFFERENCE ENGINESome people ar
Page 156 and 157: Where does this strange and extreme
Page 158 and 159: Another example is Sean Parker, who
Page 160 and 161: WHERE KINGS COME FROMExtreme founde
Page 162 and 163: For some fallen stars, death brings
Page 164 and 165: distinctive persona? Or, in his inc
Page 166 and 167: the impeccably credentialed executi
Page 168 and 169: future will look a lot like the pre
Page 170 and 171: Singularity, an attempt to name the
Page 172 and 173: Illustration CreditsThe illustratio
Page 174 and 175: Boyle, RobertbrandingBranson, Richa
Page 176 and 177: Earnhardt, Dale, Jr.East Asian fina
Page 178 and 179: housing bubble, 2.1, 8.1Howery, Ken
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Page 182 and 183: Q-CellsRand, AynRawls, John, 6.1, 6
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globalization andproprietarytechnol
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About the AuthorsPeter Thiel is an
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Zero to One_ Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future ( PDFDrive )

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