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

world needs energy, only a firm that offers a superior solution for a specific
energy problem can make money. No sector will ever be so important that
merely participating in it will be enough to build a great company.
The tech bubble was far bigger than cleantech and the crash even more
painful. But the dream of the ’90s turned out to be right: skeptics who doubted
that the internet would fundamentally change publishing or retail sales or
everyday social life looked prescient in 2001, but they seem comically foolish
today. Could successful energy startups be founded after the cleantech crash just
as Web 2.0 startups successfully launched amid the debris of the dot-coms? The
macro need for energy solutions is still real. But a valuable business must start
by finding a niche and dominating a small market. Facebook started as a service
for just one university campus before it spread to other schools and then the
entire world. Finding small markets for energy solutions will be tricky—you
could aim to replace diesel as a power source for remote islands, or maybe build
modular reactors for quick deployment at military installations in hostile
territories. Paradoxically, the challenge for the entrepreneurs who will create
Energy 2.0 is to think small.