Peter Thiel - Zero to One

The Challenge of the Future: Important Truths

• During job interviews, asking about an important truth few agree on reveals intellectual and psychological traits.
• School teaches commonly agreed upon knowledge which makes question difficult to answer.
• Answering requires unpopularity, courage and brilliant thinking which is rare.
• "Our educational system is broken" or "There is no God": these are common but inadequate answers.
• A good answer inverts common belief.
• The future's importance lies in it being a time when the world will look different.
• If society remains unchanged for 100 years, then it will take that time to reach a future
• We know the future will differ from today. Answers should be rooted in the present.

Zero to One: Horizontal vs Vertical Progress

• Hope exists for future progress.
• Horizontal progress involves copying existing successful methods from 1 to n.
• Vertical progress involves creating innovative approaches from 0 to 1.
• Duplicating 1 typewriter to 100 is horizontal progress. Creating a word processor from a typewriter is vertical.
• Globalization is horizontal, which is taking existing successful things and making them work everywhere.
• China focused on globalization to become like the United States through copying 19th and 20th-century technologies.
• China copies but adapts to straight to wireless to skip installing landlines for instance.

Techonology, A More Important Metric

• The single word for vertical progress is technology. Recent rapid technological advances have positioned Silicon Valley as the capital of "technology."
• Technology is not limited to computers, and includes any new and better way of doing things.
• Globalization and technology represent different modes of progress that can occur together, separately, or not at all.
• The period from 1815 to 1914 saw both rapid technological development and globalization.
• From WW1 to 1971 there was rapid technological development but minimal globalization. Post-1971 had rapid globalization but limited technological development mainly confined to IT
• Today's language implies a kind of technological end of history, with the developed world having achieved the achievable.
• Poorer nations must “catch up," rather than pushing progress.
• Technology matters more than globalization when it comes to contrarian questions
• Without technological progress, China doubling energy production would mean doubling its air pollution.
• Spreading old methods of wealth creation will result in devastation instead of riches
• Globalization without new technology is unsustainable in a world of scarcity because the ancestors lived in static zero sum societies
• Any gains meant losses for someone else, but they only created new sources of wealth rarely.
• Modern progress from the 1760s brought a richer society than before

Late 20th Century and the Modern Challenge

• In the late 1960s, people anticipated progress, foreseeing a four-day workweek and cheap energy, though it did not happen.
• Distractions from smartphones cause oversight that surroundings have become largely old.
• Only computers and communications have dramatically improved since midcentury.
• Challenge is to imagine and create the new technologies, for prosperity and peace in the 21st century.

Startup Thinking. Better As A Team

• New technology frequently originates from startups.
• Small groups with a sense of mission drive change best. It’s hard to be innovative in large organizations or alone.
• Bureaucracy slows progress, and entrenched interests avoid risk.
• Positively, a startup is the group you can persuade to join your plan for a different future.
• A new company’s strength is new thinking afforded by small size which allows room to think, and question and rethink business from scratch.

What Important Truth Do Very Few Peoply Agree With You On?

• It may be easier to start with what everybody agrees on.
• "Madness is rare in individuals, but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule." -Nietzsche wrote
• Delusional popular is easier to believe and then you must look for contrarian truths. .
• Obvious propositions, like “companies exist to make money’ gets blurred during bubbles.
• Internet bubble of the ‘90s, the biggest since 1929 defined and distorted thinking even to this day.

A Quick History of The 90's

• Decade started with euphoria of the Berlin Wall coming down which was short lived as The United States was in recession in mid 1990
• Slow manufacturing was never fully rebounded. The shift to a service economy was protracted.
• 1992 through end of 1994 was a time of general malaise with dead American soldiers in Mogadishu on cable news. Anxiety about globalization increased.
• Then president Bush lost to Ross Perot whatever the cultural fascination with Nirvana since it wasn't hope or confidence
• Japan seemed won the semiconductor war with internet usage was restricted to lack of user friendly the tech sector seemed idiosyncratic
• Mosaic browser was oficially released in November 1993 and Netscape release.
• Navigator browser grew so quickly from January 1995 to be able to IPO in August '95 even though it wasn't profitable Netscape stock had shot up from $28 to $174 per share. Yahoo soon went public.
• Skeptics questioned earnings and revenue multiples the market had gone crazy
• Fed chairman Alan Greenspan irrational exuberance tech investors were irration
• East Asian hit July 1997, then came rouble crisis. American investors grew nervous about a nation with 10,000 nukes.
• Set off a brought down long term capital over massave bale out

Dot Com Mania

• The underlying sentiment for dot Com mania that started in September 1998 was nothing seemed to be working
• This age was Intense and short only for 18 months of insanity was Intense of lavish that winnuin
• Companies seemed to embrace by irrationality overnight overnight .

Paypal

• The the belief PayPal was not due the the Valley people start ready
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• They pay sign We got new for Exponential
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Lessons Learned. The Aftermath

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All Happy Companies are Different: Monopoly

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Lies People Tell and Monopoly Lies

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Explore factors contributing to economic pessimism in the early 1990s and the rise of the internet. Examine events like the Mosaic browser release, Netscape's IPO, the East Asian financial crisis, and their impact. Understand how leaders and different classes in China prepare for the future.